Month: June 2008

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It’s built in, oops. Remote WIA Picture Taking

Well so much for my expensive remote control script for the D300 — yes it does work, but my script is entirely redundant as the same feature is actually built in to the Windows XP Camera and Scanner Wizard!  You know the one, described here.  It’s how most people get their digital images into their PC , even while those of us who “know better” use Adobe Bridge, or a card reader.

In fact the Wizard has advantages; as a built in part of Windows it is even better as it gives you a immediate thumbnail of the image as soon as you take it.

All you have to do is connect your PTP capable camera and when the wizard pops up you advance to the step where you can see thumbnails.  Now down below them is a row of icons for rotate left right and so on.  Well the last one in the line is “Take Picture”!

Click that and my trusty Nikon D300 instantly takes a picture, and moments later the thumbnail appears in the usual space.

It works great — and the financial breakdown is still the same as with my script, so it is either the most expensive or the cheapest wireless dslr shutter release in the world.

But is it good *enough*?  Thumbnails are great but a bigger view would be even better.   And by combining my remote shutter release script with the Tethered shooting / Adobe Bridge script that should be my next step.

Stay tuned!

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Tethered shooting with Bridge viewing

Update: This is now obsolete, use instead the  DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.1 – Greens 

application.

Here’s an update to the Tethered shooting script

— this one customized to work with Bridge for viewing.

Download

Instructions and usage are the same as the original except that if you have Bridge open on the tethered shooting folder — “c:\tethered” by default — then after each new image is added Bridge will advance to that image by pressing [END] to go to the last image in the folder.  You need to have sorting set appropriately so the most recent image is the last in the folder.

It doesn’t work with Slideshow unfortunately but you can collapse the side panels (use the tab key) and maximize the size of the thumbnails to get an almost-full-screen view of the images as you shoot them.

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D300 Remote Control Script

Update: This is now obsolete for two reasons, firstly remote is built into windows, and secondly for advance use you have the DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 1.0 application.

I wrote yesterday about why I need this script to be a remote shutter release for my Nikon D300 so today here are the details of what you need, and how to use it.  Oh, and why not use one of the cheap 3rd party remotes

 (e.g. Phottix N1

or Cleon N8), a real remote like a ML-3 or a MC-DC1 Remote cord?  Well if I can DIY I’d always like to try that first!

Hardware (this is what I used, you can substitute some pieces of course):

  • Long USB cable — doesn’t have to be that long but longer is more convenient
  • One Thinkpad X31 — or any laptop with a USB port and a Wifi connection
  • One Fujitsu Lifebook — or any other laptop with a Wifi connection
  • Wireless access point — so you can connect from one PC to another
  • Windows XP SP2 on both PCs
  • Microsoft Windows WIA Automation
  • The software Linked below
DOWNLOAD (2.0)remote2

– RAW or JPG, you choose

– JPG only
Installation:

Copy the files into any folder on your PC, I suggest c:program filesremote but it’s up to you.

Usage: 

  • Make sure your camera is in USB PTP mode
  • Plug the USB cable into the first laptop and into the camera, turn the camera on and cancel any pop-ups that occur for downloading etc
  • Install the Windows WIA Automation DLL by running install.cmd (you only need to do this once)
  • Run the script c:program filesremoteremote.wsf by double clicking it.

… and here’s the key thing that makes it wireless

  • Now use your second laptop and use the built in Windows Remote Desktop function to connect to the first laptop over your wireless connection.
  • To release the shutter on your D300 just click or use the enter key to press the “OK” button

Works with:

  • Nikon D300
  • Nikon D40
  • … and I presume would on any Nikon dSLR

    • Cost:

    • Long USB cable $2
    • Thankpad X31 $1,099
    • Fujitsu Lifebook $1,507
    • Linksys Wifi Access point $47
    • Windows WIA Automation $0
    • My script $0
    • Total: $2,655

    Or, if you already have all that hardware then :

    • Total: $0

    Variation, remote but not wireless:

    A very long mouse cable or keyboard cable could get you a similar effect with one laptop/computer – but that wouldn’t be so much fun now would it?  Or how about a wireless keyboard or mouse?

    And next:

    And then this could be combined with the tethered shooting script – plus a “advanced to next image” script to get some good results, that’s the next thing to do on the scripting side.

    Please let me know if you try this out and it works for you!  I know this isn’t particularly easy to understand from reading the above, but you’ll find it easy if you try – and I’ll try to do a video some time to show how it works.

     

    Update: The combined script that has the remote shutter release functionality here plus the tethered downloading I called the “Self Portrait Script” and you can download it

    here .

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    Coming soon – the world’s most expensive DSLR remote control

    Yes, to go with my expensive D300 — I now find I have no wireless remote control shutter release.  The handly little not-particularly-cheap ML-L3 remote that worked for my D40 is no good for the D300.

    Instead I’m supposed to buy an ML-3 remote — which costs about ten times the price.  Sure it does a lot more, but I don’t particularly want more, I just want to press a button in my hand while the camera is on a tripod at the other side of the room as I do endless self-portraits while practicing my off-camera lighting.

    So, what is a geek to do?  Well, build something yourself of course — with the techniques in mind that I used for the Tethered Shooting script I realized I could put together a wireless remote with things I had hanging around.

    Now if I add up the cost of all those items it comes to about 25 times the cost of the ML-3, so that would have to count as the most expensive dSLR wireless remote control in the world!   But…  If I already have all the gear then the extra cost to me is zero.

    So once again it’s a bit (ok a lot) of hardware tied together with a few lines of code – Windows only (XP SP2 minimum) in the version I’m doing, but I’m sure Macs can do something very similar.

    Details tomorrow when I get it all packaged up.

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    D300 – Tethered as well

    Well I’ve been a bit busy the last week and a bit, and what little “photo time” I have has been occupied with playing with my new toy the Nikon D300.  It was a gift to me and I’m really appreciating it very much.  It is a lot of camera when compared with my D40 and I really now understand what I read before about for people upgrading D40 -> D300.  Because it is a “class well above your current camera” you will need to “step up your game photographically if you want to get the benefits of those extra pixels. And there’s an enormous amount of controls to master to do that

    In a sense I am no way near there — I wasn’t even near there with my D40 though I did feel a little frustration at its limits.  But as always it is the photographer, not the camera, that is the critical component and I want to spend more time on that aspect.

    Still, as a geek I’ll never turn down, or fail to appreciate the fun, in a new gadget.

    Pro:

    • Finally auto-focus for my 50mm f1/8 lens!
    • Better high ISO, it is not miraculous, but it is better
    • ISO 100 — so called “Lo”
    • Built in CLS commander, so I can free up my SB-800 and effectively get another off-camera flash
    • It works fine with my tethered shooting script.  🙂

    Con:

    • It’s heavy – really, I don’t want to carry this about in my bag all the time
    • RAW files are so big — oh no, do I need another hard disk already?
    • It uses CF cards — when I have a big collection of SD 🙁

    And the absolutely biggest issue:

    • I can no longer blame my terrible photographs on having inadaquate equipment.  😉

    Ok I’ll stop playing soon and get back to doing something constructive.  Next up on my list “The World’s Most Expensive D300 Remote Shutter Release”.  Details to follow (if it works!)

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