A few bits and pieces about photography
Changes in 4.1 – the “Eat your own dog food” release of DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control.
4.1
– allow fractional bracketing by changing Cint to Cdbl
– don’t crash on line 157 if there is nothing to download
– removed the “download immediately” function and changed things so that the normal tether does this function
– fixed the bug where push external viewer doesn’t work unless you explicitly choose the output folder
Update, try the
Camera Control 2.1 instead which fixes some bugs.
Ok so here is DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 2.0 — the Embarrassment release. I’ve named it that because I’ve had no time to work on it recently and so it still is a) very rough with major holes and b) fails to have all the obvious fixes and enhancements that I have discussed with people.
– Try instead 2.1 which fixes some bugs
So why release it at all? Well because having control of the camera exposure from the computer is cool — and at the moment I have it sitting here on my PC working and maybe you’d like to have it on your PC working as well.
New features:
New known bugs, issues and uglinesses
Two of my scripts let you press a key on the keyboard, or click with the mouse, and remotely release the shutter. But just like the built in Windows Explorer technique for doing these they both only are able to trigger JPG, even if the camera is set to RAW.
Until today. It turns out this is not that hard to fix. But the programatic technique is a bit of a laugh; because Windows Image Automation does not officially support RAW the NEF files on my Nikon D300 are typed as being of “undefined” type. Unlike JPG files which WIA does know are JPG files and are typed appropriately.
So to get the WIA Take Picture command to get me a NEF I actually have to ask for a picture of type “undefined”! It’s amazing it works, I guess somewhere an engineer (I’m not sure Microsoft or Nikon) decided that undefined=NEF. I have no idea of this will also work with Canon, it might or it might not.
Anyway it works, and it opens up a whole range of possibilities I’ll be exploring soon with the scripting. But until then head over to the posts for those remote scripts and you can download the latest versions which support RAW.
(which is also good for table top still life. e.g. ebay shooting as well)
PS. Please please no religious RAW vs JPG comments. It’s a free world, people are entitled to the file format of their choice.
Since I first posted my free script that allows Nikon DSLRs to be shot tethered I’ve been very pleased with the response, it seems to have been helpful to many people. However I’ve hardly been very good at documenting how to use it. So in an attempt to fix that I’ve made this little video which shows how to use it.
Or view high quality YouTube version
This is my first video attempt so it is pretty basic — but it took me all afternoon to put together, so please excuse the rough edges. Hopefully I’ll work out how to do this better and perhaps make some videos explaining my hardware DIY projects which would also benefit from this type of explanation.
If you’re not sure about tethered shooting then ProPhotoLife has just released a great video
, as usual, explaining all about it – using Canon as an example. I particularly like his safety tips regarding long USB cables.
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):
– 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:
… and here’s the key thing that makes it wireless
Works with:
Cost:
Or, if you already have all that hardware then :
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 .
Update: This version is now obsolete,
Update: The With Bridge version provides almost instant image viewing in Adobe Bridge without any keypresses. If you use Bridge instead of Adobe Lightroom then download that version. I’ve also made a video to show how to use this script.
If you’ve been keeping up with the blogs of various big photography bloggers out there you’ll certainly have been seeing quite a bit about tethered shooting recently. Not that it is a revolution or anything, but it certainly is a help to be able to see your images immediately on a big screen — and that doesn’t just go for those with failing eye-sight but basically the images you see on the LCD at the back of your camera are only the jpg preview, not the RAW (should you be shooting raw).
Even if you are shooting jpg just having to view them on such a tiny screen really makes it hard to tell if they are sharp or perhaps shaded as you are hoping. Sucking them right into your PC seems just so logical.
If you are a Canon shooter then no issue – the software comes with the camera (so I’m told).
If you are a Nikon shooter then it gets a little more difficult. If you are a Mac user you could use Aperture, but for Windows you seem to be stuck with Nikon Camera Control Pro. That’s a $160 or so software which does a lot more than just tethered shooting, but is probably overkill if like me you are a hobbiest just messing around.
So in true geeky DIY mode I thought it can’t be that hard to write a script that sucks pictures out of a USB connected camera and saves them onto the PC. And after a little poking around I find that actually it’s true, it isn’t that hard.
The thing that makes it practical is that most of what you need is built into Windows, another chunk comes as a standard optional microsoft download, such that the glue you need to pull it all together is just a few lines of code.
Part 1 is Windows Image Acquisition (WIA) – that’s built in
Part 2 is WIA Automation Layer
– a free download from Microsoft for Windows XP SP2 or higher
Part 3 is a script to tie it all together – which I present here
This is now obsolete, use instead the free DIYPhotobits.com Camera Control 4.0
application.
Requirements:
Installation:
Well nothing really, just unzip it and put it in a folder anywhere — I suggest c:\program files\tethered but anywhere would do.
Usage:
Notes: