New LR3 Beta 2 Feature: Tethered Shooting

A few weeks ago I posted my top list of items I’d like to see in Lightroom 4.

The recent release of Lightroom 3′s second public beta made one of those items – tethering – a reality! Read on for more on this exciting new feature.

About Tethering

Tethered shooting allows you to connect a USB cable from your camera to your laptop and, while shooting, have the images show up instantly on the computer. More advanced tethered programs add features like seeing the camera settings (f stop, shutter speed, etc.) in the software, see a live view on the screen of what the camera is seeing and the ability to trigger the camera from the software.

How it Works in Lightroom

In the past, Lightroom was able to tether. Sort of. You needed additional software to import the photos from the camera. Lightroom had a feature called Watched Folders that would then automatically display the images imported in. The feature worked, but was a bit difficult to setup – especially for beginners – and it required installing the additional software to import the pictures.

Lightroom 3, Beta 2 now integrates the entire process right into a nice, easy to use interface.

Open Lightroom, connect your supported camera and click File, Tethered Capture, Start Tethered Capture.

You’ll then have an opportunity to set up how the photos are imported, including folder names, if you want a develop preset applied to each imported photo, etc. Set each item as needed, click OK.

The primary dialog is then replaced by a tethered shooting bar. The bar displays the connected camera, along with the camera’s current settings. As you take a picture with the camera, the photo will automatically transfer to the folder you specified and display in Lightroom. You can also click the button on the right-side of the bar to take the picture.

That’s it. One of the things I like most about this new feature is its simplicity. Plug in the camera, click a few buttons and start shooting!

What it Doesn’t Do

Unfortunately for some, tethering isn’t all roses. Depending on what camera and specific features you use, tethering may not work for you quite yet.

Camera Support

As of this writing, only newer Canon and Nikon cameras are supported. See the following release notes for the full list. Hopefully, like RAW support, tethered camera support will grow in future releases.

Advanced Features

While the existing set of features do the trick for me, some more advanced features are missing. For example, it doesn’t currently display a live view of what the camera sees and doesn’t let you change the camera’s settings from within Lightroom.

Conclusion

This isn’t just one of my favorite new features in the second beta, but one of my favorite features overall in Lightroom 3. If you do any type of studio work, integrated tethering is a great productivity help.

As long as you are using a supported camera, this new, easy to use feature works great!

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Tags: features, tethered

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 24th, 2010 at 5:00 am and is filed under Lightroom 3, beta. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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About the Author: Brian Reyman
Contact Brian

Brian lives and breathes Adobe products and loves using pretty much all of them. He is an Adobe Community Professional for Lightroom and an Adobe Certified Expert in Lightroom. Brian is also Manager for the Denver Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop User Group.

When not shooting and using Lightroom (or other Adobe products), Brian is an IT professional living in Denver, Colorado.

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http://eat5hams.com/ Eric

It would be great if you could have lightroom do an image sequence (ie act as an intervalometer), allowing you to use Lightroom to control your camera when taking time-lapse videos. It should be a matter of some relatively simple code, as there is already a way for the software to trigger the camera…
http://www.brianreyman.com/ Brian

That would be a great added feature – maybe LR 4!
http://lightroomsecrets.com/2010/04/whered-all-the-noise-go/ Where’d All the Noise Go? | Lightroom Secrets

[...] 3 Beta 2’s recent release brought with it a host of new features. In addition to tethering, its greatly improved noise reduction is at the top of my improved feature [...]
Bill

A little, LOL, work needs to be done to speed up the adjustment brush's rendering in Lightroom 3 beta 2. I've been doing some work of an old shot I have of the Tracy Arm glacier in Alaska and have been super frustrated by the amount of time the spinning wheel on my Mac occupies the screen for even simple adjustments. FYI I have an entire firewire 800 HDD dedicated to various Abobe caches and 8 GBs of RAM on a 3.06 Intel processor so I doubt the problem is with resources for the software. Just some friendly feedback and didn't know where else to post such issues, thanks
http://lightroomsecrets.com Gene McCullagh

Hi Bill!

Yes there is work to be done and the LR team is always looking for feedback from the beta. I suggest you let them know (and they do read the comments) either at the LR3 Beta forums http://forums.adobe.com/community/labs/lightroom3 or using the feedback/wishlist form at http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/mmform/index.cfm?n.... Those are the two best places to get the message to them.
cmonberg

It sure would be great if Lightroom would copy all the features C1 Pro 5 has…….They could take the whole market. I think it's great that you can teather to lightroom but its not ready for a real world fast working pro invironment…..

slow studio shoot where your not switching a lot of capture folders and doing a lot of renaming…..”Yes”…… I work on fast paced teathered shoots with thousands of files per day and its a tricky thing staying up and running all day and having a hard drive ready for the client at the end of the shoot…..which they all want and expect!!!…… C1 pro 5 has it figured out…. but I would love to see lightroom come up with an even better soultion to teathered shooting…..A few things i notice right off the bat and correct me if im wrong plz?

1. Teather speed is slower than c1 pro… maybe it has to do with preview size?

2. You need to be able to set up new capture folders fast and be able to capture to those folders right away.

3. The renaming system dosent have near the flexibility of C1 Pro

4.It would be nice to be able to see more rows of thumbnails and more flexability in that area….

Good start LR!!!! I hope someday I can make the switch and be happy with just one software……Cant we all just get along!!!! hahah
Chris
http://blog.twphch.com/2010/05/studiofotografering-del-1/ Studiofotografering – del 1

[...] der har tidligere vært Canon DPP eller dSLR Remote Pro, men siste beta av LR3 støtter nå direktekobling med kameraet, så dermed kan hele jobben gjøres i LR. Jeg vil absolutt anbefale å skyte direkte inn på en [...]
PeteG

I use the Pentax K20D, which comes with a basic tethered capture system. Useful as I do more studio work than anything else commercially. I’m wondering if it might be possible to have the images also come up in lightroom at the same time? Would give me camera control from the computer then. This assuming the beta will eventually work with Pentax. I VOTE IT DOES SOON! Like I get an opinion of course. And by the way the K20D may not have some of the feature set of some Nikon/Canon bodies, but it’s RAW files whether in PEF or DNG are second to none, check it out.
PeteG

I use the Pentax K20D, which comes with a basic tethered capture system. Useful as I do more studio work than anything else commercially. I'm wondering if it might be possible to have the images also come up in lightroom at the same time? Would give me camera control from the computer then. This assuming the beta will eventually work with Pentax. I VOTE IT DOES SOON! Like I get an opinion of course. And by the way the K20D may not have some of the feature set of some Nikon/Canon bodies, but it's RAW files whether in PEF or DNG are second to none, check it out.

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