Tethered shooting with Lightroom

I just tried tethered shooting today with my 7D, Macbook Air, and Lightroom 3.6. The Macbook is connected by USB to the 7D. It would take probably 10-15 seconds from the time I pressed the shutter button to the time the picture was viewable on the Macbook. Is the delay purely a function of the speed of the USB connection? I am shooting large raw.

I was able to attend a Scott Kelby seminar this summer and he uses tethered shooting. I noticed he uses a Mac and it seemed that the images took anywhere between 5 and 10 seconds to show up on the projector for the audience to view. I also found his set up procedure. Take a look.

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/1207

kentmcpherson said:

I just tried tethered shooting today with my 7D, Macbook Air, and Lightroom 3.6. The Macbook is connected by USB to the 7D. It would take probably 10-15 seconds from the time I pressed the shutter button to the time the picture was viewable on the Macbook. Is the delay purely a function of the speed of the USB connection? I am shooting large raw.

Click to expand...

What's wrong with EOS utility?

The delay is a combination of things, and 10 to 15 seconds isn't unusual.

It takes time to transmit via USB. If you shoot JPG only it will be much faster because the JPG files are smaller. Shoot both JPG & RAW and it will be slower than RAW alone.

It takes time to write the image to your HD. The bigger the image the longer the time to save.

It takes time for LR to render the image if you are displaying full size images on the screen. If you are in Grid mode then it will be a bit faster because the embedded JPG is displayed.

The fastest way to get an image up for review is to send your images for display on a HD TV. This only takes two to five seconds. It doesn't make much difference if you shoot JPG's or RAW.

My 60D on my HP Elitebook 2540p, Core i7, 8GB DDR3, and Windows 7 64Bits takes about 4 to 5 seconds for a RAW file to appear in Lightroom's Library. I think you need lots of horsepower.

I haven't tried shooting tethered with LR4, though. Let me do a quick test and I'll come back to you with my results.

kentmcpherson said:

I just tried tethered shooting today with my 7D, Macbook Air, and Lightroom 3.6. The Macbook is connected by USB to the 7D. It would take probably 10-15 seconds from the time I pressed the shutter button to the time the picture was viewable on the Macbook. Is the delay purely a function of the speed of the USB connection? I am shooting large raw.

Click to expand...

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Martin Ocando
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Differently from LR 6.3, which didn't supported the 60D completely (I had to use EOS utility and Auto Import), this time I was able to shoot with LR's own tethered capture feature, which is much less hassle. I think the incompatibility had to do with Windows 7 vs Mac, and not the actual version of Lightroom.
Results: Exactly 7 seconds from capture to show up in Library.

Now, using EOS Utility and Auto import: less than 5 seconds.

So, still the EOS utility way is faster.
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Martin Ocando
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Correction. When I was shooting with LR4 tethered capture feature I was saving the files to my USB drive. When I shot using EOS utility, the files were saved to my C drive. I changed it to my USB drive, and it took the same 7 seconds to appear in library.

So, they both have the same transfer speed, but for faster results is better to use a fast internal drive rather than an USB external backup drive.

Martin Ocando said:

Differently from LR 6.3, which didn't supported the 60D completely (I had to use EOS utility and Auto Import), this time I was able to shoot with LR's own tethered capture feature, which is much less hassle. I think the incompatibility had to do with Windows 7 vs Mac, and not the actual version of Lightroom.
Results: Exactly 7 seconds from capture to show up in Library.

Now, using EOS Utility and Auto import: less than 5 seconds.

So, still the EOS utility way is faster.
--
Martin Ocando
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Click to expand...

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Martin Ocando
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