Tethered Shooting & Macro Lens

bitop wrote:

I got the 300D for Christmas secondhand, came with the standard EFS 18mm-55mm lens, and I've been loving it.

However I'm looking into tethered shooting and macro lenses. Tethered shooting since I usually don't take photos that far away from my computer (wanna try to do night sky stuff and hope this will be sufficient when I buy a manual shutter thingy) so seeing the result right away will let me tweak settings much faster. And macro lenses cause the things I take photos of are generally small. Not small small but I'm just not sure if a macro lens is needed for them. I take pictures of models I build and they're generally 13cm-ish in height.

I only ask about tethered shooting because I googled and I got varied results saying yes and no so I'd like to know for sure. I'd just need EOS Utility and a USB to USB Mini/whatever to my camera? And a tripod of course I really need a tripod.

Sorry if this is all really basic, easy to answer stuff. And thanks in advance!

I can't comment about the 300D but I do know that the 350D can be shot tethered with Windows XP.

You will need to install the following from the EOS Digital Solutions disk shipped with your camera then update them from one of Canon's support site:-

Canon WIA driver.

EOS Utility.

EOS Viewer Utility.

It is probably worth installing Zoombrowser EX and DPP (Digital Photo Professional) while you are at it.

The bad news is the 350D is not supported on Window 8.1 64bit (and I suspect any other 64bit version of windows).

A quick look on Canon's UK support site indicates that the WIA Driver is only available for Windows XP and ME which probably means that these are the only two versions of Windows which you can use for tethered capture.

You might want to consider upgrading your lens to the later IS version which is a significant improvement over the non-IS version or better still the latest IS STM. Both are available in good condition on the second hand market.

A tripod is essential for night sky photography and extremely useful for close up photography. Don't be tempted to scrimp on the tripod. There are three desirable attributes for a tripod 1) Sturdy, 2) Light and 3) Cheap. you can have a maximum of two of these attributes in any tripod you buy.

As for shooting 13cm models you should be able to get pretty good images with the lens you have without needing to spend on a macro lens.

Here are a couple of quick shots from my 350D.

The RAVpower power bank is 12cm tall by 8cm wide. This was taken at 56mm focal length and resized for the web.

This is a 100% crop from the original image. Your 300D will have slightly less resolution (6Mpixels as opposed to the 350D's 8) but there is no reason it can't produce similar images.

Hope this helps.

Ian