Back when I started researching how to tether my camera to a laptop, I couldn’t find the information in one place and the whole thing seemed a bit complicated. The truth is, this is very simple, extremely useful and costs very little. You can purchase  Nikon’s Capture Software for tethering or you can download one of the free tethering software options available online.

Why shoot tethered, because it’s the only way to really see what you are getting. It’s perfect for studio work and even location portraits so you can see you images on the big laptop screen, check your focus, review your histogram and composition all without pushing a single button. No more worrying about what you have on your compact flash card vs. what you think you see on the camera back

Tethering also allows your client to see your work while you shoot if you choose to work that way. The images are stored on your laptop hard-drive instead of your camera so color correcting and reviewing proofs with your client are a snap to do before you wrap up your session.

There are lots of ways to get this done with different software and hardware. At the end of this post I give you some assorted links to research the other ways to tether. I actually use two different tethering software applications depending on what I need for that shoot. I will share the free software first and the other after that.

What you need:

1. Camera
2. Cable (tether)
3. Computer
4. Capture Software
5. Editing Software

This is what I use:

• Camera on tripod: NIKON D700, D300 and D200
• Laptop on table nearby: Mac 15” with Snow Leopard OS
• USB Cable connecting camera to laptop. I use a 15.4’ (4.7 m) Cannon USB cable (IFC-500U)but you can always use the USB cable that came with your camera but mine was too short. Pay attention to your tethering cable and people moving around your equipment between your computer and camera. It doesn’t take much to pull the camera and tripod over if someone trips on the tether cable. I will place an extra tripod extended up past 6′, between the camera and laptop and clamp the cable to the top of the tripod so people can pass under it.
• Start tethering software and turn on camera: Sofortbild (free download)
• Camera settings are visible in the tethering software on the laptop screen
• Start Lightroom 2.5 software to view images (optional)
• Fire a test image and see the image in LR 2.5 in a few seconds

The other tethering software: (wireless)

Once pretty cool option is the OnOneSoftware product DSLR Remote for the iPhone. There are two price-points for this product ($2.00 or $20.00) and in general terms the cheaper of the two doesn’t let you view your image from your phone but you need to review the website for camera model specific functions.This software is purchased right from your iPhone. Part of the software is loaded onto your phone and the other part is downloaded onto your laptop. The cool part about this software is you are now wireless. You fire your camera with your iPhone.  This is a slick affordable solution with one drawback. It works as long as your phone and computer are on the same network. This is a killer for on location work. Even if you are indoors at a client’s home, you would typically have to ask for their network password and enter it onto your phone and laptop. In this scenario I use the cable to tether.

Software Settings

Yes there are some things you need to do for all of this to work but the steps are simple, intuitive and right there in your software guide or help menu. If you still get lost, there are hundreds of tutorials and examples online. Basically you want your images to travel from your camera to your laptop and land in a specific folder that Lightroom will watch all of the time. When a new image arrives, and LR is open, it will import and display that image without any interaction required from you. The tethering software becomes a utility running in the background and LR takes over.  Using LR is purely optional; you can use the tethering software to view your images.

Tethered Photography Examples

Other Resources

Scott Kelby’s blog on tethering is a great easy to understand overview of tethering and the comments on this post provide some additional ideas: one of the blog readers states that “With Mac OS X Leopard’s Image Capture application, Nikon DSLR cameras can be tethered without buying any additional software — in other words, for FREE…” I have not investigated this option. Another reader shares a different free software option.