Tethered Shooting: With Aperture 2
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Last week we looked at the various options available to photographers wanting to shoot tethered to a computer. The advantages of working this way are numerous: if many people are involved in the shoot, they can all instantly see what is being captured and give feedback as and when required. Make-up artists, art directors and assistants can all feel more involved in a shoot, and will find their own jobs easier to do.
For the photographer, tethered shooting gives the opportunity to check you are on the right track. With a decent quality, colour-calibrated screen you’ll see an accurate representation of the colours and brightness levels you’ve captured and be able to check sharpness far more quickly than zooming in on your camera’s review screen.
Furthermore, cameras only display JPEG previews (even in Raw mode, your camera is not processing on the fly, but showing you the JPEG built-in to the Raw file header). With a tethered shooting set-up you can see Raw files more or less in real time.
One recent addition to the range of Raw processing software out there is Apple’s Aperture imaging software. In version 2 the ability to shoot tethered with cameras using the widely-adopted PTP protocol is supported, meaning you can shoot either JPEG or Raw files into an Aperture project, adding metadata on the way. Here’s how it’s done.
Step 1
Make sure your camera’s USB mode is set to PTP, then connect it to your Mac with either a FireWire or USB cable. You’ll need a decent length cable to let you move independently from the computer; we’ve used a lengthy 4.2m USB 2.0 Belkin lead to connect our Fujifilm S5 Pro.
Step 2
If Aperture brings up an image import dialogue box, cancel it by clicking the ‘X’ icon. Create a project or album to hold your pictures, exactly as you would when importing pictures from a card – this is where your images from the session will end up.
Step 3
Choose File>Tether>Start new session…
This dialogue box is like the Import Images dialogue you see when importing images from a card. You can choose where the pictures are to be stored, what they are to be called and if any metadata is to applied.
Step 4
Click Start Session. The Tether Head-Up Display (HUD) shows the status of the session, which camera is connected and how many shots have been taken. To record an image, either click the Capture button, or shoot normally with the camera’s controls.
Step 5
Each image comes directly from the camera into Aperture’s library and, if the Auto Select box is ticked, will be shown as the current image. All display modes are available (Browser, Viewer, Film Strip and Full Screen) and you can turn on the loupe to check critical sharpness in each frame.
Step 6
When you have finished shooting, click the Stop Session button in the HUD and disconnect your camera to preserve battery life. Your Raw pictures from the shoot are now all in Aperture waiting to be keyworded, sorted and edited as usual. And your hit rate should be much better!
Info: Apple Aperture: www.apple.com/uk/aperture
See page 1: "Shooting Tethered"
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