Tethered shooting in Lightroom
If you can connect your digital camera directly to the computer, you can import image files to Lightroom directly from the camera.
Photographs can be automatically imported into Lightroom, bypassing the need for a camera card and having to configure the Import settings every time you import a batch of images.
This is also referred to as ‘tethered shooting’ and Lightroom has the ability to do this, but Lightroom will need to rely on other software that can communicate with your camera and put image files to a specified folder location.
This way, Lightroom can be configured to automatically import these images into the library using ‘watched folders’.
Connecting the camera to the computer
To shoot in tethered mode you need to connect your digital camera to the computer. Ideally, you want the fastest connection possible. Most digital SLRs will offer a Firewire (IEEE 1394) or USB 2.0 connection, which in practice will allow you to shoot and download at almost the same speed as you can with a fast camera memory card. The only problem is that you have to have your camera connected to the computer via a cable and this can restrict the amount of freedom you have to move about without pulling the cable out, or worse, dragging a notebook off the table!
Camera capture software
Lightroom can appropriate the tethered shooting component of the camera communication software and from there, directly take over the image processing and image management.
Here’s how it works: the camera communication software should be instructed to download the files to a specific folder location and once the files appear in this ‘watched’ folder, Lightroom can be instructed to immediately copy the files into the Lightroom library. And since the files immediately deleted from the watched folder by Lightroom, you effectively bypass the camera software and the images will appear directly in Lightroom.
It is confirmed that it is possible to use Lightroom in conjunction with the Canon software designed for the Canon EOS range of cameras.
Nikon users can use Nikon Capture, which includes a Camera Control component that allows you to do the same thing as the Canon software and establishes a watched folder to download the images to. The latest version of Nikon Capture supports all the D Series cameras as well as the Nikon Coolpix 8700.
Alternatively, you might want to consider buying Bibble Pro 4.9.8 software from Bibble Labs. Bibble Pro costs a lot less than Nikon Capture. And it enables tethered shooting with a wide variety of digital cameras, and again, allows you to establish a watched folder for the downloaded images.
