Aperture Tethered Shooting Tutorial
Having recently upgraded to Aperture 2, I was looking forward to its tethered shooting features. Whether you are shooting studio shots, stock and macro photography, or taking shots for an eBay listing, the ability to control you camera from within Aperture is a real benefit. The real-time feedback also provides a faster shooting workflow, and can be a real asset for studio photographers that want to give instant feedback to their clients.
Not all camera models are support by Aperture, and Apple maintains a supported camera list. Currently, it seems that only Canon and Nikon models are supported.
Setting up and using the tether features in Aperture is very straightforward.
You will first need to ensure that the USB port of your camera is set to Point-To-Point rather than Mass Storage. On my Nikon, the ‘Setup Menu’ -> ‘USB’ -> ‘PTP’ allows me to set this. Cameras that only support mass storage are not supported. With the camera turned off, connect the camera to the computer using the USB cable. When you turn on the camera, you may get the standard ‘Import Photos’ dialog boxes from either iPhoto or Aperture. Just cancel out of these.
Aperture will automatically import the photos into an existing project, so select the project for the tethered images. With the project selected, select the ‘Edit’ -> ‘Tether’ -> ‘Start Session…’ menu option.
This displays the ‘Tether Settings’ dialog box, and provides the following configuration options. The destination folder is shown at the top of the dialog box for reference.
Store Files - Allows the captured photos to be stored either in the Aperture library or in the ‘Pictures’ or a user-selected folder. They will be maintained in the project as referenced photos.
Version Name - Allows a custom filename to be selected. The same filename options are available as when importing photos into Aperture.
Add Metadata From - Allows metadata (including caption, keyword ad IPTC) to be appended or replaced in the captured photos. This is a handy feature when you want all photos to be labelled with the same keywords.
The Tether HUD can also be switched off by de-selected the ‘Show HUD’ checkbox.
Selecting the ‘Start Session’ button will display the Tether HUD. The HUD shows the camera model, the destination folder, and the number of shots taken.
Pressing the ‘Capture’ button on the HUD or the camera’s shutter will take a photo and automatically upload it to the selected project in Aperture. A spinning ball will indicate the photo upload progress. Not all cameras support both remote and Aperture’s control of the shutter, as some may only support one mode or the other. After the photo shoot, pressing the ‘Stop Session’ button will stop tethered shooting.
Overall I find tethered shooting in Aperture 2 a great solution. It may not include all of the features of some of the manufacture’s software, such as the ability to adjust camera settings, but this would require Aperture to understand the native API’s of each camera.
Tags: Apple Aperture, Photography Techniques
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Josh Groft said,
Wrote on May 9, 2008 @ 2:59 am
I followed the advice on your tutorial. Thank you for taking the time to publish it. I am having a problem with my Canon EOS Digital Rebel (which is on Apples list of approved devices). First I should mention that I am running Aperture 2 on a MacBook Pro and Leopard 10.5.2. My problem is this. When I set the camera communication to PTP and start a tethered session the HUD does not show my camera, it just says Canon Digital Camera. Furthermore, my camera says busy while Aperture is looking for files on my CF and it stays like this. However when I set my camera communication to “normal” the HUD shows that it is an EOS Digital Rebel and allows me to operate the shutter, but no picture is displayed and no file transfered. Do you have any advice?
Ian said,
Wrote on May 13, 2008 @ 12:50 pm
Thats quite strange, as the Digital Rebel is definitely supported. After reading up and seeing that you met all of the requirements, I tried it out with a friends Digital Rebel (hence the late reply). They have an iMac (new model) with OS X 10.5.2 and Aperture 2.1. Setting the camera to PTP, we connected the USB cable and opened the tether hud in Aperture. It recognised the camera model and allowed us to take shots from either the camera shutter or from the hud itself.
I have done some more digging and there were a couple of references to problems with the rebel on the Apple Support Aperture forums (http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=184). It may be worth checking the forums, but I could not find any responses to the issue.
If you are still experiencing the same problems, I recommend posting on the Apple support site. They are pretty active forums, and tethering (or the lack of !!) is discussed a lot. Would love to know how things progress.
Cheers and best of luck, Ian (Digitalopia)