Aperture Tethering Support of the latest Nikon and Canon Models

5 May, 2008 Digital Photography

Apple Aperture Logo If you read my previous article on Aperture Tethered Shooting Tutorial, then you will know how much I enjoy using the new tethering features of Aperture 2.

However, one thing that I get asked often is how well supported are the newer camera models. In this article I will look at the support for the latest Nikon and Canon camera models, namely the Nikon D300 and D3, and the Canon 450D (Rebel XSi), 40D and 1DsIII.

Apple include a list of supported camera models on their Web site, Aperture 2: Tips on tethered shooting. This list shows both the Nikon D300 and D3 as being supported by Aperture 2. However, non of the latest Canon models are included. I wanted to understand why there is no support of the Canon models.

The way a camera supports tethering is through the communication between the computer and the connected camera over the USB connection. In order for the computer to be able to control the camera, it must be able to communicate using the same language (protocol) that the camera supports.

Well, it seems that there is not a standard protocol for controlling tethered shooting from a computer. Each camera manufacturer implements their protocol differently, similar to the way they implement RAW. Yes, it seems we have found another thing that camera manufacturers will need to standardise.

As an example, with the recently introduced Canon 1Ds Mark III, Canon added Live Preview support to their tethering protocol. This has caused issues with non-Canon software supporting the new protocol. Nikon have kept the same protocol since the Nikon D1, therefore each new camera model is supported by Aperture. When Nikon have added new features to the protocol, they have only added them to the protocol, rather than re-write it. This has allowed newer camera to be backwardly compatible with the older protocol specification. Canon however, have made significant changes to their protocol to support new features (such as the Live Preview example), removing any backward compatibility.

For Canon users, the situation is actually worse, as even the previous models, the Canon 400D (Rebel XTi) and 30D are not even supported, even though these camera have been available for nearly 2 years.

To confirm the support of the newer Nikon models, I recently got an opportunity to test them out.

Both the Nikon D300 and Nikon D3 are supported on Tiger (10.4.11) and Leopard (10.5). Both support remote triggering of the shutter. However, you still need to set the camera settings on the camera. Unlike Nikon Capture NX, you cannot fully control the camera settings from Aperture.

I can confirm that both the Nikon D300 and D3 worked as expected, and I was impressed with the speed with which they copied the images to the Aperture library. I can also confirm that the Nikon D3 is one of the most amazing cameras I have used.

I have included below the full list of supported Nikon cameras. All are USB unless otherwise stated.