Commercial food photography is pretty much my bread and butter. I tether my EOS 5D Mark II to a Dell Studio laptop with a 17-inch HD display using a 5m long USB cable. The length gives me a great deal of freedom to move back and fourth between the table where food is prepared and presented, and a separate table for the laptop. Tethered shooting works exceptionally well where reliability and transfer speed matters but this setup isn’t without a downside. As long as a physical cable is connected to the camera’s USB port it’s only a matter of time before an accident happens. Once I unknowingly stepped on the cable (happens when your mind is preoccupied with other distractions) pulling the cable downwards causing the mini USB connector to bend but just short of damaging it entirely. This cable is presently on loan to an associate who has just started to experiment with tethered shooting.
A LockPort USB port saver attached to my 5D Mark II. The L bracket is secured to the camera body using the tripod’s quick release plate.
One incident was enough to make me look for ways to prevent a costly recurrence. The USB port on the camera is an integrated component of the main PCB so the entire board needs to be replaced. According to a comment in this post, it costs an approximate SGD700 (Singapore dollars) to replace the motherboard. The LockPort USB adapter kit cost me SGD211 including FedEx door to door shipping.
For many years I was using a NOKIA E71 I was a “NO”-body. In the last two months or so after switching to a SAMSUNG I became a “SAM”-body 🙂 — quite the honour to be the official Samsung Mobile ‘Fan of the Month’. During this time, one of my blog posts was also featured on SamMobile, a leading resource on all things Samsung mobile. Thank you Samsung! Switching from a QWERTY Nokia phone to the S III the only learning curve is getting used to the touch screen keypad which I still find challenging to type accurately even with the help of the excellent predictive text.
Tethering a 5D Mark II to a Smartphone – whatever for?
If you’re a photographer, professional or otherwise, chances are it has crossed your mind more than once of the inadequacies of the on-board 3″ LCD for critical viewing. And with the immense popularity of the Apple iPad and other Android or Windows based 10-inch tablets you would think the concept of tethering required nothing more than buying a long enough USB cable and plugging into your favourite tablet. Unfortunately this is not the case. The iPad for one only adds misery to your day if you spend too much time wishful thinking – at time of this post, it can’t be done. Period. Your only saviour is either an Android (maybe Windows too) tablet (see compatibility list). This blog post began for reasons (and disappointment) I have explained in the opening paragraph of Tethering USB Flash Drive and Memory Card Reader to the Samsung Galaxy SÂ III.
Replace the smartphone with a compatible 10″ Android tablet and you’ll have a great external display for critical viewing. I only wished I had this set-up during my two week hotel photography assignment in Singapore. Would have eased my workflow when client would be certain “we got the shot.”
With an appropriate USB cable and DSLR Controller tethering “Live View” is finally possible and real as these photos indicate. There’s just one problem — ability to control my camera isn’t really what I need or even desire. What I do need is quite simply one that works like Canon’s EOS Utility and ZoomBrowser combined much like how I’ve always been able to use on my Windows 7 laptop. I’m hoping this blog post gets the attention of the person behind Chainfire to develop an app specifically for this purpose.
A close-up of the DSLR Controller user friendly interface on the Samsung Galaxy S3
SHIMWORLD 