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LR5 & D800e tethering issue

VINCET

Member
When I first installed LR, the tethering function works perfectly with my D800e. Somehow, it stopped working and for the life of me, I couldn't figure out how to get it back working again. Now a days, when I connect the camera to the computer and turn on tethering, it cannot detect the camera. Usually, if I remove the memory card from the camera, the computer will detect the camera but I cannot activate the shutter. Any idea how to get this working again? I tried erasing the LR preference file, different cable, on / off, reboot, etc all without success. Right now, I am working with LR5.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Vince
 

robmac

Well-known member
Wish I had an answer for your specific issue, but I got so fed-up trying to make LR work reliably tethered directly, let alone not take 3 weeks to preview an image, that I broke my tethered workflow into two processes - one to interact with the camera and one to process / manage the files.

I've always had issues with dropped connections, etc., with LR (4) and D800e (and D3S) - and to a slightly lesser extent with C1 Pro. C1 was fast, and great when worked well, but randomly dropped connections while LR was dog-slow (and that's an insult to dogs) as well as unreliable when tethered directly.

While I did find that making sure NO other USB or TB portable drives are connected at the same time helped with both C1 and LR, it didn't solve the issue. Different cables, preferences, blah, blah, blah, etc, etc., to no avail.

Got sick and tired of the hot mess and some experimentation found a fix. My solution was to have Nikon Camera Control 2 running in the background to ingest files from the camera into a hot folder for LR to pick up:

1. FAST - CC2 intakes an 800e file via USB 2, not USB 3 (my MBP is a maxed-out/dual-SSD i7 with 'only' FW/USB2/TB ) FASTER than LR can even intake a D3S file 1/3rd the size. LR is slower than I'd like getting the image from the CC2 drop folder into its own catalog and displayed, but still FAR better than when going direct to LR.

2. RELIABLE - I can shoot all day with no issues. I can disconnect the camera, change batteries, etc., re-connect and within seconds CC2 has the connection re-stablished with no input on my part.

The only issue is that is you over-shoot the 800e's buffer, you can get the spinning ball of death (MBP).

Good luck.
 

VINCET

Member
Robmac, thanks for the feedback. Too bad this is so unstable. I tried an open source tethering program and that one seems to be pretty stable but it was so slow, I might as well take the picture with the camera and download the picture to the computer.
 

robmac

Well-known member
I had high hopes for Sofortbild as it worked well with the D3S, but it was not be with the the 800E.

The CC2 + LR (or C1) setup shouldn't be required and does take an extra couple of minutes to setup, but does work very well - no more taps on the shoulder from your assistant or clients asking "why the computer is taking so long to load..." as they stare at the last image the system ungested before it, for no earthly reason, decided to have a binary fit.
 
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