Photo Credit: Image Mechanics The Infamous No Name Silver Firewire Repeater Cable

The #1 Hardware Secret to Tethered Shooting: The Cables

So how do you shoot more than 15′ away from your computer? Well, it’s a bit of a problem with firewire. Firewire doesn’t normally allow you to have single cable lengths over 15′. Meaning you have to improvise a bit when you want to put distance between your camera and computer. Some companies like Granite Digital offer premium hand made firewire cables that go out to 30′ or more, and have worked flawlessly for us in the past. However, they are quite expensive, quite heavy, and sometimes are actually too long.

So we tried another method using shorter cables connected by repeaters. Repeaters amplify the signal allowing you to connect two 15′ cables together with a repeater in the middle to give you 30′ of cable. This time it was cheaper, but the separate repeater meant dragging a small box across the ground whenever you walked around. This allowed us much longer cable runs, but was still annoying. As such we ended up with these silver firewire cables.


They are 15′ long, well shielded, coil easily, and above all, have small repeaters built into the female end. We carry 4 of these on set with us, allowing us to have the photographer over 60′ away. The only negative thing I found with these cables is that the housing on the repeater end tends to snap in half. But one wrap of gaffers tape around each end has kept them together admirably. These cables have made tethering the camera and computer a pleasure and not a hassle. Even if you don’t shoot tethered much, I would suggest that every photographer grab a couple of these, “Just In Case.” Buy them Here (the only place I’ve found them).




New Hotness vs Old and Busted

Five Secrets of Tethered Shooting

1. Use Bridge as your workflow software. Set up the shoot using your camera manufacturers software and choose a capture folder. Next, open Adobe CS2 Bridge and point it to the capture folder. Volia! Previews are faster than in DPP and more accurate (easier to adjust) than in Leaf.

2. Use Bridge’s Camera Raw processor instead of Photoshop. You can set your Bridge preferences to open ACR inside of Bridge instead of Photoshop. Check the box under the Advanced preference category that says “Double-click edits Camera Raw setting in Bridge”. You can also use command R to open in Bridge. You want things as streamlined as possible when capturing large digital files so there is no reason to run Bridge and Photoshop when you can accomplish the same thing with only one program open.

3. Use Camera Default setting to correct images as they load. Once you shoot a gray card and get your exposure set, you can apply those adjustments to all the incoming images by making it the new Camera Default Setting. You do this by clicking the small triangle next to the “Settings” pull down menu in the Camera RAW dialog box. Now all incoming images shot with the same camera as the test shot will load into Bridge with the correct settings.

4. Lock settings to the raw files. There is one catch to playing fast and loose with the Camera Default setting. If you set a new Camera Default for another scene, it will change your previous images as well. To avoid this, you want to lock the settings into place so that they can’t easily be changed. Select the images, navigate to the Edit>Apply Camera Raw Settings>Camera Raw Defaults. This will force ACR to write the sidecar file using the current Camera Defaults. Notice the small circular symbol in the bottom right corner of each thumbnail. This tells you that the image now has a sidecar file. The adjustments are now written to this sidecar file and will be used regardless of any Camera Default settings change.

5. Convert to DNG. I want my exposure adjustments and the starring/labeling attached directly to the RAW file. Since the RAW file is never touched by most image editing programs, this would seem impossible, right? Adobe’s Digital Negative file format to the rescue. It is a universal open standard that contains the raw file and also allows the sidecar information to be encapsulated within the DNG file itself. Roll your processing settings and starring into a DNG file for archiving by choosing “Digital Negative” as my export option.

Most of us have invested hundreds if not thousands of hours into learning and using Photoshop. It is the tool of professional photographers - the standard. I don’t know about you but I don’t have the time or inclination to learn every manufacturers kludgy idea of workflow software. Additionally, most of us shoot with several different brands of cameras and need to choose something to standardize on. If you don’t, you are forced to become a software expert instead of a photographer.

In addition to being a familiar tool, Adobe CS2 is much faster than any other workflow tool. On our Quad processor Mac tower we can batch process a TIFF and a JPG in around 6 seconds. Try that with the Canon, Leaf or Phase software and you’ll be more in the neighborhood of 24 to 45 seconds. This might not sound like a big time difference until you have to process 1000 images before you can go to bed.

Five Reasons to Shoot Tethered

1. A Large LCD monitor is a much better viewing medium than the small screen on the back of the camera. A vertically oriented image viewed full screen on a 23″ Apple Cinema display is the equivalent of an instant 11×14″ print.

2. Immediate feedback of focus, exposure and color. This is hard to see on the 2″ camera LCD with the limited set of processing tools provided in camera.

3. Speed is increased when you are writing data to large fast hard drives in the computer instead of to small CF cards. The camera buffer isn’t filled as often because the data travels faster and takes the load off of the camera’s internal processor.

4. Instant automatic backups using RAID or scripting. Mirrored drives (RAID 1), three drives stripped into one (RAID 3 or 5), OS scripting and utilities like Synchronize Pro X all provide a way to automatically backup your images as they are written to a hard drive.

5. Instant processing. The images can be processed immediately and delivered to the client before they leave the shoot. No waiting on 20 CF cards to load before exposure/color adjustments can even start.

These five advantages to shooting tethered all provide an amazing client experience. The client sees what is being shot and is better able to collaborate with the photographer. Providing the tools for this level of service creates happy clients.

Photographers who shoot tethered realize these advantages every day. Photography is a very competitive field and shooting tethered provides an extra level of service that the clients will remember. The next time a job comes up and the client is choosing between two photographers who do you think they will pick? The photographer who shows them 2 inch previews on the back of their camera, or the one who provides a seamless shooting experience with instant viewing and editing capabilities?

This is the reason that as Image Mechanics capture specialists, we roll in with a customized cart loaded with a super-fast Mac Tower, 21-30″ LCD monitor, battery backup etc. The photographer and client experience are definitely worth the extra baggage. We bring CF cards and laptops as backups but the experience is so different shooting to card or to portable that we rarely do a full shoot with them. Believe me, if we could get away with VR goggles and a mac-mini in our back pocket we would be tempted to leave the cart full of equipment at home. But a great experience provides that extra edge needed in a competitive field like photography.

Rap-Up Cover Shoot Behind The Scenes
Here’s a link to a behind the scenes video podcast of Image Mechanics shoot with music video director Ray Kay shooting the cover of Rap-Up Magazine with Mya. You can kinda see us in the background every so often, but you can tell the videographer was much more interested in the female talent being displayed =).

As managing partner of the full service digital capture company, Image Mechanics, Michael Britt works at the leading edge of digital technology. An impromptu photo show in the 4th grade set the stage for a life devoted to the craft of photography. He worked in film and television, shooting unit stills and galleries for over 10 years and served as a computer consultant for renowned photographer Michael Grecco. At Image Mechanics he was instrumental in developing their revolutionary digital capture workflow and continues to brand the company’s unique style. As a workflow specialist, Britt consulted on Aperture and wrote the manual for Adobe Lightroom. In addition he has written articles for PDN online and contributes to several online communities including the Image Mechanics Blog - DeathToFilm.