February 7, 2008
Shooting tethered with the Canon EOS 1Ds MkIII
The excitement of getting hold of a new camera can often be tempered by the frustrations encountered when having to learn how to work with a new piece of kit. First off I must say that I have so far been delighted with the EOS 1Ds MkIII camera in terms of the camera’s design and image quality. Canon have made a number of significant improvements that are very welcome. Although there have been some teething problems, the good news is that I have managed to overcome most of these. The main one though has been trying to get the Canon camera to work smoothly with the new Intel 24″ iMac that I bought at the same time as the camera, which has also proved difficult to set up in the studio, but more of that later.
Working in tethered mode with the EOS 1Ds MkIII
If you have been accustomed to working with the EOS Viewer Utility with EOS Capture (as described in my previous article on tethered shooting with Lightroom) then you are going to have to change to the newer EOS Utility that is designed for all tethered operations with later EOS digital SLR camera models including the EOS 1Ds MkIII.
You can install EOS Utility from the CD that comes with the camera, or download it via the Canon website. Once you have done that, here are the recommended settings to use:
1. Start by connecting your camera to the computer, switch it on and launch the Canon Camera Window utility. To begin with I am going to run you through the preference settings that are important. Click on the Preferences… button and this will take you to the following screen dialog.
2. In the Basic Settings you might as well leave this set to show main window (the one shown above). Check the Auto power off if you want the camera to save on battery power while not in use (but you’ll have to reestablish the connection again). If you are using the mains power adaptor then switch this option off.
3. In the Destination Folder section, choose the watched folder that you are going to download the camera capture files to when shooting tethered. This will need to match the folder location you select later in Lightroom.
4. In the File Name section it is vital that you choose any option but the Don’t rename option. I got caught out with this one, because it means that if you happen to break the connection between the camera and the computer, the downloaded files will renumber from 0001 again. If this happens, Lightroom will not auto import any files that it thinks it has imported already. So simply choose one of the other options such as the Prefix+Number. You will be renaming the files later anyway in Lightroom, so it really does not matter too much which other setting you choose here.
5. The Canon Utility will default to launching Digital Photo Professional. If you are using Lightroom, then you don’t want this to pop open each time you set up a tethered shoot, so choose ‘None’. Now click OK to save these preference settings
6. Almost ready now. Refer back to the Welcome screen step 1 and click on the Camera Settings/Remote Shooting button, which will launch the control window shown here. You can use this window to control the camera settings and (should you wish) fire the shutter. You will notice that the watched folder location appears near the top. If you can see this window, then you know you have a successful camera connection.
7. Now go to Lightroom, go to the File menu and choose Auto Import > Auto Import Settings… to open the dialog shown here, where you need to make sure that you have the same Watched folder selected as was chosen in the Canon utility settings. Beyond that, the instructions are the same as before: with the other options, choose a file naming scheme and select the desired information settings. Click OK, check that you have Enable Auto Import checked in the File > Auto Import menu and you are all ready to start tethered shooting in Lightroom!
Working with the new Intel iMac
Why an iMac? Well, I shoot a lot on location or in hire studios, so a portable computer is essential and I find that iMacs offer a high-powered computer with a large built-in. These are easy to transport and suit the way I work. Now regarding the new 24″ iMac I can confirm that there is a problem with the display on my screen. The left half of the display is brighter and it is impossible to set the brightness any lower than 215 cd m2. Worse still, I have not been able to generate a decent monitor profile using the Eye-One pro and ColorMatch software. It is a significant enough problem that I have found it impractical to use for judging how photographs look in Lightroom or Photoshop. The highlight tones are so blown out that I can’t tell the difference between white and off-white, which results in skin tones looking washed out and lacking in contrast. This is definitely the worse quality monitor I have ever had to work with. My solution, as you can see from the intro picture, has been to rig up an Apple 23″ LCD display as a second monitor and use this to view the photos.
USB 2.0 speed when shooting tethered
There have also been discussions on a couple of photography lists where Macintosh users have complained about Canon’s decision to adopt USB 2 as the only tethered connection option for the new MkIII camera. Macintosh users are complaining that USB 2.0 is slower than Firewire, while PC users seem to be saying ‘problem, what problem’? This was the first clue that there might be a Mac/PC issue going on here.
Let’s first look at the speed comparison I carried out with an older G5 2.1 Ghz iMac with 2.5 MB RAM, with both Firewire and USB 2.0 ports, running OS X 10.5 (Leopard). These times represent the average time it took to download a sequence of capture files of a static subject and display them in the Lightroom library module.
EOS 1Ds MkII Firewire
Raw File size: 15MB
Image download time: 5 seconds
Download speed = 3 MB per second
EOS 1Ds MkIII USB 2.0
Raw File size: 25MB
Image download time: 20 seconds
Download speed = 1.25 MB per second
(Note that in this initial test the EOS 1Ds MkII camera has only a Firewire connection)
As you can see, the download time for the MkIII is rather disappointing and this bears out what some Macintosh users have been saying. Once the new Intel 2.8 Ghz duo core Intel iMac computer (with 4 GB RAM) arrived, I was keen to see if files from the MkIII camera would download any faster via USB 2.0. Again, this test was with the same operating system: OS X 10.5
EOS 1Ds MkIII USB 2.0
Raw File size: 26.4 MB
Image download time: 7 seconds
Download speed = 3.8 MB per second
This was more like it. Upgrading to the Intel duo core machine more than tripled the download speed I was getting from the G5. I suppose I might have been content to settle for an increase of 2 seconds in download times for the MkIII. After all, these files are on average 66% bigger than those from the MkII. But then as I read more about the experience of PC users, I read that the OS drivers for USB 2.0 were running much faster on Windows. It was even suggested that you could achieve faster download speeds by running Windows on an Intel Macintosh that was capable of running Bootcamp, which is what I tried next. I won’t go into all the details of how to setup Bootcamp on an Intel Mac, but once I had done so I installed the PC versions of EOS utilities and a PC version of Lightroom. Here are the figures running Windows XP Home edition with Service Pack 2 on the same Intel iMac computer as above.
EOS 1Ds MkIII USB 2.0
Raw File size: 26.4 MB
Image download time: 3 seconds
Download speed = 8.8 MB per second
As you can see, this is definitely more like it! Now I could see what all those PC users were saying about the EOS 1Ds MkIII working fast in tethered mode.
I don’t claim to be an expert on operating systems, but the conclusion I reached is that the Windows operating system (in this case Windows XP Home edition) offers faster support for USB 2.0 than the latest Apple OS X 10.5. So whose fault is this? At first I thought it might be the Apple Macintosh OS, but it appears that it might be that the Canon EOS Utility software is not optimized for connection through the USB 2.0 port via an Intel Mac. I can’t say absolutely for sure yet though. So let’s not be too hasty to judge. What I know so far is that tethered shooting is faster on a PC than it is on a Mac when using Canon’s software.
An important point to note here is that when setting up Bootcamp, you will need to consider carefully how much to partition for Windows and get this right before you start installing the new system. Think how much hard drive space you will want to set aside for your Windows Lightroom library. Another consequence of running via Bootcamp is that you won’t be able to use the wireless keyboard or mouse that you can purchase with a new iMac.
Obviously the route I chose here would incur more expense. I should correct a statement I made on the Prodig list and state that a Mac serial number for Lightroom will also allow you to install a PC version on another computer, providing that you do so within the terms of the End User Licence. But Mac users might have to purchase a Windows operating system. But then, this does mean that you will be able to work significantly faster if you start adding up how much time and money one can save shooting say a 1000 captures in a day.
Conclusions
My quest to find the quickest way to shoot tethered with the latest Canon EOS1Ds MkIII has certainly taken up a lot more time than I had originally anticipated. The solution I have arrived at is one that I feel I can work comfortably with – 3 seconds to download a capture image should be fast enough for the type of work I shoot and an improvement on the download speeds I had been accustomed to in the past. But this may well be just a temporary solution until the Mac/Canon software issue has been resolved and there may also be other solutions and suggestions out there that will work. For example, I have not tried testing the latest Bibble software yet and I hear that Capture One users are still waiting for tethered shooting capability with the EOS 1Ds MkIII. If anyone has any insights to share, these would be most welcome.
Martin, what is the device on the top of the camera, where the flash would be?
Great write up (in case you think I was just kit spotting) :)
It looks like a Bowens Pulsar radio trigger to me Richard, But I’m sure Martin will respond.
As far as I know, it’s not related to the Canon software, it’s a shortcoming in OSX in general. USB2.0 support is still a heck of a lot better than USB1.1, but it’s a far cry from either FW400 or FW800. Pick out some external hard drives with multiple connector types and do some tests some time. The last time a friend of mine did this, eSATA was the big winner.
Also, beware when shooting tethered to check your custom function settings. When a local Canon rep was demoing this feature (over wireless no less), they had the body set to back-button focus, which prevented the camera from focusing when shooting tethered.
-/\/
Norby,
I don’t have a definite answer. A mac expert I talked to felt it was the Canon software that was not fully optimised for the Intel Mac USB 2.0. You may be right though. Whatever, the answer is that running via PC in Bootcamp offers us a solution to the problem for now.
Richard,
As Sean responded, it is a Bowens Pulsar wireless flash trigger device.
Martin
Thanks Sean and Martin.
I guess it is the Canon software, they have probably coded it for an older driver (there were slow USB driver issues in the past) and not bothered to update it.
Martin, I went through the same process, Mac/Windows, and am now happily running tethered with Boot Camp and Windows XP on my MacBook, My capture time is 2 seconds. The system seems even a bit perkier than my mkII with firewire/Mac. I was informed by a number of Mac geeks that the Apple USB drivers are and have been notoriously slow relative to Windows and that due to Mac’s investment in firewire technology they have not been that eager to fix it. Who knows?
One more thing I’d recommend is a program called MacDrive from MediaFour. This lets you access (read/write) your Mac partitions and Mac external hard drives while in Windows. In this way you can keep your boot camp partition small and keep all the data/captures on the Mac side.
*Note: If you want to use a Windows CD to install any software (like DDP) set the options in MacDrive to “show Windows“ files for dual format CD‘s otherwise the .exe files do not work. learned the hard way…
**Also for C1 users, the newest release 8/Feb does not support the mkIII in tether mode.
Great feedback Steve. It is good to hear that I was not alone in reaching this conclusion. Your summary of the Mac situation echoes what I have heard from other Mac experts, but I would still want to keep an open mind until we hear a definitive answer from Canon or Apple. Thank you for the heads up on MediaFour Mac Drive. Sounds like I could have done with this last week. When I first installed bootcamp I reckoned I had made a mistake not to have allocated more disk space and therefore redid the partition and had to reinstall everything. One thing I am looking for an answer on is this. Would it be possible to install a Windows Vista upgrade or full version of Vista by installing to the bootcamp partition? Or do you have to repartition again to do this?
Martin
Martin,
Interesting article. But what is completely blowing my mind is that your solution to having what is clearly a bum display is to go out and buy a $900. second display. I would have been on the phone to AppleCare immediately – before even trying to calibrate. The 24″ iMac should have a pretty decent display (particularly compared to the smaller models). Since it is a consumer oriented machine I wouldn’t expect perfect color fidelity, but certainly a high quality. Uneven brightness like that is a defect. I had that on a MacBook Pro and I called Apple and they replaced with out any fuss.
So now you are using a “portable” computer that happens to include a second 23″ display? None of this makes any sense to me at all…
It probably does’nt make much sense. My reasoning is that from what I have read on other forums, there are other reports of unevenly lit screens and iMacs being sent back to base and the new one being just the same. There have also been other reports of the 24″ screen being hard to calibrate. So getting a replacement is perhaps not going to be the answer. I don’t know for sure that all iMac 24″ screens are of this quality. but from what research I have carried out, my gut feeling is that this is just how the screens are and it is only the graphics users who are seeing the problem
The other factor is the length of time it takes to setup a computer, unloading the files and then reinstalling on a new machine. Plus I would need to set up a fresh bootcamp installation. When time is money I can look at the cost of the iMac against my daily earnings and decide that it is not economical to pursue finding an iMac with a better screen, if there is such a thing. Plus you know, I have to get on and shoot and make do with the hardware as is. It so happens I had a spare LCD screen anyway and for setting up in the studio, along with all the other equipment I have to transport, it isn’t such a big deal.
I hear that one about time=money, for certain. I had not heard that about the metal iMacs, that’s bad. I use one of the first gen 24″ iMacs (White enclosure, 2.16 Core2Duo) at the day job and the screen is simply fabulous. As the specs of the screens for the two models (viewing angle, brightness, contrast etc) are almost exactly the same and the ones that I have seen at the local Apple store look very nice (except for the gloss) I assumed they would be of similar quality.
Still, I would be as squeaky a wheel as I could be in your position. I have owned a lot of Apple gear and have had to, very politely, hold firm about a problem a few times and Apple has always made it right. Not without some inconvenience to me, to be sure, but made it right never the less.
Before the new metal 24″ iMac I owned a 21″ white, G5 iMac and the screen while not perfect, could easily be calibrated and relied upon for making basic image adjustments. The new 24″ screens are I believe, not just bigger and with a glossy screen. There is something else that is not quite the same, such as the high brightness at the minimum brightness setting. The main problem is that one cannot judge highlight tones. Everything from around 230,230,230 white in Photoshop appears as white on the screen and you can’t really see what you are doing.
When you go to the apple store showroom the screens look lovely showing the standard desktop pictures. But the older screens (in my opinion) did a better job of revealing the highlights. Colors would look a lot richer and more natural in the highlights. The same difference can be seem when dragging the picture from the new monitor to the old 23″ LCD.
I don’t doubt that Apple would be willing to replace the gear. They have a good reputation for customer service. But unfortunately right now, I can’t afford the time this would take.
About Lightroom tethered shooting –
Right now I’m using similar workflow but with Bridge .
Contrary to your suggestion I would set up EOS utility to open file with Bridge and that way
I get quite fast response in Bridge switching to the last incoming file
( I know some people would hate this behavior, but your “none ” is an option for those )
I guess this one would be difficult with LR because of the import process …
Thanks for the honest report about Imac 23 issues – I was really close to buy it but maybe I’ll wait a while – I hate its gloss screen and
Out blown highlights sounds dangerous …
I think it is strange that we hear all the time how fantastic bright some TFT screens are as a marketing point , when in fact we wouldn’t stare into a 500 W lamp for a longer time …
BTW it looks like there is a new 14 february 2.3 update on EOS utility for mac … maybe it gives faster transfers ..
http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-9258-9282
Jann,
The principle reason for the bottleneck is the process of bringing files from the camera to the computer via Canon EOS Utility in Mac OS X. Either the EOS utility or the Apple OS is the reason to blame here and I can’t say for sure which. importing to Bridge should therefore be no different to importing to Lightroom, since it seems that once the files have downloaded, the initial previews appear quickly in Lightroom.
I did download the latest EOS Utility update and it took 45 seconds to download over 100 MB data via a MacBook running OSX. Therefore the data transfer rate with the latest utility update is about 2.25 MB per second on an Intel MacBook via USB 2.0 (compared to the 8.8 MB per second I was seeing above).
Thanks for the great info. I refer folks to this site often.
I do have a question…Can you shoot tethered with two cameras attached to one computer?
Good question. If you connect a camera to EOS Utility it creates a connection to that specific camera and I expect that you would have to switch off the first camera and switch on the second in order to create a new connection. So it should be possible, but I don’t have two MkIIIs to test this with. Now interestingly (on the Mac at least) the latest EOS utility only recognises my MKIII and does not work with the EOS 1Ds MkII. This lack of backward compatibility would seem to be a design flaw. On the other hand, connecting the MkII camera via Firewire will launch the older version of EOS Utility that is still on the computer. So it may in fact allow one to run these two cameras side by side. It’s not particularly elegant to have to have two lots of Utility software installed in order to work with two cameras, but I guess it would in a way make this type of workflow easier to accomplish.
Martin
Is there a way to get lightroom to focus on the last image that has been auto imported? I am also looking at version 2 which is great with multiple monitors. thumbnails come in but the full size image it still the last one clicked upon.
Hello, I’m trying to work out a tethered shooting workflow for the 1Ds MKIII that can keep up with a fairly rapid lifestyle shooter. I’m on a Windows XP system, 1.86 GHz Intel Core 2 duo system with 3 GB of ram.
I’ve followed the steps Martin Evening outlines on his blog (Canon EOS utility in conjunction with Lighroom auto import) here http://lightroom-news.com/2008/02/07/shooting-tethered-with-the-canon-eos-1ds-mkiii/ and everything is working _almost_ smoothly.
When I fire off a single frame with the camera, it takes about 5 seconds for the Canon EOS utility to copy the file to the hard drive and for lightroom to see and move the file from the watched folder to the destination folder. This seems reasonable.
However, when I start shooting at a normal pace (approximately 1 frame a second) it seems like Lightroom stops watching the watched folder until I stop shooting for an extended period of time.
I would have thought Lightroom checked the folder at a standard interval, every 5 seconds or so. However, if I snap, say 40 frames at the rate of 1 a second, Lightroom doesn’t realize there are new images in the watched folder until I stop shooting and let the camera’s buffer empty out.
Has anyone else seen this behavior? Does anyone know if there is a registry hack to force lightroom to check the watched folder more frequently? I’m seeing this same behavior in LR 1.3 and LR 2.0 beta.
Thanks for the help,
Andris
Could some of the speed difference be from the possibility that the EOS Utility might be running in Rosetta.
I would like to know how you got the EOS Utility to launch on the Intel Duo with OSX 10.5 and run your camera? It won’t recognize my 5D. I think I read this right? You tethered to an iMac Intel Duo with 10.5 and the EOS Utility worked? Do they ship software on the Camera disk that isn’t on the website as an update?
I’ve been testing this setup for a few weeks and have found this.
1: Dont use MacDrive to save to a Mac formatted drive/// I find that with many fashion shooters that push the envelop with shooting speeds, MacDrive just cant cope and files appear to go missing or get corrupt. They dont get lost but MD takes some time to catch up. And no matter how many times you say its fine Clients get scared. My workflow is to shoot to windows external drive and backup through-out the day to Mac drives. Using MacDrive.
2: Dont shoot to the desktop. Everyone knows this….Right!!
3: Try keep shot under 100 frames per folder. I guess its to do with the OS indexing that goes on but it just seems to be that files come in faster. What I’m currently doing is create a bunch of shot folders at the start of the day and at the conclusion of each setup drag them fom the tether folder to one of these shot folders. This is more the case when using captureOne not sure if LR is affected in the same way.
Cheers
Rick