P: Tethering

Hello LR users,

I'm afraid but I confirm the same behaviour under LR3.5RC.

I started a shooting session and get stuck after only 3 shots.....

But!......and maybe that's the key of the problem.....I was able to do more than 120 shots in a row without any hanging/crashing problem!

Where's the difference??

In first case, I sometimes changed, from the camera, a few settings , ISO or f/stops value, or WB....

In second case, I didn't change any camera settings! Only point & shoot!

Could it be the core of the problem??

3.5 did not solve any of the issues for me. i have since started using Aperture and have had no problems at all. There is no problem imaginable that should take this long to solve. i gave up. I wish i didn't spend my hard earned money on this product.

Thanks for the additional info.

-Ben

Finally have some time to jump into this discussion and pass along the issues I have had with LR tethering. Note that all of these issues have occurred on a MacBookPro8,2 with 8GB of RAM and OS X 10.6.8. LR versions were 3.4.1 (once) and 3.5RC. Nikon D3 cameras were used.

First, my experiences are very similar to those described by Scott W. with a couple of differences I will note.

A typical tethered session runs for several hours with continuous shooting for periods of a few minutes to 30 minutes, interspersed with idle periods of anywhere between a few minutes to possibly an hour. There is no pattern per se to the shooting.

Just prior to the release of LR 3.5RC I did a session using LR 3.4.1 and to be honest, it was outright embarrassing. To have continuous failures of the connection in front of a client just doesn't look good, especially when the tethered connection is essential to the workflow. So it was with great relief when LR 3.5RC was made available before my next scheduled session.

I installed 3.5RC and set up a test session where I mimicked the shooting sequence described above. Over a period of 3 hours there was only one tethered connection failure, so I bit the bullet and decided to go with LR for the actual session. During the actual session of approximately 4 hours there were no connection failures.

Two days later I had another session and again went with LR3.5RC in an identical setup. During this session, tethering worked fine for about 2 hours, then started having connection failures (note the plural!). The failures occurred regardless of the idle time between shots.

A difference in what Scott has described:
I was always able to reestablish the connection by simply stopping and starting tethering within LR. I never had to exit the program, or restart the computer. Also notable is that I never lost an image. The images captured during the lost connection were always preserved in the camera's buffer, and when the connection was reestablished the images transferred to the computer.

I have also set up a test session using other software (Aperture) to do tethered capture, and did not have a single connection failure over a period of several hours.

I did not try your latest test due to time constraints, but also because I'm not sure that test actually addresses the issues that multiple users are experiencing during an actual shoot.

I agree with Scott that LR3.5RC does not yet fix the tethering issues, although they certainly are occurring much less than with LR 3.4.1.

I have two sessions coming up within the next few days. To say the least, I am very reluctant to use LR3.5RC for these sessions.

Although these observations mostly back up what Scott has reported, I hope they help.

OK Ben, I did everything exactly as you asked me to do above (running OSX 10.6.8 and D3x)...

In LR 3.4.1 - Interestingly, the camera did not hang, even after 30+ minutes of sitting idle. The frame came into LR without a problem. However, when I fired off some frames about 5 minutes later, they did not come into LR. I stopped tether and restarted tether and they came in.

In LR 3.5 - As you suspected, after 30+ minutes of sitting idle, the frames came into LR without a problem. But, again, about 15 minutes later I fired off some frames and they did not come in. I stopped tether and restarted tether and they came in.

On the one hand it's weird that 3.4.1 didn't have a hanging problem after 30 minutes of sitting idle. On the other hand, however, it's not really strange, as -- per my original post a couple of months ago -- the hanging/connectivity issue for me (running both 3.4.1. and 3.5) has ALWAYS seemed random and not time-bound, per se.

By this, I mean that on 3.4.1 my camera would sometimes hang after a few minutes of sitting idle, sometimes after a long time sitting idle and sometimes simply in the middle of shooting. And on 3.5 I experience the exact same "randomness" to my tethered connectivity; there is no pattern that I can discern for you.

So, I guess what I am driving at is that it is clear (at least to me) that the tethering problem has not been addressed by Adobe.

Again, I will emphasize that Sofortbild with a watched folder in LR 3.5 does not give me even a single hiccup. In fact, I shot on Tuesday intermittently for seven straight hours without ever turning off my camera, restarting my MBP or stopping/starting LR or Sofortbild -- and I did not have a single hanging/connectivity issue at any point.

I am not sure if I've helped you at all, but there you go...

Scott

Hi Scott,

"I am baffled why you are running smoothly and I am not." You're not the only one! 🙂 Maybe you'd be willing to try an experiment for me.

1. Go into user/Library/Preferences and move any files with "Lightroom" in the name to the Desktop (you can put them back once you're done with this testing).
2. Go into System Preferences and set your computer to never sleep.
3. Launch Lightroom.
4. Connect a supported camera with a fully charged battery.
5. Start a tethered capture session with the default settings (i.e., just go to File>Tethered Capture>Start Tethered Capture then click "OK" in the Tethered Capture Settings" dialog - after performing step 1 above, these settings should all be at their defaults).
6. Click the shutter release button on the tethered capture bar to verify that the camera can be triggered from Lightroom, and that it will capture a photo.
7. Wait at least 30 minutes.
8. Click the shutter release button on the tethered capture bar again and verify that a second photo is successfully captured.

Perform these steps using Lightroom 3.4.1 on Mac OS 10.6.8 or later. My expectation is that the second capture, in step 8, will fail. Then perform these steps in Lightroom 3.5 on 10.6.8 or later. My expectation is that the second capture, in step 8, will succeed.

If my expectation proves to be correct, then we will have confirmed that our fix of the basic problem has worked, and that the problem you are experiencing is something else. If my expectation is not correct, and step 8 it still fails for you in 3.5, then we will have discovered that our fix of the basic problem has not worked. Either way, that will help us narrow down the issue, and we can proceed accordingly.

I realize that doing these tests involves a non-trivial amount of time, and that you probably have better things to do than Lightroom quality assurance, so I totally understand if you'd rather not bother with it. If you are able to do these tests, it may help us get to the bottom of the issue. Either way, I appreciate the time you've spent giving detailed feedback here.

Thanks,
Ben

Hi,
I'm having the same problems as Scott. No problems with Sofortbild and a watched folder!! Running 3.5RC with Lion on a MBP.Losing images as LR hangs.I end up with some files that are not complete and not recognizable by LR. LR loses connection while the camera is transferring. Cannot get on top of this problem - restarting tethered,camera on and off, restarting Mac,changing cables,cleaning contacts. It's totally erratic and very frustrating!

Hi Charles, this is good news for you -- but disappointing news for me. As I explained in my post(s) above, I am running the exact same system as you, but my tether in LR is buggy and tempermental and unreliable. There is no rhyme or reason to how/when tether cuts out for me. I simply gave-up after a few hours shooting today where I experienced 5 crashes, lost files and lots of frustration. I moved to Sofortbild plus a watched folder in LR and did not experience a single tethering hiccup or crash or lost connection or lost photograph for the remaining 7+ hours of my shoot. I am baffled why you are running smoothly and I am not. Particularly as I can put my finger on my problems with LR tether starting the minute I upgraded to 10.6.8 (and never had a single issue ever while running 10.6.7)... I cannot be the only one experiencing this problem (can I?)... SW

Hi, I've just tried the 3.5 update and it seems to work on my Macbook running 10.6.8. It did crash once (LR quit) when I shot quite fast and the buffer capacity in my D3 got down to around 6 or 7 (out of 17) but the same thing happened occasionally with the earlier version too. Thanks for getting on to this so quickly - I reverted to the old Nikon Camera Control > LR watched folder method to keep me going and I had forgotten how truly awful a system that was....

This is not just a Nikon problem. I have abandoned trying to tether my Canon 1Ds Mk3 using LightRoom. I use the Canon software to tether & transfer, then a watched folder in LightRoom. It still hangs, but slightly less frequently. Sometimes I can get through a 90 minute shoot with no hangs! I have to watch the transfer like a hawk or lose images...