[Consolidation-Locked] Tethered Capture for Nikon D800

[PrestonPage]

Still not working with LR4.1 released today.  Are there plans to support tethered capture for the Nikon D800? 

Message title was edited by: Brett N

[Ian Lyons]

Tethered capture in Lightroom is dependent upon the camera vendor SDK. Since the D800 is not currently supported you can take it that the SDK is either unavailable or came too late for inclusion in Lr4.1, which it will be 4.2 at the earliest.

A full listing of supported cameras is provided here

[PrestonPage]

Hi Ian.  Thank you!  It is a pity, but based on your reply, I've started immediate plans to abandon Lightroom for competing products.  The lack of lens correction profiles is also a disappointment and I'm still having issue with some D800 RAW files with the LR4.1 and ACR 7.1 releases.  I know the Nikon D800 Camera SDK released December 2010 at the same time as the D4 and D800 NEF/RAW SDK.  Given that lead time, I don't believe that SDK availability presented a barrier for D800 tethered capture support, even for the LR 4.0 delivery. It looks like support for the new Nikon flagship cameras are just a very low priority on the Lightroom product roadmap.

[Ian Lyons]

PrestonPage wrote:

I know the Nikon D800 Camera SDK released December 2010 at the same time as the D4 and D800 NEF/RAW SDK.

Not sure how the SDK supporting tethering for D4 and D800 was released two years before the cameras where even released to the market.

[PrestonPage]

The math actually works out to about one year.  Camera makers don't release SDKs after cameras are released to market.  I know that Nikon generally releases its camera and file SDKs 12 months or more before the first production run to give vendors like Adobe time to integrate support into their products.  The SDKs released 12/10/2010 and the first test production runs started 12/12/2011.   This information is readily available from Nikon. 

[bob frost]

The date of release of the D4 and D800 SDKs is given on the Nikon SDK website as 12/4/10, which reversed gives the 10th of April 2012. Just look down the list of dates and you will see that the first number is the year of release.

https://sdk.nikonimaging.com/apply/

Bob Frost

[jules_1973]

This really sucks.  I'm cancelling my D800 order if I do not have lens profiles and Lightoom support.  I hear LR 4 is buggy anyway with the tone curves (says Chris Marquardt from tfttf).  A lack of lens profiles and tethered support is exactlty why I am dumping the Olympus E5 platform. 

Toronto Boudoir Photography

NOTE: There was a bug involving custom Tone Curves created in Lightroom 3.x. If the catalog was converted to version 4.0, the tone curves were "lost" (the information was still in the catalog file, but not applied in the Develop module). The 4.1 update has fixed this issue, it will even recover the missing Tone Curve adjustments in catalogs updated from LR3.x to LR4.0.

Message was edited by: Brett N

[PrestonPage]

Toronto Budoir - I started using DxO Optics Pro for the D800 lens profile and RAW processing.  The results are much, much better than ACR 7.1 and Adobe's Lens Correction profiles when I ran a series of comparisons with Nikon D700 files I'd already put throught the Lightroom workflow.  The Adobe lens profiles are a bit iffy anyway.  You'll notice that there is a rating system, from 1 to 5, supposedly a measure of the quality of the profile.  There are a few profiles for a 0.0mm f/0.0 lens (I think that is just a hole) rated 5 stars, so that calls the other profiles into question. 

I'd never have looked at DxO Optics Pro if Lightroom already had D800 support, so in a way I'm greatful.  Do yourself a favor and at least take the 31 day trial of DxO Optics Pro for a spin. 

For tethering on Windows, I found TetherPro, which supports the D800 and works well.  If you are a Mac user, I'm sure there are like products.

I'm still ironing out a new workflow.  Lightroom still plays a role for me for cataloging, printing and exporting files, but I'll never use the the Adboe RAW processing or lens correction features again.  With DxO up front, tethering to Lightroom doesn't make sense anyway.

Preston Page Photography

[Geoff the kiwi]

Enjoy!!!

[bob frost]

From: "jules_1973

>I'm cancelling my D800 order if I do not have lens profiles and Lightoom

>support.

I'm sure that will make some other person waiting for a D800 very happy.

Bob Frost

[Jeff Schewe]

PrestonPage wrote:

Camera makers don't release SDKs after cameras are released to market.  I know that Nikon generally releases its camera and file SDKs 12 months or more before the first production run to give vendors like Adobe time to integrate support into their products.

Uh huh...what planet are you from?

How can you possibly believe the Kool-Aid that a camera SDK could POSSIBLY released 1 year before the camera was released with the final camera firmware?

What you are sprouting is SciFi (and bad SciFi to boot)...it may take up to a year before a camera maker gets around to finally updating the camera SDK. There is ZERO chance they could produce a usable SDK 1 year before a camera was released...seriously, what are you smoking? Care to share?

[PrestonPage]

Hi Jeff - I'm not drinikg the Adobe Kool-Aid, to be sure.  I don't smoke, but I will share, if you're up for it, a reality check, directly from Nikon: https://sdk.nikonimaging.com/apply/.

It shows the dates Nikon released the D4 and D800 camera and RAW file SDKs released together on 12/4/2010.  I downloaded the D800 SDK myself on 12/10/2010 and again last week.  A file compare shows no changes, meaning the design parameters were solid several months before the SDK was made public.

What stretches credulity is the claim that Adobe did not have the SDK in sufficient time to support the D800. 

[Jeff Schewe]

PrestonPage wrote:

Hi Jeff - I'm not drinikg the Adobe Kool-Aid, to be sure.  I don't smoke, but I will share, if you're up for it, a reality check, directly from Nikon: https://sdk.nikonimaging.com/apply/.

No, it shows the date one could APPLY for the camera SDK...what is the date of the camera SDK RELEASE? Has it been released? Based on the final release firmware SDK? Apply vs release are different dates I would expect...the only thing your url indicates is the date Nikon started telling 3rd parties aout the possibility on a model named D800...it does not prove when Nikon actually released a usable SDK for camera tethering–if indeed that they have done so–I don't know, but it's unrealistic that Nikon released a useful SDK in 2010 for a camera realeased in 2012...again, what are you smoking?

[PrestonPage]

Jeff, I'm frankly baffled by your position and tone.  I can only assume that you are new to reviewing camera SDKs and that you didn't apply to download the Nikon SDKs to investigate further the file revision history.  The column header above the dates reads "Update" and means the date that the SDK files were last updated.  For the D4 and D800, that date is 12/4/2010.  I'm registerd to be notified of SDK revisions, so I know the SDK was available on 12/4/2010.  

It looks to me like either someone at Adobe dropped the ball or support for the new flagship cameras has a lower priority than it used to.  Maybe fixing all the bugs in the rather curious Book had developers tied up.  I don't know. 

At this point, I don't care.  I have pictures to make and process and can't wait for Adobe to pull Lightroom together for my camera of choice.  There are at least half a dozen camera tethering applications available that support the D800 and I found a great substitute for RAW file handling and lens correction.  Since I started this thread, I've moved on.

[Geoff the kiwi]

Preston, so according to your version of the dates on the Nikon site are day month year?? (D4 12/4/10 = 12 April 2010) Then how do you explain the D3X date of 11/02/22 = 11the Feb 2022??

Just curious........

[PrestonPage]

Geof, I'm looking at dates in the SDK binary headers, not the last revision date on the web site.  The April D4/D800 update includes changes from the firmware B:1.01 release.

[Geoff the kiwi]

Well maybe you would ain more traction by posting that information here directly.

Seems funny to me than that no "new" cameras are on the list then such as the rumoured D600??

PrestonPage wrote:

Geof, I'm looking at dates in the SDK binary headers, not the last revision date on the web site.  The April D4/D800 update includes changes from the firmware B:1.01 release.

[PrestonPage]

Geoff - I'm no longer looking for D800 support in Lightoom 4 from this forum.  I thought perhaps Adobe would monitor it, but this exercise has been a total waste of time.  I'm happy with work-arounds I found from companies that are more aggressive than Adobe with their support for the D4 and D800. 

If you are interested in the D600, you can apply to Nikon to get camera SDKs in advance of the public releases.  There is no charge, but you have to sign a non-disclosure agreement to not make public any camera features prior to the official product announcement.

[dacdidac007]

Well put Geoff, I agree totally

[RikkFlohr]

A couple of links for you Preston:

http://rasterweb.net/raster/2012/04/19/bad-date-data/

http://controlmynikon.com/

Top Story Left column

[Keith Reeder]

PrestonPage wrote:

so I know the SDK was available on 12/4/2010.

No.

Nikon is apparently using the "Big-Endian" (yy/mm/dd) way of writing dates on that page, so 12/04/10 is 10 April 2012, not much more than a month ago.

[PrestonPage]

April 4, 2010 is the last revision update date, which includes the firmware B:1.01 changes.  Headers in the SDK binaries show initial release 12/4/2010.  The tethering binaries in question were last updated February 20, 2012.   

[bob frost]

From: "PrestonPage

Jeff, I'm frankly baffled by your position and tone.  I can only assume

that you are new to reviewing camera SDKs and that you didn't apply to

download the Nikon SDKs to investigate further the file revision history.

The column header above the dates reads "Update" and means the date that

the SDK files were last updated.  For the D4 and D800, that date is

12/4/2010.  I'm registerd to be notified of SDK revisions, so I know the

SDK was available on 12/4/2010.

As I explained in a previous post, the date given by Nikon in that column is

12/4/10. It does NOT say 2010, and the first number - 12 - is the year

(obvious when you look down the list and see the dates on the older cameras

start with 11, 10, 09, 08), and the last number 10 is the day of the month

because some of those numbers are 22, and 30! So the date is reversed -

12/4/10 means 10th April 2012. Different countries have different date

orders. This one is called Gregorian Big-endian date/time format and is

commonly used in Asian countries and is the ISO international standard.

Bob Frost

[edk01]

SDK nonsense aside, it is now July 30, 2012 and Adobe still haven't gotten their collective a#$%@s into gear and fixed their software for Nikon D800 users. ACR still doesn't convert D800 NEF's properly, LR 4.1 still runs like a 3 legged dog and PS CS6 Lens Corrction STILL doen't list D800 as a Nikon camera.  Thethered capture is STILL not supported by LR 4.x, no wonder Adobe dropped the price, there are other applications priced beter, perform better do more and do better and priced in the same region that LR used to be.  PhaseOne here I come.

[PrestonPage]

I've settled into a workflow using Nikon Camera Control 2 + ViewNX 2 for tethered capture.  The Nikon D800 NEF files transfer and display in about 3 seconds over USB 3.0.  For RAW processing, I use DxO Labs Optics Pro Elite, which does a great job with the lens correction and is much crisper than ACR.  I stil use LR4 for the catalog and printing, but it is slow and I have to reboot frequently because it appears to have memory leaks and other stability problems, so I'm considering PhaseOne.