Don’t get confused, Nikon Control was not the Nikon Camera Control Pro Software developed by Nikon, which is available for ~$150 (List price $180). Rather, it is a free tethered shooting alternative for Mac users created by Stefan Hafeneger. We have been following the development since February.
We saw Nikon Control Beta 3 at the end of April. Now the software has been released as Sofortbild 1.0 with refreshing new graphics, icon, name, and some bug fixes.
The features of the free application are also quite impressive considering the price you pay, which is nothing. For example, the software can produce a high dynamic range (HDR) image from automatically bracketed shots. It can also display the location on a map if GPS location data is found in the image.
It is unfortunate that there is no Windows version of Sofortbild but there are some other free alternatives. Most of the free camera control/tethered shooting software applications are developed based on the Nikon SDK that is available to any who agrees to Nikon’s license terms. We can certainly expect to see more alternative tethered shooting applications for Nikon while the currently existing ones get better and better. If free software can meet your needs, it is definitely nice to save the money for some other useful things. Most likely you haven’t see many alternative tethered shooting solutions specially made for Canon DSLRs. The reason – Canon EOS Utility comes with their cameras free of additional charges.
Download link is available at Sofortbild Website.
In the past, I have introduced a few free tethered shooting software applications, one for Windows, and a couple (this and this) for Mac. Now guys at Nikon Rumor pointed out another one for Windows platform.
The software, DCamCapture, is a free tool to copy images from a Nikon DSLR to a computer during tethered shooting. Currently it only runs on MS Windows XP and Vista. The author offered the following warning:
The current state is alpha and the application isn’t tested very well.Therefore the author didn’t liable for any errors or defects, especially for lost images, not captured images ans camera defects. You are not allowed to use the application if you didn’t aggree.
Features:
- Copies images during shooting
- Start Image capture
- Timer to capture image sequences
- LiveView with image capture and video recording (MJPEG in AVI file) function
- Writing IPTC data in Bibble 4 files (*.bib)
- Battery charge state
- Application window always on top option
Supported Cameras:
- D40, D40x, D60, D80, D90
- D200, D300, D700
- D3, D3x
My impressions:
I tested the software on a Windows PC running Vista Business. The software successfully tethered to my Nikon D200 but that’s about all I can do. It gives out an error message when I click on the Capture button. It is able to download the photo immediately without problem if I release the shutter manually on the camera.
The software does not provide any ability to change the camera settings. There is no way to automatically launch the downloaded photo either. Perhaps you can use a software that supports watched folder for automatic display and import. One such example is Adobe Lightroom.
For anyone who is looking for a sophisticated tethered shooting solution, you will need to look elsewhere, at least for now. I am sure it will get better and better with time (it is not even beta yet!). For people who is looking for a simple tethered shooting software, it may work, especially for people who wants to do time-lapse photography. The timer controlled shooting function should be a great help if your camera doesn’t have a built-in intervolmeter.
The guys at Nikon Rumors have found a new tethered shooting option for Mac users. Icarus Camera Control is an open source software that is currently available for download at SourceForge. Since I don’t have a Mac, I cannot try it out. The screenshots do look quite nice. The author mentioned Linux/gPhoto2 support in the future, but apparently no Windows support is coming.
The other Mac option we talked about is the Nikon Control.
For windows users, the best free option seems to be the DIYPhotobits Camera Control, which is currently at Version 4.0. A basic bracketing function has been added. This should help high dynamic range (HDR) shooters especially who are shooting with Nikon DSLRs such as D40, D40X, and D60 that do not have built-in automatic bracketing function. You could manually change exposure settings, but avoiding camera movement may be difficult even with camera mounted on a tripod.
Posted in
Software on March 7th, 2009.
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Previously we talked about the free Windows tethering application that does pretty much the expensive Nikon Camera Control Pro 2
is capable of. Now Stefan Hafeneger played with the Nikon SDK packages and created a Mac application that allows tethered shooting with Nikon DSLR cameras.
The current beta1 version supports Nikon D3, D2, D700, D300 and D90. Since I am not a Mac user, I cannot test it out. From the author’s description, the application allows tethered single shot or exposure bracketing. The author is looking for ideas, suggestions, and feature requests. For me, automatic time lapse would be great. However it is still useless if it doesn’t run on Windows, and Stefan has refused to make a Windows version. I wish I have time and the courage to pick up my programing again. 
More coverage of the story on the Internet:
Posted in
Digital photography,
Software on February 20th, 2009.
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Shooting tethered means that you connect the camera to a computer, then adjust the camera settings and trigger the shutter release from a software program on the computer. With each shutter release, the image gets downloaded immediately so you can instantly review the photo to make sure it is captured properly.
For lucky Canon users, they have the free EOS Utility to work with. For Nikon users, you will need open your wallet to Nikon to get the Camera Control Pro 2, which is quite expensive in comparison. Camera Control Pro is definitely a nice piece of software. You may be able to justify the price if you are a professional photographer or perfectionists who always want the best. If you are a hobbyist photographer like me, or many other readers of this blog, a free piece of software that does pretty much the same thing is certainly nice.
So, check out DIYPhotobits and the Camera Control software that is available for free. The user interface is definitely crude. However it offers quite complete control of the camera and provides time lapse function for Cameras (e.g. D40, D60, D80, D90, etc) that do not have it built-in.
The program is Windows only. It works great on Windows XP. You can shoot RAW (NEF) or JPG by toggling a radio button on the software. It downloads the image instantly if you want it to do so. On Windows Vista, it only seems to work when you shoot JPG, or RAW+JPG (set it on the camera). The software cannot toggle between JPG and RAW. It cannot download RAW either, only JPG. If you set the camera to RAW only, the software (currently V3.1) will freeze up. You will then need to kill process “mshta.exe” from Task Manager. Raymond Lowe, the programmer, is aware of this issue. A fix is hopefully coming soon for the freezing issue. However the RAW support may never come to Windows Vista due to the lack of RAW support in the Windows Image Acquisition API on Vista. This shouldn’t be too much of an issue though. The JPG file is good enough for review purpose. If you shoot RAW+JPG, you could still download the RAW files from the memory card using conventional method later.
Posted in
Other on January 23rd, 2009.
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