There are many situations in which having a camera tethered directly to your Mac could be advantageous. Captured images are sent directly to the computer, and in many cases you can even control your camera's settings and trigger the shutter directly from your desktop.

Many studio photographers love to shoot tethered. The photographer can focus on the subject while an editor or art director watches the images appear on screen as they are captured. There is no waiting for the photographer to finish a shoot, load the camera's card into a card reader, and begin downloading to the computer. The images are sent to the computer instantly after each frame is shot, and what's more, they can be backed up as soon as they are on the machine, adding an additional level of redundancy and security.

But studio photography is not the only application for a tethered setup. Time-lapse photographers can take full advantage of the intervalometer (a mechanism to control the tripping of a shutter at regular intervals over time) function that is included with many digital capture applications.

Tethered shooting can also be very useful for remote camera operation. By using a WiFi connection (or a very long data cable) and a radio remote trigger, the photographer can easily grab images captured with the remote camera as they are shot, directly to the computer.

Tethered with Aperture

Tethered shooting in Aperture is actually quite simple to set up. This article on Apple's Pro UK site describes a simple solution. Essentially, the author has you download a small application that when combined with your camera's capture software (they use the Canon Utility) allows for easy tethered shooting via Aperture. You press the button and after a few seconds the image pops up in Aperture's viewer.

While this method is an easy and quick way to set up tethered shooting, it can be made even easier. By using Automator instead of the article's downloadable application, you can set up tethered shooting with Aperture and incorporate additional Automator actions. In fact, once you learn the basic steps, you can, on the fly, create workflows that match your personal needs for just about any situation you may encounter.

Let's say, for example, you have a pile of items you want to sell on eBay. You have to take pictures of each item and prepare each picture for use on the Web. However, you still want to shoot in the RAW format because you think some of the items shot on a clean background might make for good stock images. With a tethered setup and Aperture, you could easily watch your images appear on screen as you shoot--making adjustments and checking focus as you go. At the same time, with the flexibility of Automator, you could create a workflow that not only handles tethered shooting, but also prepares web-resolution images, and even uploads them to your web server.

Sound complicated? It's really not. By following a few easy steps you can set up Automator and Aperture and be on your way to a streamlined, tethered workflow.

Connectivity

To begin, there are a few requirements to make the process actually work. First of all, your camera needs to support tethered shooting. Most digital SLRs do, and many even include WiFi support, but nevertheless, check your camera's instruction manual to make sure tethered shooting is possible.

Secondly, Aperture itself does not support tethered shooting. So you will need another application to do the work of getting your image files off of the camera and onto your computer automatically. If you are shooting with Nikon or Canon DSLRs you can use their corresponding capture software: Nikon Capture and Canon's Digital Photo Professional. For Canon users, in addition to DPP, you will need EOS Capture.

Another great software option for tethered shooting is Phase One's Capture One. In addition to being a great RAW processor, Capture One supports tethered shooting for a wide variety of DSLRs as well as many high-end, medium-format digital backs. If you don't want to shell out $500 for their flagship software, Phase One also offers Capture One LE for about $100. Both support tethered shooting and you can download trial versions from their website.

If all you want to do is automatically trip your camera's shutter from your computer, the setup is even simpler. Image Capture (included with your Mac) features a Take Picture Automator action with support for a large number of popular cameras. Combined with the Automator Loop Utility, the Take Picture action makes for a really simple time-lapse setup--more on this below.

Finally, you will need a data cable or WiFi connection kit for your camera. Most DSLRs come packaged with either a FireWire or USB cable. This cable can be used for importing images after a shoot, or for controlling the camera in a tethered setup.

Many pro-level DSLRs have the ability to utilize an accessory WiFi connection kit. Both Nikon and Canon offer such a kit for about $300. Once set up, the photographer can send images over a WiFi network directly from the camera to a nearby computer. Images can even be directed to an FTP server if one is available on the WiFi network.

Setting up Automator

Once you have installed and set up the capture software for your camera, and attached your camera and tested it out, follow these easy steps.

First, make a new folder somewhere on your computer's hard drive. I made a folder called Tethered and placed it in my Pictures folder. This folder is going to be a special holding place for images as they come off your camera before being imported into Aperture.

Second, open Automator and create a new workflow. In the Automator library, click the Aperture set and find the action named Import Photos. Drag this action into your workflow.

Figure 1. Import Photos action

The Import Photos action has a number of options. These can all be customized for your own personal preference, but for the sake of this tutorial, use the following settings.

Where it says "Add to:" select New Project and enter "Tethered." This will tell Aperture to make a new project called "Tethered," and will continue adding images to this project as you shoot.

Now for the Important Part

Normally, when you create an Automator workflow, you simply save the workflow and run it when you need it. In order to invoke Automator automatically you will need to select "Save As Plug-in...."

Figure 2. Saving workflow as a plugin

This will bring up a dialog box, which will ask you a few questions:

1) Enter "Tethered" in the Save Plug-in As box.
2) Where it says "Plug-in for" select Folder Actions from the drop-down menu.
3) Where it says "Attached to Folder" select the Tethered folder you created in the beginning of this tutorial, and you're done.

This process will turn the Tethered folder into a "hot folder." Whenever a file is placed in this folder, the Tethered action will automatically run and the image will be imported into the Tethered project in Aperture.

Figure 3. Setting the folder action

As an example, I used Canon's Digital Photo Professional to shoot tethered with my Canon EOS 20D, connected with its USB cable to my MacBook Pro. In DPP, I selected the Tethered folder I had previously created as my active folder, and then selected Start EOS Capture from the Tools menu. Once the interface for the camera was up and running, I clicked back to Aperture and selected the Tethered project.

With this setup, I am able to shoot with the 20D connected to my laptop and watch the images appear in Aperture. You can see the Automator action running in the Dock each time a new image ends up in the Tethered folder.

For Nikon and Phase One users the setup is essentially the same. The important part is that you direct your images to be saved to that Tethered folder.