How to Tether Your Camera Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

this is our in-studio tethering station
I'm going to show you exactly how and
why we set it up start with the camera
and work our way down this is a Canon 5d
sr with the canon 70 to 200 f28 l is
zoom this has always been just our
favorite lens for the studio because
even up close at 200 millimetres it's
the true 200 millimetres and it's the
only 70 200 and zoom that we found that
can do that I love being able to zoom as
opposed to using a prime because I can
easily zoom back for full body shot or
zoom in tight for a head shot notice
that it's attached using a collar this
allows me to quickly switch into a
portrait mode just by rotating the
camera like that no need to you know
work the ball head like that
I do like a ball head you know I used to
always hand hold the camera and nowadays
I've decided I like the tripod a lot
more first it really does make your
pictures a little bit sharper especially
with a high 50 megapixel camera like
that it'll start to notice a difference
it reduces fatigue because your arms
really will get tired especially for
Chelsea because she's smaller and
generally it just makes things easier
when you're using tethering because you
always have to have USB cable there and
if you're not on a tripod then you're
moving around and the cables bound to
get knocked loose and then everything
kind of gets reset so if you decide you
want to go for tethering you really do
need a good tripod that works well in
the studio the ball head here is a
Manfrotto ball head and it works well it
has a knob that allows me to adjust the
tension on it so I can tighten it up
enough that I can easily fluidly move it
around like this when I'm shooting and
then use this other knob to really lock
it in place if I'm going to walk away
from it and I don't want it falling off
this is a totally optional component
this is a Manfrotto sidearm that allows
you to mount a couple of heads to it and
we have this because we often do side by
side comparisons of cameras but then
once I started using it I realized I
really liked having the camera moved off
the center axis of the tripod because
normally when you want to get really
close to the camera you're putting your
body right
against the tripod so by moving it off
here it's still very steady with this
heavy tripod but it just means my body
isn't over the tripod and my legs aren't
getting tangled up and such the tripod
we have here is a Mon photo for 75 be a
very big and heavy tripod one of the
biggest and heaviest that they make and
because I'm not carrying it around I
don't really mind it has a couple of
features that I really like it has this
crank center column that allows me to
lower down or raise it up this can be
really important because sometimes we'll
get a big guy in here might be you know
maybe it's an actor who's six foot three
and needs head shots and I don't want to
be shooting him from underneath if I'm 6
1 or Chelsea who's 5 4 we'd be shooting
them from underneath and you'll just see
this like double chin so it's very
important that we'd be able to crank
this up and get over their head height
and you'll also notice that there are a
couple of Apple boxes down here this
allows me to me or Chelsea to crank it
up and then stand on these to give us
some extra height so that we're not
looking up at somebody so this is a nice
big heavy tripod now as we start to work
our way towards the computer we have a
this particular camera supports a USB 3
connection and that can really be key
especially with these high megapixel
cameras because USB 3 as many times
faster than USB 2 and once you start
tethering you realize the connection
between the computer and the camera is
key because it can be very slow and that
can be very annoying when you're in the
flow of a shoot you might be rattling
off a couple of pictures a second and
you don't want to have to wait 10 15 20
30 seconds for your stupid picture to
pop up so you could check to see if it's
sharp and properly exposed and with for
example a high megapixel USB 2 cameras
and especially in light room which is
very slow that would get very very
annoying and that for that reason we
just didn't use tethering for the
longest time but now technology has kind
of really caught up and allowed it to
happen fast enough that it's in real
time so
moving over to my desk here first I'll
show you an alternative a cheaper
alternative a lot of people like just a
little I just have a light stand here
with a platform made by men Frodo and
you can just put a laptop here and
connect your camera right to it if you
already have a laptop that works pretty
well especially if the laptop is USB 3
if it does an SSD you can probably get
the job done with it we did that for a
long time and decided we wanted a bigger
more permanent screen a computer that
could be a little bit faster and you can
get fast laptops but fast and apps
desktop computers tend to be faster and
to get more bang for your buck the
monitor here is a 4k monitor so it's an
extremely high resolution monitor and
that allows me to more easily spot
detail problems for example if I
slightly miss focused I would not notice
on the back of the camera here without
really laborious ly having to zoom in
but here I can see it much more
obviously it enables me to show a
histogram over to the left and in fact
it will automatically detect
overexposure like if i zoom in on our
skin here I can see these red dots are
showing that some of the highlights on
her skin are very slightly blown out and
that's that actually to me that means a
pretty perfect exposure so I'm happy
with that but it's information that I
need in the course of the shoot that
lets me know the exposure is perfect
because the last thing you want is to do
a shoot for a client and shake their
hand and send them on their way and they
get back to the computer and realize
that you weren't using high enough
f-stop and there's not enough depth of
field or all of your pictures are a
little bit overexposed or a little bit
underexposed and these are things you
might not notice on the back of the
camera you really might not so the
computer here is a safeguard it helps me
realize my mistakes before it's too late
and that's the the biggest purpose of it
there are other benefits to it it's
constantly copying pictures from the
camera to the computer so now I can
easily transfer them to the desk where I
work and
at them immediately so there's I don't
have to wait for this to copy from my
camera to my computer at my desk and I
render the previews in fact I have a
synchronization process running here
that's constantly copying the pictures
from this computer to my workstation at
my desk so that they're already ready
when I go downstairs this particular
rolling kiosk has been really useful to
us you can see that it has the ability
to tilt both the monitor and keyboard
separately and the way we work this has
been really important because I can
easily flip the screen around and show
the model the pictures that are coming
up so it's also important that I'd be
able to hide it because I don't
generally want the model to be able to
see their own pictures so with the flip
this way I can browse through select a
picture that I think is good enough that
they can see it and not have their self
esteem crushed and then flip it around
and I can say I can point to it and say
you know you're not smiling with your
eyes if you tilt your chin back see how
much better the light is there provide
them any feedback that I want the
ability to rotate the entire thing and
the keyboard means I can position it and
if I move up or down or side to side
this can go with me as many things as
possible or wireless in this
configuration so the mouse which is a
Logitech performance MX mouse is
Wireless and it has a laser pointer on
it so that it works very quickly and
accurately
I like this mouse in particular because
the wheel Scrolls smoothly and as you
look at the screen that means that I can
position the cursor over the eye and
zoom right in just means it happens very
instantly and that allows me to just
check the critical focus and actually
looking at that picture I can see this
particular eye is not sharp this eye is
sharp but that's maybe not exactly what
I want and that might lead me to for
example choose a higher f-stop the
software using here is capture one Pro
and it might surprise you if you know a
little bit about me because I've written
a couple of books about Adobe Lightroom
and we do like Adobe Lightroom capture
one does most of the same stuff as Adobe
Lightroom but in the studio for
tethering it
much much faster so you could tether
with Lightroom or capture one and they
cost about the same on a monthly basis
but capture one is several times faster
especially with the 5d sr lightroom was
taking five ten seconds more sometimes
to actually show me a picture that I
could zoom in on whereas capture one
manages to get it done much much faster
it's just better written software so we
still use Lightroom at our actual
editing stations for organizing and
editing photos but for capturing for
looking at the pictures in the process
of the shoot capture one is definitely
the way to go we've been very happy with
it several times faster and with
Lightroom I this would have been a no-go
it was just too slow to work with so
let's crouch down and take a look at the
computer that I decided to use it so
I'll just spin this around unplug my
camera so doesn't get tangled up this is
an alienware x51
and I chose this because it has an i7
4790k processor in it so if you watch my
video about making a desktop PC you'll
see that in my main editing workstation
I chose a different processor I chose a
processor with more cores but a slower
overall speed and because this is not
doing video editing because doing photo
editing only the 4790k is currently the
fastest processor you can get for that
type of work I think it only has four
cores but the speed of four gigahertz
makes the overall performance better I
have an SSD here that I have yet to
install I just wanted a small SSD we
only store photos from one session at a
time here so 120 gigs is just fine
you can't actually cram two drives into
this so it works pretty well I like this
particular computer because it has a
graphics card that's capable of driving
this 4k monitor that's something
important to check on the graphics
performance isn't going to really
benefit your day-to-day use but of
course if you're using I res monitor
you'll need something that can drive it
you also want to make sure that you get
USB three connections because your USB 3
camera will be much faster not that most
most computers accept it I decided to
upgrade my wireless access point to 802
11 AC and include an 802 11 AC wireless
adapter here because that link ended up
being many times faster than the old 802
dot 11 G Network I had I would rather
have had wired Ethernet but there's just
no way for me to get from my computer's
downstairs all the way up here so that
was the fastest wireless connection that
I could possibly make and you know these
files can be 50 megabytes each we can
end up with many gigs of files and a
given shoot so transferring those back
and forth it with my old 802 dot 11g
network would take hours with the new
network it works out much much faster so
I hope this video has been useful to
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