Tethered shooting JPEG + RAW
Shooting tethered is getting ever more popular, pictures appear on a larger screen as you shoot. Typically tethered shooting is with a cable, but various other means of shooting tethered without wires exist.
Big files transfer slower than small ones
However with 20MP cameras sending a RAW file over to the computer takes a few seconds. EOS 5D Mark III RAW images are typically 25MB files.
Using the fact that the cameras can shoot a RAW and JPEG image simultaneously it is possible to send only the JPEG image to the computer. This makes for much faster transfer of images. Looking at a 20MP JPEG is more than enough on a laptop display, in fact I often use medium or small JPEGs for faster speed.
EOS Utility 3.0 for tethered shooting
EOS Utility has changed around some of the locations of settings compared to the older versions. I received a question about how to send only JPEG images when shooting tethered with EOS Utility 3.x
Remote shooting = tethered shooting
If the camera is set to RAW and JPEG then EOS Utility can be configured to only transfer the JPEG to the computer. Both the RAW image and the JPEG images are also stored on the camera memory card.
Click on the highlighted section of the remote shooting window where the computer and camera icons are shown to open the file handling options in the Image saving location window.
In this screen you can choose what happens to the files from the camera. If you like you can just have the pictures stored on the computer. If you do so and the cable comes out you lose the picture. I don’t use this setting.
If you have the files stored on the computer and camera then you can opt to have only the JPEG image sent to the computer when shooting RAW + JPEG mode. This is the one to choose so that you get the image from the camera quickly to the computer screen AND have a RAW image on the camera memory card. I often just use a small JPEG which is still 2880 x 1920 pixels on the EOS 5D Mark III.
Thanks for posting this handy tutorial. I shoot tethered all the time for my commercial work. Just got the 5DS and found with my 5 year old Macbook Pro the RAW files loaded very slowly and the system bogged down quickly. I’m finding having the utility transfer the compressed S1 jpegs gives me acceptable transfer speed but still able to check focus on my photos by zooming in. Thanks again! Ken
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Hi Brian, thanks for the blog post, this is exactly what I was looking for.
I’m shooting Prof. Headshots in the studio and also tethered form my 5D Mk III to an old (late 2009) MacBook and it’s painfully slow and thought there’s goto to be a faster way especially since I only need small images for presentation purposes.
Get info and very timely.
And I’ve subscribed to your newsletter, much appreciated 🙂
Thank you 🙂
Ah, thanks for this article; I’ve been looking for the EOS Utility’s version 3 new location of the JPEG-only option for quite some time now. I used version 2 up to now because this option seemed lacking in v3.
Thanks for this .. very useful. I had to get around the Mac firewall settings, but as soon as I’d cracked that one, I was able to tether by wifi and can now display jpegs on screen when shooting … great!
For anyone else who has the same problem…
I opened the EOS utility and it gave me the pairing over wifi/lan option.
When I clicked it, I got a “FireWallAlertMsg” msg.
So, I went to system preferences / security and privacy / Firewall / Firewall options / uncheck enable stealth mode
This then opened the pairing dialogue options when I tried the EOS Utility pairing and I was able to make the connection.
(Needless to say, when I’d finished, I rechecked the stealth mode box)