Tethering a D90 on a Mac?

[Marcus Rowland]

I recently upgraded from a D50 to a D90, and want to use it for some photomicroscopy. Unfortunately my microscope is an old professional model and an awkward design - fairly high with a vertical camera tube - which would make it very difficult to use live view and a pain to use the viewfinder. This was easy with my film SLR, an old Canon F1 which had a rotating 90-degree sports finder, but a pain with a body that only has an eye-level viewfinder and a screen on the back. When I've tried it in the past it's taken a long time to set up each shot using an angled periscope thingy and get a good result.
 
What I was hoping to use was some sort of tethering software so that I could do it with liveview, one of the reasons I went for a D90. Unfortunately it would have to be with my laptop, a MacBook Pro running the current release of OS-X, since the microscope is in another room to my Windows PC and I don't have room to set it up nearby. I say unfortunately because I have a good freeware tethering program for the PC, DigiCamControl, but can't find something that works properly for the mac. So far the closest is Sofortbild, but for some reason liveview isn't working, I have no idea why.

I really don't want to spend money on the Nikon software for this, it isn't really a very important project, just a favour for someone.

Any suggestions?

[Marcus Rowland]

I think I have a fix for this, and it's one I should have thought of sooner - I can install Windows 7 on the laptop using Bootcamp to make the Mac dual boot, and hopefully use DigiCamControl on it. Not ideal since it makes things a little more complicated, but there are enough Windows programs I use that don't have good Mac equivalents that I should have done this ages ago.

Now trying to source a legit copy of Windows 7. I may be some time...

[charlie]

You can try Capture One free for 30 days and see if that will work for you. It is excellent for tethering and has liveview features as well. Works on Mac or PC.

[HCS]

Couldn't you use Sofortbild for this, it's for Mac (www.sofortbildapp.com)?

[Marcus Rowland]

You can try Capture One free for 30 days and see if that will work for you. It is excellent for tethering and has liveview features as well. Works on Mac or PC.

I'd want to keep it going for more than 30 days, and it's way out of my price range.

Couldn't you use Sofortbild for this, it's for Mac (www.sofortbildapp.com)?

Tried it, bits of it work but Liveview doesn't. It's apparently based on an old version of the Mac development kit and isn't fully compatible with the latest releases of OS X on all Macs.

[HCS]

Tried it, bits of it work but Liveview doesn't. It's apparently based on an old version of the Mac development kit and isn't fully compatible with the latest releases of OS X on all Macs.

Oh, i didn't know that.

I've used Smartshooter (https://kuvacode.com/) for a while, but that's not free. It worked very well though.

Nowadays, i'm using Capture One Pro, since it does decent tethering and is a heck of a raw converter IMHO.

[Marcus Rowland]

OK, it worked on the laptop with Windows installed, and I seem to be able to swap backwards and forwards between operating systems without too many problems. Haven't tried it on the microscope yet, it's taken me most of the evening just to install Windows etc. and get over my loathing for the process, but I've got camera control and LiveView is working via the computer screen. I think I'll try some actual photomicroscopy tomorrow.

[David H. Hartman]

The Nikon D90 has a "HDMI mini-pin connector" on the side. All one needs to use a spare LCD computer display is a 6' (2m) HDMI cable. These can be had fairly cheap on Amazon or a similar supplier. What you get is the same display as the LCD on the back of the camera. You do have to use the camera controls as there is no computer involved. Would that do the trick?

This method of "tethering" would probably be more useful with the camera in the normal orientation on a tripod. It's not what I think of as tethering proper.

Dave

---

There is a Sofortbild 1.5 Beta 11 available to support El Capitan and Sierra...

http://www.sofortbildapp.com/beta/

...it might be worth a try if one were using an older beta version.

[Marcus Rowland]

RE HDMI, I thought about that, but the laptop is much better from a control point of view - it's completely hands off the camera and microscope, apart from focusing, whereas I'd have to set speed etc. on the camera if I used HDMI. I tried it today and it works well, but I need a stronger blue filter, I think the lamp has reddened a little and it's throwing the colours off.

I tried the beta version - it didn't work.