Free Nikon Tethering Software Mac

  1. Nikon D90 Tethering To Pc

Recently we wanted to test tethering our Nikon D7000 to a Macbook Pro running Sierra. Top 10 dj apps for mac 2017. For those who don’t know what tethering is, it’s hooking up your camera to the computer. It allows us to view an image on the computer instead of through the view finder or LCD screen of the camera. This makes it easier to see what’s going on with an image. Having a bigger view of an image, it’s more likely we’ll see a mistake that we might miss on the smaller LCD or in the view finder of the camera.

One of the things you find out about tethering is that it requires software. Canon cameras include free software called Canon EOS Utility for tethering. Nikon users aren’t as lucky. Their cameras require an extra purchase for tethering software which can be pricey.

Sofortbild is a native macOS app for tethered shooting using Nikon DSLR cameras. The software allows you to control any supported Nikon DSLR camera remotely from your Mac via USB. Sofortbild transfers captured images instantly to your hard disk for review in full. May 12, 2013  Free Nikon DSLR Tethering Software for PCs, Tablets and Smartphones. May 12, 2013. The free, open source software digiCamControl seems to offer a bit more.

In the age of the internet and open source software there is a bright side. It’s not hard to find free software from developers who have coded such programs in their own time. The hard part is trying to find open source software that works the way you want, is up to date, and most importantly works with your specific camera. This can make finding what you want a challenge.

We spent a few days looking for free tethering software for our Nikon. We also experienced a few of the problems mentioned above. Some programs didn’t working the way we wanted, or didn’t support our specific camera. It seems the most popular program mentioned was Sofortbild.

Free Nikon Tethering Software Mac

From reading the reviews, it seemed like a solid app that would do what we wanted. Visiting the website though we found out there was an issue. Most of the reviews where it worked well were on the older Mac operating systems such as Yosemite and Snow Leopard. For El Capitan and Sierra users like us, the program was still in beta. It seemed that it was being built by one programmer which means updates or getting it running could take awhile.

Since we just wanted a Live View to work, we installed it hoping for the best. The interface isn’t the prettiest but it’s not bad. It did take a few minutes for the program to detect the camera when we plugged it in. It let us take pictures and view them instantaneously on the computer. We were also able to remotely control the camera through the program on the computer. In other words we could snap pics by tapping a button, change the aperture, etc. all on the computer. When switching to Live View though we were met with a grey, blank window. Live view didn’t seem to work at all. Without that feature we were on to the next program.

We tried looking at digiCamControl next. Sadly, it was Windows only software. We also started looking at gPhoto2 but glancing through the documents it’s seems to be a command line tool to control the camera. While that’s nice, it still didn’t solve the Live View feature we wanted. We work with the command line constantly on web projects. It’s the last thing we want to do with camera software.

Through gPhoto2, we came across a program called digiKam. From the articles it sounded like it could be used to tether. Sadly, the examples we saw didn’t appear to work in the way the bloggers made it sound. The tethering screenshots we saw for it were ugly. It seemed like their idea of tethering was just connecting the camera to the computer and using digiKam to load them into the computer. Once in the computer, a preview with some basic photoshop tools were enabled. The article was a few years old so it might be worth a look to see if things have changed since then. For us, it was once again onto the next program.

When we were about to give up hope we came across qDslrDashboard. It seemed to be a newer version of DSLR Controller. The great thing about qDslrDashboard is that it has the best user interface we’ve seen from the free software we tried. It also works with a wide range of cameras and operating systems. Best of all, it had the Live View feature we wanted. The remote system worked fine from the few hundred test shots we tried, even though the software page claims it’s still a work in progress and there might be some bugs.

Free nikon tethering software mac 2017

The only issue we had with the software was being able to have a Live View through the computer while controlling the camera from the camera itself. Once you switched to Live View, while you were able to see on the computer screen what the camera was looking at, all changes to the f-stop, shutter speed, and other options had to be done through the program on the computer.

To regain control of the camera, Live View had to be switched off along with changing the setting to camera mode. At that point you could control the camera through the camera itself, and any pictures would then pop up on the computer screen after they were taken. There didn’t seem to be a way to do a Live View while controlling the aperture, shutter speed, and other functions through the camera. While it didn’t do exactly what we wanted in the way we wanted, it was close enough that it seems to fit the bill. It’s a great program for those looking for free tethering software for their Nikon and Mac computers.

If anyone knows of any other free tethering software for slightly older Nikon’s that works on the newer Mac operating systems, let us know. We’d love to try it out!

Nikon D90 Tethering To Pc


DigiCamControl is a free, open source program that gives you full control over Nikon cameras from your Windows PC. It supports tethering, live view, remote triggering, direct image transfer, controlling multiple cameras simultaneously and even offers you to control the camera from your tablet or smartphone. This is the first full release of digiCamControl which has support for almost all Nikon DSLR's cameras.

Connect your camera to the computer with a USB cable and fire up the program, and you have full access to almost all camera controls. You can have the viewfinder image live on your computer monitor and you can focus and expose manually or automatically and see the result directly on your computer screen.

The program supports almost all digital Nikon SLR's plus quite a few other cameras, and enables you to utilize almost all your camera's features remotely. Apart from shooting single frames, digiCamControl also offers sequences, bracketing, time lapse and focus stacking.

You have detailed control over the image transfer, storing, naming and many other aspects of your shooting session from within the program.

Once you have set up your camera, you can control it wirelessly using a smartphone or a tablet. Both iPhones, iPads, Android devices and other devices that can run a web browser are supported. You can even use a second remote computer (Mac, pc, Unix or whatever) to control and release the camera.

DigiCamControl is developed by Duka Istvan and is distributed as open source with both the finished program and the original source code (C#) freely available under the GNU license. Dji ronin m assistant software mac. You can read the history of digiCamControl here.

Here are several other alternative and free software solutions for Nikon cameras from previous posts:

  • Sofortbildapp for Mac - (can now be downloaded from the App Store)
  • Another Camera Control software for PC plus (see instructional video)
  • You can also try DCamCapture

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