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Bridging Tech and Creative Photography
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Photography Culture

Tether Your Camera to a Microsoft Surface Tablet: And Why You Shouldn’t Do It

Chris Gampat
No Comments
05/07/2013
2 Mins read

Last Updated on 05/07/2013 by Chris Gampat

0001_Surface_2-3

Shooting tethered is always something people love doing when they get the chance to. Tuts Plus has an interesting feature on how to shoot tethered to a Microsoft Surface tablet. How? Well, since it is a Windows 8 tablet you’ll just need to have Lightroom installed. Then you’ll need to go through the normal process of shooting tethered: which essentially means connecting the camera to the tablet via a USB cord, shooting, and waiting for the images to transfer into Lightroom as you shoot.

From a guy who used to shoot tethered often in a studio and also manage a computer for many studio shoots, I highly recommend not ever doing this–and there a couple of very good reasons why. First off, this is a tablet and you’re not using this to replace your dedicated machine. The Surface is quite powerful with up to 128GB of memory and 4GB of RAM, but it isn’t practical. If you’re doing one or two macro photos at home, then we understand why you might want to do this but you’re just going to have to move those images off of your machine anyway to edit on a significantly better display that can be easily calibrated. Plus, a lot of room has to be between the device and your camera to make tethering practical. Shoots are often done with 12 foot cables or longer because the cables tend to move in and out of their ports–so you’ll need to use gaffers tape to secure them.

However, I see one other application where this might be useful: the journalist at CES or another show that need to shoot a photo during a conference and send images immediately as it is happening. I’m positive that there is someone at Engadget that may just do this. There is a wireless way to do this through use of an Eye-Fi card and the Eye-Fi app–and that’s a bit more practical to be honest.

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Chris Gampat

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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