Lightroom: Intermittent Communication with D800E When Shooting Tethered in LR 5

I can't remember whether or not I had this with Lr4, but I have it a lot with tethered shooting in Lr5. I'm shooting with a Canon 5D Mk. III. When I start shooting tethered, everything works fine for about 5-10 minutes, or until after about 10-12 shots. After that, it drops the connection after every couple of shots. I never have to relaunch Lightroom. I can make the connection go again by starting tethered capture again from the File menu. It takes it about 20 or 30 seconds to regain the connection to the camera. It'll work OK for 3, 5, 7 shots, but then it'll drop again every time. Total pain in the tush and a big waste of time. I wondered if it was a Canon problem, but if you're having it with a D800E, it answers that question. It definitely sounds like a Lightroom issue.

Since I first documented this issue I have done a few more things and have discovered it was my camera, had it repaired and the issue has disappeared.

Here's how I came about to this:
I had tested three different cables with no change in the problem.
Restarted LR and rebooted computer with no change.
Updated to LR 5.2CR with no change
Returned to LR 4 and steady communication with no breaks (this part is still a mystery).

Then, I borrowed a second D800 and a Canon ds1 MKIII and both cameras worked well LR5. There were no communication issues with the Nikon and a few disconnects with the Canon, which has a newly replaced USB socket, but not frequent enough to be a problem (once an hour)
With that, I had to question the camera.
Sent it off to Nikon for repair and upon receipt of the repaired camera, the problem stopped.

I can't say what it was that Nikon did, as the repair ticket shows they replaced the top cover (just the cover or does the cover contain electronics?), Check Communication (no other comment on that) and a firmware upgrade (the Nikon site makes no mention of any improvement in tethered communications).

It's the LR4/LR5 issue I can't figure out unless Adobe had made a change in the resistance parameters for cables or cameras that caused the intermittent connectivity and slow downloads and metadata issues (captures were being downloaded with a metadata warning that it had been changed in another program).

It's all a mystery, however the repair seems to have solved the LR5 connectivity problem.

My final suggestion is to try another camera or two to test with LR5 before faulting Lightroom.

Mr. Wagner--Thanks very much for the reply, that's very interesting. It might explain why so few of us (apparently exactly two!) are having this problem. I will give it a try with the other Canon body I have, a 7D that's quite bit older than my 5D3. More later . . .

You're welcome.

And, as added security, I've purchased a JerkStopper (what a name!) from tethertools.com which, in addition to the Nikon provided cable support that came with the camera, further keeps the cable connection nice and secure.

D.A.

OK, so now I've done some controlled testing and am more baffled then before. I hooked up the 5D3 and computer same as always. I made 105 shots, trying every combination of firing off 50 shots as fast as I could, pausing 10 seconds between shots, shooting in live view, every change of settings that I ever do when shooting for real. Bottom line: Not one failure. Same camera, cable and computer as always, but everything worked perfectly. I guess it's good news that it's now working OK, but it's bothersome when you hit these intermittent problems. I betting that there's a good chance I haven't seen the last of this. If I learn more, I will post again here. Good luck with your shooting!

Yup. I've been shooing all day with the D800 without a single disconnect. Oddly though, I have had a two captures that didn't show up at all and one capture that yielded a gray frame and no image. I've had the gray frames before, but not the missed captures.

But no disconnect.

So the minor issues continue. Just out of curiosity, are you a PC or Mac?

Mac.

Dear, you are not alone. I completely struggle with the D4 on tethered shooting. To worsen things, I bought the unbelievable expensive WT-5 to tether wirelessly. I experience absolutely the same intermittent problems on both LR 5. The WiFi connection to the computer is stable and from within Windows, the camera is always accessible and connected, but LR keeps reporting connecting and unconnecting and finally hangs.

Most of the time the behaviour is like this:

- LR reports camera connected, everything is ok and ready, LR shows correct and responsive exposure controls
- First shot is taken: immediately reporting the progress bar top left, immediately showing an empty thumbnail in the grid view.
- After a few seconds, tehered toolbar switching to "no camera found" for a while, then reports again "D4 found"
- Thumbnail never gets a picture in, Tethering bar is unresponsive, camera body controls are locked, Display shows "PC"
- after a few minutes, LR presents an error pop up which states "A problem wit h Tethering occurs.
- No use in restarting tehered mode or restarting LR. Only reboot works.

Interestingly in the task manager occasionally one can see more and more processes named "tether_nikon.exe" appear one after each error pop up(?), sometimes not.

When trying to do the same with camera control pro 2, things are stable. But ist is a little inconvienient to set this up each time. (Using Camera Control to transfer to the watched Folder, then autoimport in LR).

When I compare Versions and date of the diver files in LR and camera control pro, I find quite old versions in LR

So I am not really sure it is a HW problem of the camera because a) windows connection is ok, b) WiFi does not use the USB of the camera.

I strongly suspect Adobes tethering support being not very carefully looked after

So what is your newest experience with this topic? Any news? Or anybody happy?

Martin, thanks for your input.

Since my last report, I have experienced similar issues again, even with my recently repaired D800, including the blank thumbnails and progress dial on the capture bar that doesn't stop.

I'll agree that Adobe doesn't seem to be as supportive with LR tethering - starting with my Leaf Aptus 75, which they've never added support for.

Not as frequently as before, but enough to interrupt my shoots numerous times, LR5 looses communication with the camera. It's also happened a few times with my Canon ds1 MKIII. It's interesting that you compared drivers in different programs to find older drivers for your D4 (Is it the same drivers for the D800? They came out at different times.)

Considering that I shoot still life in the studio, I'm tethered 99% of the time. So this is quite a nuisance.

Not happy.

Guys,

We're exeriencing here the same connection issues with a couple of Nikon bodies (D800 and D3X). It's very erratic and happens randomly.
All bodies are connected through Nikon's WT-4

LR 5.2/Mac OS 10.7.5

What's LR team opinion about??

Thanks!
David

I've been waiting for an Adobe LR team member to chime in, but nothing so far. It doesn't seem that there are enough tethered users to merit Adobe taking a look at this issue.

It's interesting that I believed my problem had been solved with a repair, but it didn't last long.

It's really frustrating.

Dang, It's happening to me again. See my comment above from about 3 weeks ago: When I set up a controlled testing environment, I ran off 105 shots without a single failure, trying everything I could to get it to fail. All worked perfectly.

Yesterday, I had some actual shooting to do and of course, it failed again after the first few shots. I only had to make about 20 shots total, but it dropped the connection 4 times during that 1 hour session.

This is a Canon 5D Mk. III, USB cable tethering to a MacBook ProRetina 15" running OS X 10.8.5, Lightroom 5.1 (since updated to 5.2).

Any suggestions?

After one year of messing around with tethered shooting functionality in LR, wirde and wirelessly, I finally decided not to lose any more time with this tool. Desperately threw up another 200 bucks, got Nikon Camera Control Pro and the auto import Folder in LR.

Works flawlessly, no real speed penalty visible. Shame on LR for not being able to deliver and shame on Nikon for charging for what any other manufacturer gives out for free.

Still its working great. As a small candy, Camera control gives really convenient remote control with all the camera featurea and individual settings. It provides quite some overview.

And, really, as Nikon SW normally isn't the best I know, Camera Control does really not appear home-brewn as one might expect.

Give it a try, there's a trial version for free and keep shooting instead of messing. This is my final decision about this annoying issue.

What are you guys thinking about? LEt me know how you deal with it.

Martin, Thanks for the suggestion, but this software has a rating of 2.1 out of 5. And, with 25-1 star ratings out of a total of 39 (and only 7-5 star ratings), this software is too heavily weighted in the negative. One of the comments said it was "especially slow" on the Mac. And, in looking at the specs for the Mac, the Nikon Camera Control Pro works with up to OS 10.6.8, which is already a couple years old. They don't know we're up to 10.8.5?

So, I'll have to pass on your suggestion. But thanks for letting us know you've also had similar problems.