Darktable Tethering Double Import

Software darktable
1

When I shoot tethered, darktable imports the images twice.

  • darktable 5.4.0 AppImage on Ubuntu 24.04
  • Nikon Z 7ii shooting RAW+JPEG

Steps to reproduce

  1. Connect camera via USB and unmount the camera’s filesystem.
  2. Start darktable.
  3. Click “mount camera”.
  4. Click “tethered shoot”.
  5. Press the shutter once.
  6. Observe that there are now four image files, two NEF and two JPG on the computer. There are only two on the camera memory card.

For example:

tippy:~/pictures/2025/2025-12-28/tethering test $ ls -lh
total 115M
-rw-rw-r-- 1 art art 9.9M Dec 28 18:39 2025-12-28_18-39-18_0001.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 art art  48M Dec 28 18:39 2025-12-28_18-39-18_0002.NEF
-rw-rw-r-- 1 art art 9.9M Dec 28 18:39 2025-12-28_18-39-18_0003.JPG
-rw-rw-r-- 1 art art  48M Dec 28 18:39 2025-12-28_18-39-18_0004.NEF

Is there a setting that I have missed or is this a bug?

2

You’re shooting raw+jpg and it looks like you’re getting raw and jpg. What do you expect to happen?

1 Like
3

@paperdigits I expect to get one raw plus one JPEG when I push the shutter button one time for a total of two files. I’m getting two of each, for a total of four files.

1 Like
4

And to make sure, the files are identical? If you set the camera to just Raw or just jpg, do you also get two identical files?

1 Like
5

How many times do I have to say this? I pressed the shutter button ONE time. The camera has TWO files, ONE raw and ONE JPEG. There are TWO copies of each file on the computer.

This really isn’t complicated folks.

6

ok. Maybe someone else wants to help you. bye

1 Like
7

Camera settings?

8

instead of try and error providing a debug log is quite more helpful to see what exactly happens …

so run darktable from terminal with debug messages e.g. darktable -d camctl -d common

9

Recently had a similar issue when I accidentally set my camera to whitebalance-burst mode. Could this be an issue?

1 Like
10

Yup. I finally found the camera setting. I had set the camera to store a backup of each file to the second memory card. Apparently gphoto2 identifies and copies new files, not images, so it copied all four of the files, the two “primary” and the two “backup” files.

Mystery solved.