Tethering experiments

Software RawTherapee
1

I have wanted to try out tethering for a while now. So I installed Darktable and tried it out. It works. Kinda. The image appears, but it is not possible to make any adjustments or to zoom in. Darktable also likes to crash a lot.

So I deinstalled Darktable again and installed Entangle. It also kinda works. The image appears, but since Entangle has no image editing capabilities you can make no adjustments to the image. And it not possible to zoom in either. One thing it didn’t do was crash.

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Then I decided to open RawTherapee on another desktop and go to the directory where Entangle was placing the files it downloaded from the camera. Fortunately I remembered the Inspect tab and pulled it open. Excellent, now I was able to see the image at 100%, which is useful to check the focus!

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It’s not perfect, but at least it is a workable solution for product and even for portrait photography in the studio.

RawTherapee is really a great piece of software, but I do miss an integrated tethering solution that let’s you do at least some basic adjustments on the fly like curves, exposure, white balance and black and white conversion. These adjustments should of course be added to all subsequent images that are taken. And a magnifying glass to check focus. (See Capture One)

I hope one of the developers finds tethering useful and implements it.

2

The reason tethering works the way it does in entangle and darktable is because they use the same library to control the camera.

3

I have been wanting to give ART a try but it does not compile with any instructions I have been able to find. Fortunately now with version 1.0 there is an Appimage available, so I gave it a try.
And it is actually even more useful for tethering than RawTherapee.

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Not only is it possible to view the complete image in the inspect tab, but you can even make some adjustments on the fly with three standard curves. You can also view any clipped pixels as shown in the image.

To import the images to a folder Entangle or maybe a self made script is still necessary, but this is still a step forward.

1 Like
4

I think ART’s curves in the inspect tab are just for display, they are not saved in the processing profile.

5

I don’t mind that. At least it is possible to apply an “S” curve to the raw in the tethering preview. It does help a bit. Seeing the clipped pixels is also useful.