Current generation of MacBook Air & Nikon D800 problem

Peter

A reader sent me this email - has anyone experienced this issue?

I bought the brand new MacBook Air in June as it first came out. Thinking that would be the perfect laptop to shoot tethering with Lightroom 5 + Nikon D800 on location. The camera was never recognized whenever it was plugged in. I tried different cables, upgrading firmware. No luck. So, I took it to Apple Store on the weekend, the Genius tried various things. Even without Lightroom, the Apple Preview app also didn't recognized when the camera was plugged in. Perplex, the Genius tried plugging in the camera into 2 other brand new MacBook Air on the floor. No luck. Curious, he plugged it in the MacBook pro and last generation of MacBook Air, then it worked. So, there is something wrong with the current generation of MacBook Air hardware. Apple accepted the return even after 30 days. Anyone has the same problem?

Mac OSX 10.8.4
Nikon D800 firmware latest

Golf007sd

First time I have heard of this. Witch MacBook air does the end user have...11 or 13"? The 13" has the SDXC card slot for transferring images. I know the latest MacBook Pro's have no issues however.

JJ_SO

card slots are no help for tethered shooting [-X
But kind of that appears to be Apple tragedy: finally they're using USB3 but can't recognise one of the few cams with such a connection. We stupid customers became test labs...

macsavageg4

Sounds like a software bug that they will hopefully squash in an OS update. I'd be curious to know if the camera showed up in the system report and what showed up in that section as well.

dzmconstr

Have you tried pulling the pictures with View NX2? or Camera Control Pro? Mac software doesn't recognize the camera but the Nikon software will.

JJ_SO

@dzmconstr this is simply not true. All my Nikons are recognised by "digital pictures". It's not possible to shoot tethered with it but as soon there are pictures on the memory card, the app will show them ready for download. I suggest to your reader @Peter to make a report to Apple. It's most likely a bug, but it can be a hardware problem as well because the Genius tried different samples of MBAs.

And - at least on 10.6.8 - it's not the "preview" app to recognise camera or scanners or cellphones with cameras or other stuff able to take pictures, it's "digital pictures", the one with a camera symbol. But that might have changed. Other users with OS 10.8.x should have a try with their MacBooks. Even Geniuses don't know everything.

Thanks for reporting that.

Edit: just checked, the English name is not "digital pictures" but "Image Capture", as described in the article. Hope this helps? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2498?viewlocale=en_US

It would be no surprise if only LR doesn't work. Same goes for Nikon software, none of those manufacturers is keen to support Macs at first place.

Killerbob

I tried connecting my D800 to my new MacBook Air, and it is recognised in "Image Capture", alongside my iPhone, iPad, etc. Neither is displayed on my desktop with an icon...

hlx

The MacBook Air was purchased in June. I wonder if your MBA is newer or from a different batch.

Anyway, my intent was to use LR5 (no NX2 etc) for tether shooting on location. Since LR5 on my new MBA didn't recognize the D800 (after trying different cables, ports, firmware upgrade, reboot etc), I took it to Apple Store. They didn't have LR on their machines, so the Genuis used "Preview" to see if the camera could be detected. Same D800, same cable, same memory (with some images on it), the camera was immediately recognized by MacBook Pro and last generation of MBA, but not the current generation of 13" MBAs (tried 2 or 3) in the Apple Store. We didn't try 11" MBA. They all ran the same Max OS.

Golf007sd

If you have the most resent MB Air and are using the SD cards to store your images on D800, for the time being I would hope you are using the detected card slot for transferring your images, until the issue is resolved.

JJ_SO

Tethered shooting has NOTHING to do with card slots. Is that so complicate to get?
And "Preview" is not the same as "Image Capture". That appears to be also complicate to get.

Well, anyway, it's not my MBA, so have fun in trying to make LR work with it... /:)

adamz

@Peter - I'll check it on Wednesday, but AFAIR there were no issues. My wife has the new 13" MBA and I was playing with it and had no problems with capturing the files from D800 but I was just importing them - no tethering shooting. I have no issues with tether shooting on my MBP Retina in Aperture neither with D3s or D800.

macsavageg4

Another possibility is it could be a firmware related issue. It is possible that the firmware updates for the machines had not been run. I know that some of the firmware updates that generally aren't installed on the out of the box machines (firmware wasn't around when they were made or hasn't made it to the production lines). Just an idea. Teching these machines is what I do for a living so if one person has the same machine (going by the assumption that they are both brand new and purchased after mid 2013 and the assumption that software updates have been installed) and everything is fine just fine and the other machine new out of the box with all software updates possibly not run. I am just gonna go with the possibility that it is either a bug in OS X or all the firmware/OS updates for the machine have not been run.

hlx

SD Card
I totally understand the SD card slot for image transfer. That's not the issue. I need tether shooting to work. i.e. shoot a frame and check focus, re-shoot immediately if there's any problem. It is different workflow than shoot everything and then transfer everything with SD card.

Preview
I also understand "Preview" is not "Image Capture" and not for tethering, it is just trouble shooting from the OS level, taking LR out of the equation. I didn't mean to use "Preview" for tether shooting. It was meant to test if the MBA could detect a device with image files. Sorry for the confusion.

Firmware
The D800 was updated with the latest firmware. The MAC OS was updated with the latest release. That was checked by Genius on the MBA and other MacBook Airs/MacBook pro.

Given someone of you do not have any issues with your new MBA, I may give it another try.

Killerbob

I checked it all out on my MBA/D800 combination. 1) images on the D800 are recognised in Image Capture, Aperture, LR, and any other SW package I have. 2) using Nikon Camera Control Pro I am tethered with the D800 just fine, and have LV. 3) I couldn't get tethering in LR to work...

JJ_SO

@hlx i know as well, Image capture is not for tethered shooting. But it's the first way to check, if camera, OS and Mac are working together.

Maybe you want to try a download of Capture One, just to check if it's, like I'm afraid of, a LR issue. But at the same time I could not tell, if the newest version Mac OS X and C1 will allow tethering. Phase One has a slightly better Mac Support than Adobe, it appears to me.

hlx

@Killerbob Your 3) is the problem I have. There is never any problem with the image files themselves. The problem is when the camera is plugged into the MBA USB 3.0 port (not SD card).

Nikon Camera Control Pro will probably work, but I don't really want to spend another $200 just for capture.

Anyhow, I will bring my camera and try another Apple Store.

hlx

Please note that I already have a MacBook Pro 2011 17". It works with my D800 with LR5 for tether shooting. I have done it many times in studio. No problem. It is just too heavy to carry on location. I bought the MBA thinking the combination should work (Mac OSX, D800 & LR5). Maybe it is a bad batch.

Ade

Hi hlx,

My MBA is of an older generation, but like you I tether extensively when in studio with my D800 (usually to an iMac via USB3, but sometimes to the MBA with USB2).

What I have noticed, if there is a memory card present in the D800, then when you connect it to the computer the tethering software will not report detecting the camera until it has read some information (metadata?) from each image in the memory card. This behavior is not documented anywhere, but it is true of both Lightroom and Nikon's Camera Control Pro, in my experience.

If there are a ton of images in the memory card -- e.g., when the memory card is almost full -- then this initial metadata read can take minutes (!) to complete. Until then, the tether software will remain in the "no camera detected" mode.

So it's pretty easy to think that the camera isn't detected, when in reality, the tethering software is in the process of loading a ton of data from the camera. If you leave the camera connected for several minutes, the tether software will eventually detect the camera (once the metadata download is completed.)

One way to know that this metadata download is happening is to look at the back of the camera. There is a small green LED by the "Info" button which lights up whenever data is being transferred to/from the memory cards. When you initially connect the camera to the tethering software, this small green LED will be on continuously until the download is complete. Then the camera will be "detected".

It could be, on the new gen MBA, this metadata download takes longer than on your MBP. (Or maybe it's another problem together.)

To be sure, when you test your D800 again with a new MBA, either take out all the memory cards from the camera (so there is no image metadata to download), or look for that tiny green LED to confirm that some sort of information transfer is happening.

As an aside, I prefer to use Nikon's Camera Control Pro together with LR. When shooting, I have both open at the same time. Camera Control Pro is controlling the tether, and LR automatically picks up all the images as I shoot. I find it works very well that way.

hlx

Thanks, Ade. I am aware of the memory card issue. When I do tether shooting, I remove the memory card. So my test included both with/without memory card in the camera.

I'll take a look at Nikon Camera Control again, but for $200, it seems over priced since I already have LR. However, it would be a good test if NCC works with the new MBA.

Ade

I believe you can download Camera Control Pro for free, it will work as a fully functional demo for 30-days, which should be more than enough time for testing.

Somewhat ironically, one nice thing about Camera Control is it allows the camera to save tethered images to both the memory card and send it to the PC at the same time. (So, that is one of the main reasons I always have my memory cards on the D800 while tethering). The camera's file naming/numbering scheme is also preserved (so images are named _DSCxxxxx instead of Img0001, etc.). With LR last time I tried I could not not accomplish either.