Wireless Tethering – Shoot Tethered… Wirelessly

I know it sounds like an oxymoron, however, this is one of the best examples of hack’n mod beating the cr*p out of store bought solutions.

Canberra Australia based photographer Jamie Carl, rigged together a great system that will wireless your USB setup (can you use wireless as a verb? not sure). This is so trivial that it just shouts, Why didn’t I do this before.

Jamie says this setup helped hum nail a difficult car-rigged setup where he did not know how fast the car will be going, and as a result did not know what shutter speed to use for good motion blur on the road, but no camera blur on the car. Using a wireless USB Carl was able to sit shotgun and adjust the settings on the go.

Nikon has a similar setup called WT-4A for about $750. Jamie made this project for about $200. (And it can get even cheaper).

The setup includes A Nikon D300 as camera, a Cables To Go TruLink Wireless USB Device Adapter ($132.69) as a wireless USB cable and an Asus EeePC 901 loaded with , Breeze System’s nkRemote for remote controlling the camera.

The Camera-end connects to the camera along with a battery pack using a hot shoe mounting bracket.

In his post, Jamie refereed to where he got the idea, a similar system made by Pete Tsai. Pete uses a different wireless USB solution which does not look as slick but uses a less expensive wireless USB set.

And for the Strobist shooters, here is a version that mounts on a pocket wizard.

Now, before you run and by those babies, Pete lists a few BUTs to be aware of (still pretty cool even with the BUTs):

• No MAC support
• In a weird way the cordless USB adapter requires a power outlet. Both Pete and Jamie has slick solutions that eliminates this need.
• It takes a bit of time to establish the initial connection with Nikon Capture.

Looking at the amazon store, it seems like the cheap USB dongles are out, if you know where to get them, share in the comments.

Links:

• Pete’s Wireless USB setup, Pete’s blog does not seem very active, but the archives have tons of great DIY projects very recommended.
• Jamie’s Wireless USB setup (and flickr)