Ultralight Tethering with Kuuvik Capture

February 27, 2022 by

With the release of Kuuvik Capture for iPad, a decade-old dream started to unfold: enjoying all the benefits of tethered shooting out in the field without the burden of carrying around a notebook.

Once the very first beta of the app was ready, a quest for the optimal iPad size and a lightweight mounting solution had begun. It took several weeks of research to arrive at a solution that I’m using for the last year.

My Cambo Actus digital view camera with the Canon EOS R5 acting as the recording medium controlled by Kuuvik Capture running on an iPad Air 4. The image shows one of the app’s unique features: multi-point simultaneous live view.

The iPad had to have a USB-C port and large enough screen while keeping the weight down. Quite early during the development we’ve realized that the sweet spot is the ~11″ size. At the end I chose the Air 4 as it weighs a little less than the Pro, costs less, and for a dedicated tethering controller the Pro doesn’t provide anything worthwhile over it.

Storage-wise 64GB is plenty for me, especially since I don’t have to shoot a myriad of images to compensate for possible errors. With Kuuvik Capture I only keep the perfect ones. 64GB also turned out to be more than enough for a 5-hour Perseid shooting session, where I shot a ton of long exposure images.

Mounting the iPad was a headache, though. Generally I’m not happy with buying stuff made by Chinese copycats, but it turned out that nobody else makes any competent iPad holder… So I ended up getting a Sunwayfoto PC-01 tablet bracket.

Attaching the iPad bracket to the tripod was an easier job to accomplish with products from reputable European and US manufacturers: my choices being the Manfrotto 386B-1 nano clamp and RRS’ BC-18 micro ball head.

You can see the completed mounting solution below.

The lightweight mounting solution.

The torque the whole iPad assembly exerts on the ball head’s screw is significant, and could easily loosen it from the Manfrotto clamp. So a drop of Vibra-Tite Blue 121 or Loctite Blue 242 removable threadlocker is highly recommended to avoid issues down the road.

You don’t want your iPad to land on a sharp rock after all…

Another possible source of inconvenient moments is the nano clamp itself. If you don’t tighten it enough. Or if it breaks… iPad meets a sharp rock situation again.

To mitigate this risk, I’m using a simple security tether between the tripod and the iPad bracket.

Security tether.

It is just a Think Tank Red Whip and a small carabiner.

Speaking of tethers, I have to talk about the cables that connect the iPad with my cameras. In plural, since I’m using a 5DS R and a R5 for tethered shooting, both having different USB connectors.

We learned through the years of supporting camera connectivity apps that you should avoid cheap Chinese junk cables and adapters. They are unreliable and most of the time do not work at all. We maintain a list of certified cables and adapters, and can’t stress enough the importance of high quality cabling.

With the R5 I’m using the cable that was included in the box, and with the 5DS R Cable Matter’s 1m long USB-C to Micro B 3.1 cable is my preferred choice.

Why not Wi-Fi? Well, Canon’s Wi-Fi connectivity implementation is a pain to use and is significantly slower than USB. Not to mention that I prefer not to be surrounded by Wi-Fi smog while enjoying nature.

The whole mount packs relatively flat, which I can slip into an outer pocket of my backpack or shooting vest. Even the iPad fits easily into a side pocket of my old Domke vest.

iPad holder and mount packed flat.

How light it is?

The holder and the mount (as shown above) plus the security tether weighs 357 grams. Add 458g for the iPad Air 4 and 83g for the two cables. 898g in total. Not bad for a pro-level tethering solution.

You may have noticed, but I’d like to mention it explicitly: with Kuuvik Capture you don’t need additional boxes, batteries, etc. Just the iPad and a USB cable. Or the camera’s built-in Wi-Fi in case wireless floats your boat.

I’m really happy with this solution, which perfectly augments the app’s ease of use.

Honestly, I feel like I’m cheating when shooting with this rig. It’s so easy to accomplish previously complex tasks, such as obtaining perfect focus with high-megapixel cameras or exposure evaluation. Not to mention the sheer joy of seeing just-captured images on a large screen.

  ☕ ☕ ☕

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Filed Under: My Apps, Photo Equipment, Photo Software Tagged With: , , , , ,

Canon EOS R3 is Supported in ShutterCount and Kuuvik Capture

February 26, 2022 by

I’ve been silent on this site for the last ten months. Suing Apple, developing exciting new features (that were released but I haven’t posted about), stealing a few hours for my knife hobby, and actually making some great images were what I spent most of my time on. Now I’m back, with some cool news to share.

Canon CPS was finally able to deliver our rental R3 (pretty much first in the country), so we did add support for the camera both in ShutterCount and Kuuvik Capture.

I haven’t purchased one for myself as I didn’t see any compelling reason to do so. This feeling was reinforced during the rental as I tried the camera for actual bird photography. I’m not going to replace my trusty 1D-X Mark III (or any DSLR for that matter) with the R3. But that is another story…

The camera’s firmware has a lot in common with the R5, R6 and 1D-X Mark III – including bugs and dumb solutions. So in Kuuvik Capture we had to apply the usual set of workarounds to shield you from the crap. For example our depth-of-field preview handling technique (disabling it when you move around in magnified live view, but restoring it automatically when you move to a marker) also applies here.

Note that you will have to upgrade your R3’s firmware to 1.1.1 or later to be able to use it with the app.

ShutterCount‘s support for the camera had also been elevated from basic to complete. The mechanical-only counter is now the default to be in sync with what you see in the camera’s menu, but the app also shows the electronic counter on the Distribution Chart. All extra features – like shutter life prediction, outdated firmware warning and the Network Connection Cheat Sheet in the Wizard – are available for the R3 as well.

Kuuvik Capture 5.9 and ShutterCount 5.1 are available for your Mac and mobile device in the respective App Store. These updates are free for existing customers.

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Kuuvik Capture 5.6 : Memory Card Import

April 18, 2021 by

The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted “import” related stuff on the screen shots of my previous post. Yes, Kuuvik Capture 5.6 brings memory card import to the table. In fact, you can import folders and file from whatever source you like, but memory cards get a special treatment.

Actually this is a feature I made for myself. I prefer to cull the thousands of images from my bird shoots in Kuuvik Capture for its sheer speed, but bringing the images into the app was quite a bit of pain: download the files manually and run a script in Terminal to rename them before Kuuvik Capture is opened.

With the import feature you can download the images right into your open session. And the filename template is used, so you’ll have all the files named properly without any further intervention.

My Card Reader Setup

I’m using multiple cameras, and end up having images on both CompactFlash and CFexpress cards 99% of the time. So it’s important to me that the new import feature can import multiple cards in one go.

Personally I’m using ProGrade Digital readers (Thunderbolt 3 for CFexpress cards) and Apple’s Thunderbolt 3 cables to connect them to the right side Thunderbolt 3 ports of my 15″ MacBook Pro, as depicted above. These cables also work as USB3, and having two identical cables prevent the need to always check which one should go where.

Note that I’m illustrating the import feature with multiple cards. If you are importing a single card, then obviously you’ll select that single card only. All other aspects are the same.

To begin, open or create a session where you want your images to be placed. Then bring up the import panel by clicking Import Images… in the File menu (or press Ctrl+Command+I).

Selecting Multiple Cards for Import

The trick to import multiple cards is to select all of them under your “computer” location, which can be found at multiple places: on the Locations section of the sidebar, and on the drop down list at the top of the panel (mine is named triton on the screen shot above). If you formatted the cards in-camera (which I always highly recommend), then they will be named EOS_DIGITAL. Once all the cards are selected, just click Import.

Cards are imported one after another – not in parallel. If you have the Image Browser visible, you’ll see the new images popping into the session.

What if you just want to import a few images selectively? Go into the actual image folder on your card and select the desired files before clicking Import.

Now there’s another thing that’s a royal PITA when importing cards: ejecting them. Unless properly ejected, the card’s contents can be corrupted as you might pull it when a write operation is still in progress. To help with this, we have a new option called Eject memory cards after successful import on the session preferences page. This is off by default, but when activated, memory card from which you have imported images will be automatically ejected. This applies to whole card imports, or even if you imported just a handful of images. Cards will not be ejected if an error occurs during the import.

And that’s it. This feature already saved me tremendous amount of time, and I strongly think you’ll have the same experience.

Importing is only available in the Mac version of Kuuvik Capture.

The v5.6 update is free for existing Kuuvik Capture 5 users. We also offer an upgrade from 2.x-4.x to version 5. New users can buy the app in the respective App Store. Don’t forget that the Mac and iPad versions are sold together – buy any of them and you’ll get the other for free!

Filed Under: My Apps, Photo Software Tagged With: , , , ,

Kuuvik Capture 5.6 : The Filename Template

April 16, 2021 by

I’m using the same image file naming scheme for more than a decade, and always wanted Kuuvik Capture to generate file names fitting into this scheme automatically, avoiding a later renaming step. Finally I was able to allocate some time to make it happen: version 5.6 allows you to name captured files according to your liking.

This feature is off by default, you can activate it by turning the Name image files using template session preference on.

Kuuvik Capture 5.6 Session Preferences

The first time you click on the check box the app will bring up the template editor to actually set a template – which can be later modified by clicking the Edit… button.

The template is a simple text field where you can use tokens to insert different snippets of information. For example %Y will be replaced by the 4-digit year of the image’s date. We opted for this approach instead of a graphical drag & drop one so that you can copy and paste the template easily for backup purposes or for sending it to somebody else.

As you can see on the screen shot below, there are quite a few tokens to choose form.

The Filename Template Editor

Most tokens extract information from the image file (date, time and metadata tokens fall into this category). It is important to note that date/time tokens use the date/time in the image and not the Mac’s clock. Month and day names, as well as the AM/PM indicator, use names according to the current language setting of your Mac.

I recommend you to experiment with the different tokens, and watch in the Preview field what kind of filenames your template is going to produce. The preview uses the current date/time and metadata from a hypothetical 5DS R image, so you’ll always see the same metadata field contents there.

To avoid collisions, you want to create a template that generates unique names. Besides using a time with sub-second accuracy, you have two counter fields to ensure this. One of them is the last 4 digits of the original filename that the camera generated, and the other is a 4 digit capture counter.

The capture counter starts from the number of images already in the currently open session, and is incremented with each capture. Note that shooting RAW+JPG pairs count as a single image.

Should you need to change the counter, simply use the Set Capture Counter… command in the File menu, or press Ctrl+Command+C.

The capture counter will wrap over from 9999 to 0000, in a similar fashion to the 4 digit suffix does in camera generated names.

Differences on iPad

On iPad you have the exact same functionality, but can be accessed a bit differently: all template-related settings can be manipulated from the File Naming page that opens from the Session tab of the menu.

File Naming Settings on iPad

In the template editor the iPad keyboard is also extended with function keys to be able to easily enter special characters, like the percent sign or the underscore.

Availability

The update is free for existing Kuuvik Capture 5 users. We also offer an upgrade from 2.x-4.x to version 5. New users can buy the app in the respective App Store. Don’t forget that the Mac and iPad versions are sold together – buy any of them and you’ll get the other for free!

Filed Under: My Apps, Photo Software Tagged With: , , , , , ,
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