Tethering with Canon Cameras

We have been receiving some reports of problems tethering with Canon DSLRs, in particular when using Mac OS-X 10.7.x and OS-X 10.8.x operating systems.

In our efforts to find a workaround to this problem we have found the following guidance that was posted on the Phase One Capture One v7 User Forum by Paul Steunebrink. Paul is a Phase One Certified Professional and works with our Dutch friends at Eyes On Media in offering training and expertise on Capture One Pro software.

We reproduce Paul's article in full below and readily acknowledge his fantastic contribution!

We hope that in the near future the Canon SDK will be fully updated to support the new operating systems and workarounds such as this will no longer be necessary.

This is a description of a workaround for Canon shooters who have problems tethering to Capture One Pro 7.0 in combination with OS X Lion and Mountain Lion.

Status

Currently Canon has not yet released the needed software (SDK or Software Development Kit) to support both Lion (up to 10.7.5) and Mountain Lion (10.8.x). However, Canon's latest EOS Utility 2.12.x does support Lion and Mountain Lion for tethering. As soon as Canon releases the new SDK and Phase One builds it into CO7, this workaround becomes obsolete.

Solution/workaround

What I propose and explain in this post is how you get the best from Canon and put it into Capture One Pro 7. In plain English: copy the SDK in EOS Utility and place it into Capture One Pro 7.

Prerequisites

You need administrative privileges on your system (be an admin, not regular user).

Process

The process involves the following steps

1) download and install EOS Utility 2.12.0 (or later)

2) get the SDK from EOS Utility

3) replace the SDK in Capture One Pro 7.0 with the newer version from EOS Utility

The steps described below may seem complicated and overwhelming at first sight, but it is really easy to do.

Please note you should also update the firmware in your Canon camera to the latest version for full compatibility with the newer EOS Untility.

Step 1

Go to your localized Canon site and download and install EOS Utility 2.12.0 Updater (or later). If you do not have already EOS Utility installed on your computer, you only need to insert your Canon EOS Digital Solution disk in your CD/DVD drive for detection and the updater will install the software.

Step 2

In Finder, go to the EOS Utility program icon (Applications/Canon Utilities/EOS Utility). As you might know, this is a folder with subfolders.

Right-click on the application (do not start it up), select "Show Package Contents" (SPC).

The path to the SDK folder is:

EOS Utility (SPC) > Contents > Frameworks > EDSDK.framework > Versions > A

Copy the entire contents of folder A to a temporary location (Desktop for example). This should be 4 items.

Step 3

In Finder look up Capture One in the Applications folder.

Tip

Before we proceed, you might want to rename it, for example into "Capture One - Canon". This allows you to install a second and unaltered version of Capture One 7 in the Applications folder as a backup and fall back scenario. This also prevents you from accidentally overwriting the modified version when installing an update.

As with EOS Utility, do not start it but right-click in Finder on Capture One and select "Show Package Contents" (SPC). Now we drill into it until we find the SDK folder:

Capture One (SPC) > Contents > MacOS > CaptureCoreServer (SPC) > Contents > Frameworks < CaptureCore > Canon > ED-SDK > EDSDK.framework > Versions > A

Copy the 4 items from the A folder of EOS Utility to this Capture One A folder to replace 4 items with the same name.

Close the Finder window and start Capture One, connect your camera and shoot tethered.