Saving images straight to hard drive

December 30, 2009 4:53 PM

I have a Nikon D5000 - how do I shoot straight to hard drive?

I'll be covering some major events next week which will require me getting pictures straight to our website ASAP. I'd like to keep my Nikon plugged into my laptop, shoot images, and have them appear immediately or get them straight away into iPhoto or ViewNX/Nikon Transfer.

Can anyone help me with that set up? I've tried plugging my camera in and taking snapshots, but images won't get saved onto the memory card if the USB cable is plugged in. Is there any way to shoot and have it saved on my computer instead?

Thanks.

posted by consilience to Technology (6 answers total)

Have you considered using an EyeFi ?
posted by iamabot at 4:55 PM on December 30, 2009

Response by poster: I'm not completely familiar with EyeFi memory cards. Will I be able to use my computer's Wi-Fi for data if I'm also making transfers via EyeFi?
posted by consilience at 5:00 PM on December 30, 2009

I'm not too up-to-date on the Nikon software, but search for "tethered shooting" - that's the name of what you want to do.
posted by jedrek at 5:02 PM on December 30, 2009

Response by poster: Thanks jedrek. Through that search, I was able to find Camera Control Pro 2. And they have a 30-day trial so I can get my work done and not have to buy it straight away! I do get the feeling I'll end up buying eventually as I do these types of events quite often.

Thanks again, everyone. I may also consider one of those EyeFi cards as a handy backup.
posted by consilience at 5:05 PM on December 30, 2009

I believe Scott Kelby has a blog post (or maybe an episode of DTown) where he goes over this. I believe you can do it with Lightroom.
posted by dave*p at 7:54 PM on December 30, 2009

Have you taken a look at the Image Capture app included on the Mac? I'm not near my camera (same one as yours) right now, but when I have it plugged in with Image Capture running, one of the options is to control the camera through the app.

I know that's not exactly what you're looking to do and I'm sorry I can't be more specific at the moment, but it's definitely worth taking a look at.
posted by veggieboy at 9:55 PM on December 30, 2009