Monitor mode?

[sandiegojoey]

The other day I was making my first attempt at portrait photography with my D80

and two flash slaves (sb-800 and sb-600). I lucked out and for the most part

my shots came out pretty good. One problem I have is that although the LCD on

the back of the camera is great, I'd love to plug my camera into a laptop when

shooting portraits and get a larger, more detailed view of my shot.

 

Is there such a thing as a "monitor" mode or interface on my camera?

 

Thank you,

Joey

[ellis_vener_photography]

You can dothis with two programs that I know of:Adobe Lightroom and Capture One Pro.

Lightroom is free while it is in beta and works with jpeg, tiff or raw foramts. basically you

connect your camera to your computer and have it download to a folder on your desktop and

have that folder open in Lightroom.

[mawz]

You can get Nikon Camera Control Pro to shoot tethered, which will allow this. You'll want to check the docs first to ensure the D80 is supported though.

[Matt Laur]

Here's another cheap-and-sleazy approach. Assuming that 1) You're shooting JPGs, 2) You're on a Windows XP (or later) machine, you can plug your camera into a USB port and have its file system show up as a folder on your desktop. Choose to display that as thumbnails. As you shoot, new thumbnails will appear in that folder. You're a mouseclick from seeing them full-screen. Remember, though, that MS's preview (which actually works pretty well) is going to take some liberties with color and contrast, trying to make it look nice. I've used this technique when shooting while tethered to someone else's machine, and it's nice to know you have an option that uses only what comes with the operating system. But if you're in RAW, you've got to get another application involved.

[frank_skomial]

Lowest quality solution, but instantenous, would be to use direct video output from you camera, ( perhaps appropriate video output cable came with your camera ?), to an ordinary TV with video input socket. You can see it in NTSC or PAL standard, depending on your TV standard.

[aaron l]

If you can tollerate the teather, just use the video out in NTSC mode to a TV. It doesn't look great but it's way bigger than your LCD. The computer is a better but more involved option.

[digidave2]

Matt Laur Photo.net Patron, jan 12, 2007; 09:12 a.m.

Here's another cheap-and-sleazy approach. Assuming that 1) You're shooting JPGs, 2) You're on a Windows XP (or later) machine, you can plug your camera into a USB port and have its file system show up as a folder on your desktop. Choose to display that as thumbnails. As you shoot, new thumbnails will appear in that folder. You're a mouseclick from seeing them full-screen. Remember, though, that MS's preview (which actually works pretty well) is going to take some liberties with color and contrast, trying to make it look nice. I've used this technique when shooting while tethered to someone else's machine, and it's nice to know you have an option that uses only what comes with the operating system. But if you're in RAW, you've got to get another application involved.

 

Microsoft has a Raw Thumbnail & Image Viewer that you can get here.

 

[link]http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=D48E808E-B10D-4CE4-A141-5866FD4A3286&displaylang=en[\link]

[Matt Laur]

David F: great link! Can't believe I didn't know about that tool from MS. As usual, I seem to know a wierd mix of a little about a whole lot of things, and a whole lot about - usually - the <i>wrong</i> things. Thanks.

[skellener]

Nikon Camera Control Pro 1.0.0 Full Version/Trial - Macintosh

 

http://tinyurl.com/rhsje

 

Supported cameras D1-series, D2-series, D100 (with firmware 2.0), D200, D70S, D70, D50

 

Looks like you need the newest verion with th D80

> v1.1.0 is available on the CD-ROM shipped with the D80.