Trying to Trigger DSLR

Dustin Ross

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Jul 27, 2022, 5:40:46 PM7/27/22

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Hey there, I'm new to QLab and I'm trying to trigger a DSLR camera to capture a still photo. Ideally I would use a Canon DSLR of some kind and have it tethered to the computer running QLab. The capture software could be EOS Utility unless there is a way within QLab to trigger the camera and download the image to a folder on the computer.

If anyone has any idea I would love to hear. Thanks!

micpool

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Jul 27, 2022, 7:55:27 PM7/27/22

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EOS Utility is not a scriptable app. I can't get UI scripting to work either. I can click at the shutter position, I can see some interaction with the button but can't actually do a shutter press and I can only do that by clicking at a universal screen position so it's not very practical. It's probably not worth bothering trying.

Luckily there is an app that will control a tethered Canon camera ( as long as it is in the supported list), which has a fully implemented AppleScript dictionary, that can control just about everything on the camera (and in the app).

At it's simplest this script will operate the shutter of the camera

tell application "Capture One 22"
set theCamera to camera of current document
capture
end tell

The shooting is really fast and the photo is available to QLab almost instantly.

I think only the pro version of Capture One supports instant pictures over tethering. This isn't cheap, but you can currently get 50 percent off a permanent license using the code JULYFLASH50. Or there is a free 30 day trial, or a monthly subscription.

Top Tip: You often need to take the SD cards out of the camera to get it to connect with Capture One.

Mic

micpool

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Jul 27, 2022, 8:09:45 PM7/27/22

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The other way of doing this if you don’t need flash or any other shutter features, is to put the camera into video mode and either use the clean hdmi out, or Canon Webcam Utility. You will have to either have a spare monitor to play the camera to and screenshot that monitor, using a screenshot shell script, or make a simple app in Max or vuo that can capture stills from the video stream.

Mic

On Wednesday, July 27, 2022 at 10:40:46 PM UTC+1 Dustin Ross wrote:

Dustin Ross

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Jul 28, 2022, 2:21:33 PM7/28/22

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Thank you Mic! So are you saying with Apple Script you can control all the functions of Capture One? Does that include the ability to capture an image and save it into a folder on the computer?

Thank you!

micpool

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Jul 28, 2022, 2:27:24 PM7/28/22

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Yes you can control just about everything in Capture One with AppleScript. (Dictionary attached) When it captures an image it automatically gets saved in to a folder.