How to Tether Your Camera to an iPad with Capture One

I've spent a large part of my professional photography career working with tethered capture. In a controlled commercial environment, a laptop-based Capture One station can still make perfect sense. But there are plenty of shoots where carrying the laptop, stand, cables and supporting hardware simply adds more equipment than the job really needs.

An iPad sits somewhere between shooting completely untethered and working from a conventional computer tether station. You retain the freedom of a relatively lightweight setup while gaining a much larger viewing surface than the LCD on the back of your camera.

That larger display matters. It becomes easier to judge sharpness, expression, composition, styling, product position and distracting details before you move too far through the shoot.

It's particularly useful when you need:

• A larger screen for checking focus and composition while shooting.
• A lightweight alternative to carrying a laptop and full tether station.
• A screen that can be handed to or positioned near a client, stylist or collaborator.
• A portable capture workflow for location photography.
• A way to begin selecting or editing images before returning to the desktop.

It's easy to focus entirely on whether the camera will connect to the iPad. For a useful professional workflow, however, I think the more important question is what happens to the photographs after they arrive.

Capture One Mobile can form part of a larger Capture One workflow rather than existing as an isolated mobile application. That makes it possible to begin the job on location and continue it later when you're back at your main editing system.

Sessions can make sense for tethered work

For jobs built around a specific shoot, a Session-style workflow is particularly logical. It keeps that piece of work self-contained and makes the transition between capture, selection and later desktop editing easier to understand.

External storage changes the equation

Current versions of Capture One Mobile can work with compatible external storage, including working with Sessions or Catalogs stored externally and shooting tethered into external storage. For larger jobs, this can make an iPad workflow considerably more practical than treating the tablet's internal storage as the only destination.

If I'm working on a large commercial production where several people need to inspect images, a traditional Capture One workstation can still be the stronger solution. There is room for a large monitor, robust storage, detailed image comparison and a more permanent technical setup.

But photography isn't always like that.

On a smaller portrait shoot, product setup, personal project, location job or content production, an iPad can provide enough additional visibility to make tethering worthwhile without allowing the tether station to dominate the shoot.

It can also make client interaction easier. Instead of repeatedly showing someone the rear LCD or bringing them behind the camera, the iPad can become a dedicated viewing surface positioned somewhere useful.

The important part is choosing the simplest workflow that solves the problem in front of you. Sometimes that's a laptop. Sometimes it's an iPad. And sometimes the fastest workflow is still to shoot directly to the camera.