When I ran my workshop the other week, I wanted to tether but I had just ended my CaptureOne and decided to use Lightroom instead. If you’ve read that blog you’ll know it just straight up didn’t work. Today I gave myself some time to play around and see if I could sort the tethering issue.

In short, I couldn’t get Lightroom to detect either my Fujifilm XH1 or XH2 at all! Updates, setting changes, soft and hard resets, you name it I tried it! (Probably). My cameras were definitely connected to the laptop as they appeared in my storage locations and hardware settings. The cameras also showed the connectivity icons too. 

My options were either Lightroom is just being an ass or it was my cables. The cables worked elsewhere and I have 2 of them that are both near brand-new Tethertools cables. The odds of both of them being bad are pretty slim. I gave Google a quick search and there’s actually a Tethertools signal booster you can buy that MAY apparently fix the issue of signal drops. I knew mine wasn’t a signal problem, but I also wasn’t going to buy a £50 booster to go with my 2 £50 cables and hope it just works. But basically, Lightroom would just sit trying to detect a camera until I gave up.

I then downloaded Fujifilms own software called Fujifilm X Acquire. The programme downloaded and installed. That’s all it did. It just sat on my screen as it watched me trying to run it. Right-click and run as administrator, tried that too. Uninstall, deleted and retry? Done it. Just a blank stare as NOTHING HAPPENED.  Because why would you even want it to run, let alone use it?! 

I considered CaptureOne again as that just worked before for half a shoot. It did freeze and need to be restarted, but it had been the reliable option in comparison. But as I said earlier, I didn’t want to start another license with them.

I had listened to Joe Edelman’s show “The Last Frame” a few weeks ago and he had gone over a tether software I hadn’t heard of called “Smart Shooter 5”, from none other than Tethertools, which also gives a 30-day trial. None of this blog is sponsored or endorsed by the way, but my first impressions were super positive. So much so that I think I’ll be purchasing it. The software is essentially just tethering software and not an editor, so there’s nothing like CaptureOne where you can adjust colour, exposure etc. However, it instantly recognised both cameras plugged into it, and in my brief testing files transferred in around 1 second each! Even the bigger files from my XH2 transferred fast! I have a shoot I’ll tether next week so I’ll be able to give a more in-depth and accurate opinion based on real-world experience. 

As an initial first look though, Smart Shooter 5 has really impressed me! Being able to recognise my Fujifilm XH1 and XH2 was impressive compared to Lightroom. But the speed it did so too, and tethering transfer speeds have me excited that I may have found the tethering software that’ll make me shoot tethered every studio shoot.