Recently, a lot of people have complained in internet forum about the last version of Lightroom (3.4.1 when I am writing this article) not working anymore in tethered mode with OS X Lion.

The tethered mode is really useful when you are doing a portrait photos session. It allows you (by connecting your camera to your computer using an USB cable) to directly transfer the photo from your camera to Lightroom. Then, you can directly see on your “big” computer screen (compared to the back LCD of your camera) the photo you have just taken. You can also apply modifications on your picture in Lightroom (like converting the picture in black and white, changing a curve or changing the white balance) and apply the same modification to all the pictures you will take after that.

A lot of words to only say that tethered mode is essential to a lot of photographers.

Reading all these alarming messages on internet forums about the tethered mode being broken, I had to test it myself. I had a portrait photos session planned so I had to be sure to be able to use the tethered mode.

Before using OS X Lion, everything was working perfectly. You had to start a tethered session, connect your camera to your computer with an USB cable then start your camera. Your camera was recognized and you were ready for a long photos session.

Apparently, Apple has changed the way they are handling USB connections in OS X Lion. They are shutting down the USB connection after a while when there is no activity on the USB port: Lightroom is not recognizing your camera anymore. I have also notices that you have to execute a lit of steps in a specific order.

Here is what you have to do:

1. Connect your camera to your computer (I am using a Nikon D700 and I am not sure that it will work with another camera… I am also not sure it will work with YOUR Nikon D700)
2. Start a tethered session in Lightroom
3. Your camera is recognized and you can start to take photos.

If you are not taking photos for a long time, your camera could stop being recognized by Lightroom. Here is what you have to do:

1. Stop your tethered session in Lightroom
2. Turn off your camera
3. Turn on your camera
4. Start a new tethered session in Lightroom

It is frustrating to have to do all these steps, but apparently Adobe is working on a bug fix for the next Lightroom release.

During my last photos session, this happened only once during a two hours photos session. So, it was not a big pain.

I hope that this article will help you to use your camera (at least your Nikon D700) with Lightroom in tethered mode again. Tell me if you had any success!

Google has just launched the Google Art Project.

You will discover several paintings from a lot of museums in the world. You can virtually visit (as in Google Street) the museums and see high res photos of the paintings. Historical notes are available for all these paintings.

Walk through these museums and get inspired by the lighting techniques of these paintings. The Rambrandt portrait lighting style is well known by photographers. Rediscover the original lighting technique in this small selection of Rambrandt’s portraits..

Stroll, get inspired then create your own style!

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It could seem difficult de take a group photo.

Of course, you can always use the “school group photo” method et align everybody in two or three rows. The shorter guys in the first row (or seated), then several rows from shorter to taller. The last row of people could even stand on a bench.

As I do not like a lot this way of doing, I will advice you to take your photo from an high place. It will help to have a better point of view and you’ll be able to create a more creative alignment of the guys you are shooting.

If you are shooting a medium size group of people, you can align them and use a wide angle lens. Of course, do not create a strait line shape. It is better to have a shape that is like a M. Place on the center of the M (at the angle) the guy who is the most “important of the group”.

To take your photo from an high place, you could go on a balcony if you are taking your photo inside a building, or simply use a stepladder if your are shooting outside.

Place people regarding the shape you have choose, then use your wide angle lens to take your photo.

If you have a large group of people in front of you, be sure to have a light source that is coming from an high place (or you could reflect your light on a white roof) then place your group of people like a “rugby pack”, people should be shoulders against shoulders, in several tight rows, and you should not be able to see the ground. Then ask them to look at you.

Like for any portrait shoot, it is important to have people looking at you and having their eyes sharp.

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If you have already used Lightroom on Microsoft Windows, you know that you can change the default languages in the preferences panel.

On Mac OS X, you cannot do it, I do not know why… On Mac OS X, Lightroom is using the operating system language as default language. As I have a French Mac OS X installed on my computer, Lightroom is using the French language as default language.

Unfortunately, I am used to work in English with my photography related softwares. I see several advantages doing this: you can find more information on the web in English, keyboard shortcuts sometime are related to the default language (fortunately, Lightroom is not doing that), and a lot of time English words are shorter than French words and that allows to gain some space on your screen

Here is what you have to do to change the default language in Lightroom :

• Open your Applications folder
• Right-Click on Lightroom (or Ctrl-Click) then select «Show Package Contents»
• Open «Contents/Resources»
• Several folders contain available languages. They have all the «.lproj» extension. Lightroom will use the default language of your system (for me, it will use «fr.lproj») then the English language.
• To use the English language, you have to «hide» the Erench language to Lightroom. To achieve this, rename «fr.lproj» to «fr.lproj.nouse» for example.

There is another path to reach the same goal. Each language folder contains a «TranslatedStrings.txt» file: it contains all sentences used by Lightroom in the targeted language. So you have to copy the «TranslatedStrings.txt» file of the targeted language to your OS X default language folder. For me, if I want to use Lightroom in Japanese language, I have to copy the «TranslatedStrings.txt» of the «ja.lproj» to the «fr.lproj» folder (I would have backed up the «TranslatedStrings.txt» file in the «fr.lproj» before to be able to go back to French language afterward).

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Being away from home this week, I’ll make a brief but useful article.

When you take photos with flash, consider increasing the ISO of your camera! Use the ISO value at which your camera takes pictures where the noise is not visible for printing.

For example, on the D700, I regularly take photos with flash at ISO 800. Compared with the nominal ISO of the camera (200), I gain two stops (200 – 400 – 800). By gaining two stops, I am using four times less flash power to take the same photo (200 -> 400, two times less power, 200 -> 800, four times less power). So I can take four times more photos with the same set of batteries.

So always remember to use a higher ISO when you are taking photos with flash, you can take more photos before changing batteries!