Tether your camera with CamRanger

I've been a fan of tethering my camera so that I can see (with my old eyes) in a larger format what my images look like.

I've tried the traditional cable tether, connecting the camera and laptop with a USB cable. I tried the Canon software, Lightroom and others. Ugh. It's somewhat slow and since I'm clumsy I've feared damaging either the laptop or the camera tripping over the cable. It works ok in my somewhat small studio but it's just too much gear to haul around on a remote shoot.

So my search then took me to the EyeFi card. This is an SDHC card that you put in your camera to send your images to your phone or tablet. When it works it works very well. But it drops the wifi connection to the iPad/iPhone I'm using with great regularity. Which means I have to stop shooting to reset the connect so that the client and I can see the images. It's not exactly fast either and it stores the images on your device, so then you have to go back and clean them all up. More ugh. The Eye-Fi card works well for me when I am just wanting to get images to social media quickly, but not for tethered shooting. So the search continued.

I then had a photographer, Jay P Morgan (The Slanted Lens), suggest a product called "CamRanger" to me. Let me tell you....my search is over. CamRanger is the best wireless tethering on the market and a whole lot more. Here is the description from their website (or click on the provided links): CamRanger is a stand-alone device that connects to select Canon or Nikon DLSR cameras with a provided USB cable. It creates its own WiFi network that your device (iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Android, or Mac or Windows computer) can then connect to. The free CamRanger app then enables control of the camera. There is no need for a computer or existing Internet connection.

I have tested this in the studio and on location. At this time I have not had 1 lost wifi connection, I can control the camera from my iPhone and display the images on my iPad at the same time. The file transfer is the fastest I have tested so far, by a wide margin. Plus I control which images get saved to my device, so I don't have to clean up hundreds of unwanted images! I have not tried the movie or intervalometer features yet but have I have no doubt they will be rock steady too.

I've used the CamRanger with my Canon 5D Mark III and with my old pal the Canon 40D, works flawlessly with all my cameras. Here are some images from a recent product shoot,

Viewing the images on my iPad: