Benefits of shooting tethered for food photography + tutorial

I always get a lot of questions about shooting tethered when I show behind the scenes videos of my photoshoots on social media, so thought it would be a good idea to dedicate a blog post to this topic!

But first...

What is tethering?

Shooting tethered is when you connect your camera to your computer via a cable and then run software specific to your camera manufacturer in order to see what your camera sees on a bigger screen. You can also control the camera settings from your computer and release the shutter.

Looking back, when I started shooting tethered I really noticed a huge improvement in the quality of my work.Using a tripod and planning my shoots in advance had already had a positive impact on my workflow and enabled me to practice new photography compositions and techniques.However, I feel that tethering lifted my work to another level for both personal and client projects - and it may well do the same for you!

Benefits of shooting tethered

There are lots of reasons why I think shooting tethered has helped me to improve my photography and quality of work. For me, the benefits of shooting tethered are:

• The ability to see your camera's live view on a bigger screen makes it easier to refine your composition in the moment
• The bigger live view is also handy when shooting on-location so clients can see/approve images in real-time
• The ability to use composition overlays in the live view means you can work with or practice a specific composition technique (e.g. rule of thirds, golden triangle)
• Being able to adjust camera settings and release the shutter from the computer allows you to shoot remotely and include yourself in the scene if you like
• Being able to import the images directly into Lightroom enable you to make quick edits during the shoot
• Taking fewer shots overall to get to the desired result because you can see and compose your scene more accurately
• A smoother and and more efficient workflow thanks to all of the above!

Another great thing about shooting tethered is that it's not expensive at all to get started!

I got my tether cable from Tether Tools for under £40 - their website will help you select the cable that is compatible with your camera and computer. You can get cheaper ones elsewhere, but TetherTools is the gold standard and I have rarely had any issues whilst shooting. The cable is also over four metres long, which is really helpful on set when changing scenes or working on-location for restaurants.

Tethering does tend to drain my camera batteries faster though, so I have four batteries that I cycle through and keep on charge throughout the shoot. My laptop is also always plugged in, otherwise it doesn't last long!

How to tether with Canon & EOS Utility: Tutorial

Let's take a look at a tutorial of how I shoot tethered so you can see my workflow!

I shoot with a Canon camera and a free software called EOS Utility, so this video focuses on this gear only. I also currently use Adobe Lightroom to edit my images, which is where the images that I shoot tethered are imported into.

I've heard great things about Capture One, but for now I've stuck with Lightroom as it works well for me and my budget! 

For Nikon users, I found this page on Nikon's website about tethering, and for Sony users I found this YouTube video.

This video is part of Module 1 of my online course, Hobbyist To Pro Food Photography For Beginners. I hope you enjoy it and find it helpful if you are new to or not familiar with tethering!

I hope you enjoyed this post about the benefits of shooting tethered and that the tutorial was helpful!

If you enjoyed the video, you could consider enrolling in Hobbyist To Pro, an online self-paced course designed for beginners in food photography.

With eight core modules that provide you with strong foundations of food photography, an ebook and bonus module about food styling for creating picture-perfect plates and a bonus module on turning your passion into profit, Hobbyist To Pro is a complete course perfect for anyone starting out in food photography.