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Lost FW connections on macintel Mac Book Pro

Jann Lipka
I have been shooting P 45 tethered alongside a customer yestarday
to my new 2,16 Gig MAc .

I bought the fastest machine with 7200 drive and 2 Gig RAM .

The good side is speed .

The bad side is every 10-20 pictures taken I get a Dialog Box loop
with error message .

Unfortunately that is a plague outweighing the speed increase .

I get several types of lost connection dialogs .

I have to disconnect the camera to make C1 to quit ( which feels like a bug )
otherwise I get an endless dialog like this that I click OK on 100000 times .

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pictu ... l4j6Z1QAyS

and

http://www.pixentral.com/show.php?pictu ... T88wTT95X1

I have to restart everything to regaing shooting ability .
My customers face looked longish after a while ☹️(

Anyone found this issue and some solution ?
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Comments

18 comments

Date Votes
  • olo1
    Hi Jann,

    how old is your firewire cable?
    I ususally have to renew it after 6 months, due to the fact that people step on it, assistants bend it too much 🙄 and so on...

    I got exactly the same error messages and luckily could trace it down to the firewire cable...

    Hope that helps

    cheers Nicolas
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  • Jann Lipka
    OK
    That faulty cable could be a reason .
    I'll check it .
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  • studio78
    Hello, I have read that the new Macbook Pro firewire port is somehow underpowered and prone to this kind of failure when shooting tethered. So if your cable is fine you might want to check into this. Your feedback is appreciated as I'm sure there's a 17\" MBP with my name on it out there but I need to know the firewire will work.

    Best regards,
    Dave Robertson
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  • Jann Lipka
    Unfortunately I will not be able to check this for a while ,
    I'm going to Tokyo for a week so P45 have to wait .
    Basically I think MBPro buy was a good thing because of much improved speed .
    I 'll check if setting my P45 back to get power from the camera battery
    would improve my results .
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  • Ulf Liljegren
    The firewire ports on the MacBook Pro's work fine but they are under powered, allegedly due to the built-in iSight.
    So with P45, 30 and 21 you have to set the back to use battery power and have a battery plugged in to the back.
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  • studio78
    Hi Ulf, quick question, do you not agree that this situation is retrograde and unnecessary? I'm just surprised there's not more objection from users who have to modify their workflows and not for the better to get around this. Getting feedback from Apple on this is futile.

    Thanks,
    Dave Robertson
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  • Jann Lipka
    What would be interesting is to clarify if Apple make powering MBP FW port
    under some standarized specifications , or is the back expecting \" better\" than that specs .
    Anyway powering back from batteries is an option that I hope will work .
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  • Olivier111
    Hi Jann,

    I have the exact same MacBook Pro and P45... I also have the same Annoying problem...

    I knew that the PowerBook had the FW power issue but I did not know that they screwed up on the MacBook Pro as well.

    The thing that annoys me the most with Apple and FireWire, is that they were the major player in the FW Dev. Process (they set the SPEC...) and now they don't respect it...

    Does anyone know if a FW to USB2 cable ( exist with the proper FW connector and if it would work.
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  • Olivier111
    I just want to add that there is a lot of LOST DATA retransmission...when shooting..

    Is this also due to the FW issue?
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  • Jann Lipka
    Quick update from todays shoot -
    I have changed to a new 4,5 m cable and have not seen any issues today .

    It is still a bit early to say if those are gone though , because it was just a
    small session ( about 50 captures ) but not a single missbehaviour this time,
    so maybe it was after all just a cable thing as suggested here .
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  • Jann Lipka
    Unfortunately , lost FW connection problems came back yestarday ( with the new
    heavy duty cable ) .
    I could go on shooting when switched to Battery power ...
    Weird, that some lucky day it worked fine .
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  • Jann Lipka
    New problems on tethered shoot today , despite battery powered back and new cable.
    Endless restarts and headache .
    Several different error messgaes .

    Gave up on shooting untethered, LCd display is much worse ( and showing completely off color pixelated image ) then on my cellphone.

    My customer is making jokes showing me his Canon Ixus with 3 inch clear display ..

    I'm trying to tell ipmress him with the price of my P45 back ☹️
    Good night .
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  • abalian
    Jann,

    I highly recommend using a Firewire Repeater between your P45 and your computer. The firewire repeater is a self-powered \"hub\" that provides more power to your port. You have to remember that a single cable is powering your heavy-duty digital back as well as transferring huge amounts of data. Why not help the cause by adding a nice sub-$100 firewire repeater in the mix?

    We use this firewire repeater from Unibrain.com and it's great:
    http://www.unibrain.com/Products/p1394/FR400.htm

    Sincerely,

    Alan Balian
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  • keatsong
    Hi Jann,
    IM facing a same problem like u since end of april, im trying a lot of way to solve the problem, but negative. finally i ask APPLE to change my fire wire port (together with mother board) yesterday. now im using it 2 days already with abt 200 capture, still nothing happen. thx god.....but im not sure its really work or not. i will keep using it till i confident, will let u know again. anyway, b4 this, i never success to shoot over 100 capture without the error happen.

    regards

    keat song
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  • Hans de Kort
    No problems with my Canon 1DsmarkII shooting tethered on my MacbookPro
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  • Olivier111
    I shoot with the 20'' Intel iMac (2GB RAM and 256MB vid. card) and I have lots of FW issue.

    Last night I found \"Spotless\" a shareware made to enable/disable Spotlight.

    I disabled it and the FW error came only twice during a photoshot today.

    I have another shot tomorrow, I hope it will work just as fine...
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  • Jann Lipka
    I have been Shooting All day with 1 DS - what pleasure !
    Considering also nice speed .

    Not even one crash .

    P45 - troubles. ( better speed then before my MBP though )
    5 D - No go .
    Sometimes you wonder what do they test the software with ..
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  • Olivier111
    I've finally overcome my FW issue.

    I simply connect the P45 to a powered USB2/FW hub and it works just fine...

    I used this setup on a Macbook Pro and an intel iMac... Simple and it works...

    I paid about 60$ can.

    I've implemented this setup 3 shoot ago and it worked flawlessly for about 1800 picts...
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