Shooting with 2 computers linked together

gidz

• June 23, 2006 11:39

Hi I hope some one can help with this.

I am working with a photographer next week doing a look book shoot for a major clothes company next week where they have a really quick turn around on the images.
i.e. we shoot tehered, edit and process on the spot, they are then retouched straight away and posted live to the companys website so clients can view the finished look book pretty much as soon as we finish shooting.

The problem i have is this :-

we want to shoot tethered to a g5 so we can check the images. Then when we have finished a shot the client wants to be able to view the images on another g5 pretty much straight away so they can edit and process the files without slowing down the shoot. (1 computer will be used for retouching so we can't just swop computers after each shot and do it that way)

so basicly i want to link two computers together by firewire? so i can drag and drop files between them very quickly, maybe by some form of shared folder? Is this possible? and if so how do you set it up? can it be done through Capture 1 or is it a system/networking issue?

i realise we could restart 1 computer holding down T and drag the files across, but we can't really afford the time and disruption of constant restarts on one of the computers.

or we could use an external hard drive to transfer them, but again we have time issues with coping the files twice.

i hope someone out there can help.

thanks

Gideon

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  Cannon

  • June 23, 2006 12:57

  Networking the two computers over ethernet works pretty well. You can open the same session on both machines. I would use the first one just for shooting and process the files on the second machine. This way you don't have bandwidth problems while trying to shoot and transfer the files on the same connection.

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  gidz

  • June 23, 2006 13:14

  hiya thanks for the suggestion.
  
  just a couple of questions about this :-
  
  - is it pretty straight forward setting up a network?
  
  - so you mean that you don't actually transfer the raw files to the 2nd computer, you just select them on that computer and chose a location on its hard drive to put the processed images in?
  
  - what happens if you make changes on the second computer whilst shooting on the first? ie delete files, change wb etc.
  
  - also becuase c1 jumps to the last shot image, does this happen on the 2nd computer, or can you navigate through the session at will whilst shooting into the other computer?
  
  sorry if they are stupid questions but as i have not got 2 computers to try it on at this time i just want to be certain it will work ok when i have to set it up on the shoot day.
  
  thanks again
  
  Gideon

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  Cannon

  • June 23, 2006 16:29

  I've been playing around with opening the same session on two computers, and it doesn't seem to work as well in 3.7.4 as I remember in 3.7.3. The Thumbnails window doesn't automatically refresh and the settings don't seem to transfer properly. I think that I would still go for the ethernet network, but do all of the shooting editing and processing on the first computer. Then you could browse the Processed folder over the network on the second computer and save the retouched files to it. I played around with shooting while I was processing and it seemed to work all right. I was using a 20D which may be a lot lighter on the system than some other cameras or backs you may encounter.
  
  Setting up a network is not hard, but it's not something to be fumbling around with if while clients are standing over you. First go to the Network preferences panel in your system prefs and select Network Port Configurations from the Show drop down menu at the top. Make sure Built-in Ethernet is checked and is at the top of the list. Now go back to the Show menu, select Built-in Ethernet, and in the TCP/IP tab select configure using DHCP.
  
  Now go to the Sharing preference panel and in the Services tab check the Personal File Sharing box. Make sure to make the settings on both computers. Make a note of the Computer name in the Sharing tab. It comes up set to the account name that you are logged into, but you can change it to anything that makes sense to you.
  
  Next, on the second computer go to Connect to Server under the Go menu in the finder. If everyting is in alignment a connection pop-up window will show up, and you can connect to the other computer. After that you can access the first computer like any mounted drive.
  
  You might want to find a buddy with another Mac to test all this out before the shoot. Trying out new stuff in front of the client is pretty tough.

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