Tethering for the Kx

Home made tethering program for the Kx
https://sites.google.com/a/pentax.org.pl/tomaszkos/en

Even though I haven't got a K-x it's nice to see someone
try this.

K-7/K-r/K-5 support coming soon.

Yet people have been told by Pentax that it is impossible to tether the K-7 due to hardware limitations.

An Eye-Fi card is a better option anyway.... no need for
any leads.

An Eye-Fi card is only good for file transfer, nothing else.

I am never likely to use tethering but I would imagine it would be very useful to some people and find it incredible that Pentax didn't think it necessary on the K-7 or K-5 which are supposedly enthusiast/semi-pro cameras.

Spoke to one of Pentax representatives at a photography fair a Sunday and it seems quite likely that the tethering program for the 645D will also supported the K5, i didn't asked about the other camera's.

You can't control the camera from your computer with an Eye-Fi card, so if he does manage to get this working well, it's big news.

So would that mean that I can get GPS data in to my EXIF file for pictures taken with my K5?
(I hopefully can order tomorrow from SRS, if the cheque has cleared ).
Next day delivery may not be an option this time round due to the weather condition

Nope this is something else.

With this you can connect your camera to the computer and use your computer to controll the camera.

I see, that would be an interesting one for Macro photography. Thanks for that

Only if you take your laptop with you on hikes
It's mostly used in the studio, think about making photos of products and such.
I don't think it's very useful for portrait but that's me though.

The Eye-fi card will do 99% of what you want from tethering
and there's no leads to fall over

It will also send a copy to someone else over the net for comments
before you finish the shoot.

If your using it in the studio you won't be controlling much anyway
Your flash will probably be at 1/180th and you won't change it.
If your handholding the camera you have to carefully put it down
change the aperture etc. on the computer... pick up the camera
again.... much easier to just change on the camera anyway.
The camera can be fired from 100m away with a wireless remote.

If your just taking the shots to show someone else a WiFi card
does that and you can be 5 - 10M away from the computer.
They don't even have to be in the studio, which is handy
if there isn't much room.

I use the WiFi card mainly to check exposure and white balance.

Until Pentax bring out a way of fully programming the camera
from the computer by means of a SDK or even script language
(like Canon have) tethering will be of very limited use.

Oh so you know what i want, what do i want then?
Ever heard of wireless USB?

How would you watch the screen/live-view 100 meters away?

I've no idea what you want Stefan.... apart from it not having
anything to do with photography

Simple solution to something 100m away is a pair of binoculars
I suppose you could rig up a videosender?

In all this talk about tethering I've never yet heard anyone mention
DOF preview on the computer screen, which is one of the most
useful things that can be done with it

Does anyone know of an EDITOR that will watch a Folder for
a JPG to be downloaded and then LOAD it so that I can read the
RGB values to check the white balance? Or a viewer that reads
RGB? Plenty viewers load the file just for viewing automatically.
The Canon software can run an external BAT file and pass the
filename on to launch another app.

Thanks Algi for the laughs

Eye-fi is good for most things but is not a substitute for a good tethering program, like you've already said.
I assumed it could send live view over the cable, i hope the tethering program for the 645D can do that... would be really interesting to see that the program could control the AF.
You simply click on the Live-view where you want to focus and the PC does Contrast focus on that part of the screen. That would be so useful.
You might even can program it to focus bracket

With Lightroom you can say it should watch a folder for changes, not sure if it works real-time or not.