I shot around 350 RAW images with a 1Ds Mark III tethered to the MacBook today via the USB cable. I used 8 different lenses for these images; I was testing the AF and DOF of my lenses at various apertures and various focal lengths for the zooms. The USB cable used is the one that came with the 1Ds Mark III.
On 3 occasions the Canon Camera Window (aka EOS Utility) stopped responding while waiting to download the image from the camera; the images were not being saved on the camera, just downloaded to the Mac.
On each occasion (1) a different lens was on the camera, (2) many shots had already been taken exactly the same way as the one that failed, (3) all shots taken today were initiated from the EOS Utility, and (4) the only change from the previous shot was an aperture setting in one case, no change in the other cases (I was taking two identical shots to make sure the AF refocused correctly when nothing else changed).
In all cases, after a long wait while the twirley thing twirled, any effort to terminate the EOS Utility from the Dock resulted in the ‘Application is Not Responding’ message. I elected to ‘Force Quit’ the app, which presents the option to send a report to Apple (I did, it was sent). After that the EOS Utility continues to run but is still Not Responding and using the option on the Dock to Force Quit again only goes through the ‘Send Apple a Report’ process again.
After that failed I tried to shut the system down from the Apple logo menu. After confirming that I want to shut down nothing works …no menus, no keyboard input, no pen tablet input clicks. After a long wait a hardware reset was the only thing I found that would shut the system down (press and hold the Start button).
Notice that it happened only 3 times in the course of taking about 350 shots. I would say there was roughly the same number of images taken between the instances (more than 100) but the first time was after only about 15 shots.
Anybody see anything like this with the Apple and Canon’s Camera Window before? Is this a known issue?
I also noticed that the MacBook does not find the Camera if it is attached and on when the Mac boots up. The camera must be off/turned off then turned back on after the Mac has booted before the Mac can detect the camera.
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I regularly tether a 5D on a Mac and it's dead reliable via EOS Utility. Are you sure you have the most recent version? What you describe sounds very much like what I would get on some much earlier versions of EOS Utility and Mac OS but I haven't seen that in ages (two years?). Also be sure your OS is up to date. I've never used a 1DS mkIII but I've seen a number of posts elsewhere saying that the 10.5.6 update helps tethering speed tremendously with that particular camera. Mac USB drivers have been a bit notoriously flaky compared to Windows counterparts. The 10.5.6 update supposedly fixes that with the 1DS mkIII
I double checked just now (Apple Menu>About this Mac>More Info), I am to be up-to-date on the software.
Interestingly there were 4 listings for the Camera Window, maybe they correspond to the 4 options on the EOS Utility main window. Since it is hard to know what is inside the Canon updates I downloaded and reinstalled the EOS Utility but it told me I was already up to date.
In case anyone is interested the software versions running on my Mac (as reported by the Mac) are…
Mac OS is vs 10.5.6 (9G55)
CameraWindow vs: 7.2.0.4
CameraWindow DC vs: 7.3.0.1
CameraWindowDVC vs: 5.0.4.28
CameraWindowDVC+ vs: 6.4.11
I always suspect the cable connection first with this kind of problem, then the drivers if the cables are good. Seems to me the FireWire 800 was a better protocol than USB 2.0 (I have both on my PC but only USB 2.0 comes on the Mac). Alas it seems that FireWire (IEEE 1394b) is going the same way Betamax went.
I’ll be shooting tethered again today with the 1Ds III but I can’t try it with the 1D Mark II as it only connects via a FireWire port! I’ll try to see exactly what happens and when it happens if there is another lockup.
Thanks for the response…
White Balance so easy, even our 5 year old can do it.- Melissa Strickland
I'm assuming you're using a continuous power source for the camera instead of the battery, and that any camera power-saver options are disabled. I'm also assuming that screensavers, virus protection, e-mail monitoring etc. in your computer are likewise disabled and that the only USB connection during your tethered shooting is between camera and computer. Watching your Activity Monitor might yield a clue as to what's going on when things lock up.
If your software is up to date, the cable is good and the connection is good - and if this problem is not named in Apple's or Canon's current 'read me' files as a 'known issue' then you're left with only a few other choices. I suppose memory shortage could be an issue vis a vis too little RAM or some bad or corrupted RAM - easy to check. With the amount of data you're sending from camera to computer I wonder if moving those operations to a separate external hard drive would make sense, as opposed to using your primary internal drive which contains everything else, may need de-fragging or re-partitioning or even has bad sectors. Good luck! I'm eager to learn what is really going on and how you eventually fix it.
Your Mac should have a firewire port. Some models only have 400 but many (most?) have 400 and 800. I've not heard of a Mac in years that had none. If you only have a 400 port and your camera uses 800, get a cable that has an 800 connector on one end and a 400 on the other. I use these all time with other types of devices. My 5D only uses USB for tethering. My old Kodaks were all Firewire. Both are quite fast and reliable when working properly. It seems like I hear of more people tethering 1D series cameras with Firewire. You may get more reliable results that way. What you're seeing is by no means "normal"
The suggestions Buddy makes are appropriate... especially for debugging but I often shoot tethered with many other things running on the computer at the same time. I shoot to a mounted server volume, not to a local hard drive at all... and performance is still only very slightly slower than shooting to card in the camera. The tethering process is not all that taxing of computer resources. I shoot to an older G5 in the studio and a 17" MacBook Pro on location. I always shoot with the camera on nothing but battery power. The computer usually just on battery power when on location. That shouldn't be an issue.
Linear Mode
