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Tethering problems (D4s + MacBook Pro 2017)

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jemostrom

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Premium Classic Member
Premium Cloud Member
Joined
Jul 8, 2015
Messages
67
Lightroom Experience
Beginner
Lightroom Version
Lightroom Version Number
LR Classic 8.3.1
Operating System
  1. macOS 10.14 Mojave
I decided to try tethered shooting and bought a tethertools cable and tried to connect my MacBook Pro 2017 laptop with my Nikon D4s ... when I start the session from LR it just says that it's waiting for a camera to show up, that's all.

So I took it to my old Mac Mini and tried there, and it seem to work perfectly. Does anyone have an idea why it doesn't work with my laptop?

Right now I have to idea if it's the software on my laptop or the hardware or something else ... any advise is appreciated.

Some details, the MacBook Pro is from 2017 running macOS 10.14.5, it has USB-C. The cable is Tethertools Micro-B to USB-A, to be able to connect this to my laptop I've tried Apples USB-C to USB-A converter as well as a mini-dock thingy that has two USB-A ports. I also tried USB-C ports on both sides of the laptop (I seem to remember that there is some difference).
 
I've followed the troubleshooting instructions given by Adobe, nothing worked until I came to the point of "installing some other software and try" ... well, Capture One works perfectly.

I've contacted Adobe Support but the guy do I chatted with me said something that got me a bit confused. I've always thought that tethered shooting means that the photo is sent to the computer and, depending on camera/setting, also saved to memory card. This guy said that I needed to mount the camera/card as a disk before it would work. Is this true? (Sorry if this is a stupid question but this didn't happen when using Capture One and I haven't seen anything about this in the places I've looked)
 
With Macbooks - especially USB-C versions, it may be necessary to use a powered USB hub between the camera and the Macbook.
 
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to work either, at work I tried when connected to my ThunderBolt dock but it didn’t work either (when I used capture one it worked just fine).
 
After some further digging I've solved the problem - there is a plugin that need to be activated.

When I first tried this on my laptop I actually checked all over since I remembered that I sometimes had seen the text "nikon" and "tether" somewhere. I checked the preferences, the plugins, etc. But I couldn't find something so I thought I misremembered or that it had been removed in a newer version. Not so, I had probably removed it when I deleted a lot of plugin 1-1.5 years ago. Then when I uninstalled and installed again the plugin was installed but it was disabled (I didn't check after the re-installation). Tonight I looked at the plugins on my Mac Mini and saw that it was there so I went to my laptop and saw that in was disabled, one checkbox later and everything works.
 
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