I'm running Parallels Desktop for Mac, Build 3120, and have been blown away by the progress over the last several months. Kudos to those slaving away to build this product! The last item I am attempting to get to work (at least for now) is image capture with my Canon EOS SLR's. In Windows I normally use Digital SLR Remote from Breeze Systems for that process. This is a program which hooks up the camera through a USB connection in order to control settings and remotely fire the camera, as well as capturing the images directly to the computer for immediate viewing during a photo shoot. I attempted to fire it up under Parallels, and found that while the program does control the camera as it should, images never get to the computer. Is this an example of "isochronous devices such as web cameras" which is not yet supported under Parallels? Thanks...Bob
When you say images do you mean live preview images or snapped pictures? My Sony cannot act as a live image camera - wish it did. Anyway, if it is the live images then that is probably not going to work. I have to agree with you - the dev team is getting a lot done between the beta and release candidate drops we're seeing. My personal wish is they show some activity with Parallels Tools for Solaris and Linux. Just having a free floating mouse would be huge.
This is called tethered shooting. These are the actual photos as shot by the camera. The photos are are not even saved to the CF card in the camera when the picture is taken, but instead are saved directly to the computer. At least that's what's supposed to happen... The only alternatives I'm aware of are Phase One's Capture One Pro and Bibble Lab's Bibble, both of which work great as Universal Mac programs for dealing with raw files on the MacIntels. Unfortunately, Canon hasn't released the necessary MacIntel drivers/libraries to allow Bibble to do tethered shooting with the Canon 5D (in fact, Canon's own program doesn't work on Intel Macs), and while I understand that Capture One works great, it also costs $500, which is a bit steep for my relatively limited use. Digital SLR Remote is a great and relatively inexpensive program for tethered shooting under Windows, and I was just hoping that it would work under Parallels. Not yet, though, it seems. Oh, well, they've certainly done a bang up job with Parallels otherwise, and I have to assume that the Parallels folks will get this one figured out. I just wish it were now, instead of sometime in the future...
Hmm - interesting. I know that a lot of photogs at Corbis, GettyImages, and iStockPhoto, etc. use Mac computers for post processing so I'm surprised there's not a satisfactory native Mac solution. Seems like a natural fit.
So your option seem to be: 1) Capture one 2) Bootcamp 3) Wait until Parallels supports what you need. 4) CF card 5) Nikon
6) Try VMWare Fusion beta 7) Try a real PC because the current releases are not for critical production use. It's worth a look for the data point. I think both products are converging on common features, that being to emulate a PC in the absence of a real one. My money's with Parallels. I'm in it for two licenses so far. The final option is for those who find problems to provide a short write up on the system configuration, installed software and versions, other peripherals, etc. Stuff the beta team can actually use to correct errors. I think it gets lost that that is why the betas are available in the first place. And having said that and to avoid my sounding snarky, posting here does not also mean information was not sent to the beta team.
The actual current option is to use the Toshiba Windows laptop... Its just that I've been trying to switch to the Mac, because I find so many things about it to be attractive. My ideal solution would be Bibble, because I already own the license for it. Bootcamp would certainly work for this limited purpose, but then I've still got to get the files between the bootcamp partition and the Mac partition. Since this is a laptop, with limited disk space, I am loath to set up a very big bootcamp partition - with Parallels I can set up a minimal VM disk and simply use the shared folder concept to put the real file storage (incliuding the picture files) directly on the Mac disk where it is immediately accessible in Photoshop without having to use a FAT32 partition on the Windows side....at least I could if this one last item were fixed. I'm sure it will come... Thanks...Bob
The actual current option is to use the Toshiba Windows laptop... Its just that I've been trying to switch to the Mac, because I find so many things about it to be attractive. My ideal solution would be Bibble, because I already own the license for it. Bootcamp would certainly work for this limited purpose, but then I've still got to get the files between the bootcamp partition and the Mac partition. Since this is a laptop, with limited disk space, I am loath to set up a very big bootcamp partition - with Parallels I can set up a minimal VM disk and simply use the shared folder concept to put the real file storage (incliuding the picture files) directly on the Mac disk where it is immediately accessible in Photoshop without having to use a FAT32 partition on the Windows side....at least I could if this one last item were fixed. I'm sure it will come... Thanks...Bob
