Work-around for tethering Fujifilm cameras and Adobe Lightroom Classic

There is a work-around that allows limited tethering between Fujifilm cameras and Adobe Lightroom Classic.

The work flow involves using the Fujifilm X Acquire stand-alone application as described in my last blog post. Essentially the process is as follows: Your Fujifilm camera is tethered to a computer via a USB cable; photo files are saved to both a user-selected target folder on the computer and a memory card in your camera. The photo files saved to your computer can be opened using an application such as either Apple “Preview” or Adobe Lightroom.

Adobe Lightroom can be set to “watch” a selected folder and display photo files as they are added to that folder. A video by Nathan Woodgate shows how it works (better than I could describe). The first part of the video is related to how to use Fujifilm X Acquire; the last part of the video (beginning ~4:15 into the video) explains the Adobe Lightroom work-around.

A summary of the steps to follow in order to set-up the work-around is as follows…

1. open Lightroom

2. select File / Auto Import >

3. select Auto Import Settings…

– <check> Enable Auto Import

– choose “Watched Folder” [folder must be empty initially]

– choose “Destination Folder” <— Note: The Destination Folder can be located on an external disk drive, such as my SanDisk SSD (where I store photo files permanently).

– click <OK>

As each new photo is added to the “Watched Folder,” it is opened automatically in Lightroom and moved (not copied) to the “Destination Folder.” The net effect is the Watched Folder is an empty shell through which files pass along the way to the Destination Folder.

Another video by Lee Zavitz covers mostly the same information. If you’re going to watch only one of the two videos, then I recommend the Woodgate video. I added the Zavitz video because I think it can be helpful to see/hear more than one photographer explain how something works.

What are the take-aways?

During limited testing, I can verify the work-around process works.

For me, the advantage of viewing the photo files in Lightroom rather than Preview is Lightroom enables me to examine a histogram to be sure that the background is pure white (255, 255, 255) when using the “Meet Your Neighbours” (MYN) technique. For that purpose, I would set X Acquire to save only RAW (RAF) files to the computer.

Copyright © 2021 Walter Sanford. All rights reserved.

Tags: Fujifilm X Acquire, gear talk, Meet Your Neighbours, studio photography