Using a Macbook Pro Tethered Using Phocus

[fraherim]

Hello,
I'm wondering if anyone is using the Macbook Pros to shoot tethered with Phocus?  Particularly how fast does the preview get fully rendered with an HD3II 39?  What happens if the shoot a series of 10 or so within 20 or 30 seconds?  Does it take long for all the previews to get rendered?
Does anyone shoot to an external drive through the Macbook Pro or just use the internal hardrive?

Thanks,
Bob

[Matt Crawford]

Hi Bob,
Was just operating on a shoot the other day using a Macbook Pro 2.4 2gb ram tethered with a H3D 39. Only had a firewire 800 to 400 cable so not sure how much this could have slowed things down?!
When single shoots were being taken previews were quick to show with rendering taking a farther 2 seconds or so. With a burst of shoots i.e. 25 at maximum camera speed I found myself waiting some time for the previews to render.
Having 4gb of ram would have really helped and maybe the faster internal 7200rpm hard drive. Have never tried using an external drive to capture to.

Sorry not to be more specific about time, I spent a lot of the shoot looking over my shoulder at the dark rain clouds above constantly threatening to soak camera, laptop and all the gear.

Matt

[robertpoll]

Matt's summary is pretty accurate. I did do some timings at one point but can't lay my hands on them, but maybe 5 seconds to process an image is about where you end up. I typically shoot burst of about 20 images, then you have a minute or so catch-up. It would be nice if it was faster but you do get used to it. The important thing though is that it doesn't slow down shooting, which is pretty much the case (you do sometimes see a slight slowdown and the occasional 'busy' when it's way behind). I did try FW800 and external disks but they made no difference. Also the processor isn't at 100% so my guess is faster dis is the place to spend the money (I have the 7200 rpm). Not sure about more memory - mine's a 2GB, could be that going higher would help.

Would be really nice though if the software could keep up with the capture rate of the camera - it really should. I had heard that Phocus was going to be faster than Flex, but it doesn't seem to be. Not surprising for the first release but I'd hope that Hasselblad would work on performance as a priority in the not too distant future.

....rob