I spent a bit of today taking photos of creatures in my saltwater tank, and while I had my Tamron 90mm f/2.8 macro lens out, I figured I would take a photo of Alan’s eye and then my eye. One thing led to another, and I tried to figure out how to tether my Nikon D800 to my laptop so I could use the screen as a viewfinder, making self eye portraits easier. It was not easy.

Google wasn’t turning up a lot of sense. I thought I read this morning you used to be able to do live tethering with the Nikon software Camera Control Pro 2, but it no longer worked with OS X 10.11 El Capitan, and thus would also not work in my macOS 10.12 Sierra. Now I see the app has Sierra listed, and I was apparently mistaken when I skimmed the forum post earlier. But, it is a paid app. Perhaps I will try it later.

So next I read I should use Nikon’s ViewNX-i, and I saw it works with my version of macOS. Only, I could not get it to install. I installed both the driver app and the program app, but it did not result in any Nikon folder or ViewNX app showing up in my applications directory. I didn’t find anyone reporting the same thing, so I wasn’t sure what to do.

Then I read Lightroom can tether, but I could not figure out how to turn on live view. After reading their support page I learned Lightroom does not have a live view with this (or all?) Nikon camera, and you need to use a separate app for that!

Then I tried an app called Sofortbild just in case, but the description said it worked only in Yosemite and earlier, and that is apparently not a lie.

Finally I found mention of the program [digiCamControl[(http://digicamcontrol.com/download), which is free and open source. But it only works on Windows! I decided to try it anyway, and thankfully it worked relatively well in my Parallels based Windows 7 virtual machine, after I installed the USB 3.0 drivers. It crashed a few times, but I was able to test a few photos. I will need to revisit later when I have more time. I am looking forward to playing with the Halo LED Ring Light I got recently.

Realizing the day was slipping away, I was about to shift to working on my projects, but then I realized the year was also slipping away and the San Francisco marathon was eight weeks away! And I have only run about 20 miles in the last month. So, I took some time to get a training schedule decided and in my calendar. I am basically using an 8 week train plan I found on competitor.com. I put all the runs at 8 a.m., so I hope to continue the trend I started today of getting up before 7:30.

Finally, after talking to my brother Tim a bit about the running schedule and avoiding injuries, he recommended I check out an exercise called “founder” by Eric Goodman. I watched a TED talk by the guy where he briefly introduced the exercise. The video wasn’t the greatest for following along, so I next followed along with the first chunk of the second video below. It seemed pretty good, so I will try to incorporate that into my routine. I am also experimenting with my desk situation and am typing this standing up. My body feels weird.

[youtube BZcZenvWBlg]

[youtube HKH_JVlTGDQ]