Remember also that I was talking about a shooting with the Canon. MF is another story and the tether with MF gear is almost an obligation.
But then and again, I would feel certainly more comfortable with a Leaf back than a Phase, and not shol.
As it stands now, if you use medium format and you want to see a detailed view, you have to tether, so I believe the whole tethering thing never came from client requests, it came from the only way to see an image if you used a larger camera was to tether.
Now, it's somewhat the standard, though lately we've done less and less tethering just because we have to move so quickly due to budget, time restrictions and honestly clients are somewhat over the staring at every image as it pops up on screen.
Tethering imo is so 2007.
Actually, when we started serious digital capture with the original 1ds we never tethered, we shot to cards downloaded as we went. We did run a full tech station and the clients could review the images before we moved on to the next session and rarely, very very rarely did any AD ask for us to continue or go back and add something.
I really think this system worked best anyway, because they got to review the shoot as an overview seeing every image per session in a browser, rather than seeing them one at a time on a monitor.
It also kept more eyeballs on the set, rather than the screen and let's face it, staring at one flicking image after another becomes boring at best.
Model's and real subjects seemed to appreciate the non tethered session better as the interaction was between the photographer, the talent and the on set artists.
It was easy to show the hair stylist an image on the back of a camera and say we've got a issue here, or there, without altering the whole studio that anything negative was happening.
It is easy to walk over to the subject and give them a quick run through saying, this works well, this doesn't this is great etc., once again without dragging over a cart or taking the talent off set for them to review it.
It is also more person to walk over to the AD and flip through the images on the back of the camera. They had suggestions, we'd implement them and work more as a one on one team than a committee.
Depending on what you shoot, how you shoot, I believe that a non tethering session goes faster and is more free and productive than tethering.
As I review my body of work, the best imagery commercial or personal always came from a non tethered shoot.