MacBook Pro M4 doesn’t connect to Nikon D810 for tethered shooting

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

My wife and I have just begun to learn tethered shooting using our Nikon D810 tethered to our M4 Pro MacBooks, both of us using Tahoe 26.5 and Lightroom Classic 15.0.

When I set up my MacBook Pro for tethered shooting, the connection to the D810 and the tethered shooting work as expected.

When we tether my wife’s MacBook Pro to the D810 using the same cable and without changing any of the D810’s settings, the MBP hangs up on the message “Detecting Camera… Please make sure your camera is properly connected and turned on. You may need to wake you camera if it ended sleep mode.” The camera does not connect, nor do I ever see that “Detecting Camera…” message when I set up to shoot tethered on my MacBook.

We’ve tried the recommended fixes in Adobe’s document “Lightroom Classic Help > Troubleshooting tethered capture” (“last updated on May 24, 2023”). (I skipped Recommendation 8, which is to delete the Lightroom preferences file, because as far as I can recall, when I set up our MacBooks, the preferences would have been the same and would not have been changed since.)

It seems to me that there must be something unknown to us going on in my wife’s MacBook that is not happening in mine.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

[degrub]

what hardware version is your MB ?
did you try other USB/TB ports on her MBP4 ?
turn off camera, connect to MBP, turn on camera. Any difference ?

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

what hardware version is your MB ?
did you try other USB/TB ports on her MBP4 ?
turn off camera, connect to MBP, turn on camera. Any difference ?

Thank you.

1. Both MBs are M4 MacBook Pro, OS Tahoe 26.5,  Lightroom Classic 15.0
2. Yes. The ports are ok (tested with another external drive, which connected).
3. No difference. The D810 still doesn’t connect to my wife’s MBP, but with the same steps it connects to mine.

It seems to me that that the solution resides either somewhere in Lightroom (i.e., perhaps as set up on her MBP in a way that is different from how it is set up on mine) or elsewhere in the computer. Lightroom otherwise works fine in the ways my wife uses it.

[degrub]

Which machine was the 810 first connected to ?
Maybe the camera is remembering the first connection only and has to be reset in its menu somewhere ?
i looked on Nikon's website but that model does not seem to be supported by software any more. The old software was available by disk.
Do you have another machine you can test against, Mac or Windows  ?

[Jeffrey Saldinger]

Which machine was the 810 first connected to ?
Maybe the camera is remembering the first connection only and has to be reset in its menu somewhere ?
i looked on Nikon's website but that model does not seem to be supported by software any more. The old software was available by disk.
Do you have another machine you can test against, Mac or Windows  ?

Thank you.

1. First tried tethered shooting on my MBP.

2. A quick internet/AI search of In the nikon d810 camera, are there any menu items related to tethered shooting? gave the answer No, there are no specific menu items or toggles labeled "tethering" or "tethered shooting" inside the Nikon D810 internal menu system.But note, this was from a source I’m not familiar with. Furthermore, most of the hits for my question were from several years ago, so their value for today’s situation is not clear to me. And finally, neither my D810 owner’s manual nor another D810 user book has an index entry for “tethered shooting.”

3. Yes, I do have my previous MBP. It’s has an older OS and version of Lightroom Classic than my current MBP, and the Lr version does include tethered shooting. However, I don’t own a USB-A male to USB-C female cable, which I need in order to connect it to the D810 using the same cable I've been using all along. I have ordered the cable and it’s supposed to be delivered tomorrow.

[degrub]

Some further ideas including some you have covered.

Does the camera charge from the problematic M4 Macbook ?

https://discovercameras.com/nikon-camera-usb-not-working/

You could dig into the macbook hardware listings for the TB/USB ports and see if there is a difference between the two M4 machines, either port daughter board or main board ports as well as exact OS build and port driver version numbers.