Sony A850 not connecting

[DanXM]

Great product you have here, fast! I have used it successfully with a nikon d3000. But when trying to connect with my sony a850, the camera just had the 'connecting to computer' message on the lcd and I was unable to operate it.

The camera has 3 options for connecting; Mass Storage, PTP, and Remote PC. I have tried all 3. I am running windows 7 32-bit on my computer. As I mentioned before, no problems connecting to the the d3000

Is this a codec thing? the program recognises the a850 down in the bottom right of the screen so should work right?

[Axel]

Unfortunately, tethering support depends heavily on the camera's PTP implementation, and in particular on the fact that the camera firmware let the user operate the camera's controls while connected. This appear not to be the case with your Sony camera. All Nikon DSLRs (except the old D1 series) works fine and can be tethered without special driver (meaning tethering also works on Windows 64-bit, for which Nikon never provided any software so far).

For other cameras, tethering through PTP is a hit or miss situation, and for a given brand it can depend on the camera model and firmware version. However, there is hope: if your manufacturer supplies tethering software that simply download files to a folder on the computer, you can open the same folder in FastPictureViewer Professional and monitor its content using the tracking mode (T). The program will grab and display pictures as they land on the monitored folder and the end-result will be the same as when using the built-in tethering function.

A quick search revealed that the Sony Image Data Suite software should be able to provide the necessary function for your A850. Similarly, Canon owners can use the Canon EOS Utility to the same effect, and most of the time those OEM applications works fine under XP emulation (aka "Windows XP Mode") on Windows 7 64 too.

As a side note, we have a nice tethering tutorial on the help page.

[DanXM]

Thanks for the quick reply

I thought that might be an option, just so impressed with the speed of the app that I didn't want the sony software to get in the way... I'll test your method and post back the results.

[DanXM]

Brilliant! Full-res 24mp previews in 5 secs flat.

Beats the 13 secs it takes in lightroom hot-folder setup

Thanks Axel, great product you have here.