How to use WiFi on your Nikon DSLR with computers

The high-end pro series of Nikon DSLR has been enjoying WiFi since many years ago, and finally we get to use that in more affordable, mass-market models, you just have to keep in mind that in order for this to work you have to have a good internet connection, we suggest to follow this recomendation about best wi-fi online!

Newer models such as D750, D7200, D5500 & D5300 has the feature built-in & other models including D3200, D3300, D5200, D7100, D600, D610 & Df uses an optional dongle (Wu-1a & Wu-1b).

Unlike the pro-series, the WiFi feature in these camera are officially designed to work with smart devices only.  The Nikon apps will only work with Android or iOS devices, does that means you can’t use it with laptop and etc?

Afraid not, I am writing this post to share about a 3rd party application named qDslrDashboard (Available for most common platform including PC, Mac, Android and even Rasberry Pi).

“qDslrDashboard is a free cross platform application for controlling Nikon and some other DSLR cameras. It uses the PTP and PTP/IP protocol to communicate with the connected DSLR camera. Currently it runs on Android, iOS, Linux, OSX and Windows platforms”

Despite listed as in-development stage still, this handy application works for most Nikon DSLR and is stable enough for daily usage.  In short, the application open up a lot of possibilities for Nikon WiFi of top of the official apps.

[UPDATE – March 2019]  As you may have noticed, this post was created in 2015, and things has changed a lot since then.  This solution was originally written for Nikon cameras supporting Nikon’s WMU (Wireless Mobile Utility), it may not work with some of the newer cameras until the qDSLRDashboard was patched to do so.  Please refer to the official site for details.

To get you started, this is what I have used in my workshop,

1. Ad-hoc WiFi connection from the camera to my laptop (Windows 7)
2. qDslrDashboard with the following configuration
   1. Connect Nikon DSLR via Wireless connection
   2. Depend on what I need to do, if I am shooting a real-life subject for demo, I’ll configure the apps as “Camera-mode” other wise you can use “Host-mode” to control the camera from laptop.
   3. The apps is then configured to automatically download the pictures and saved in a dedicated folder ( eg: c:\FromCamera )
3. AdobeLightroom with the following configuration
   1. My LR was configured to automatically import from the dedicated folder ( eg: c:\FromCamera )
   2. LR will show the last imported photo.
   3. Enable second screen option by pressing F11.
4. My laptop is connected to a 2nd screen (Extended desktop mode) on projector, when ever I took a picture with the camera, the photo will be automatically pulled to my laptop by qDslrDashboard.
5. Once completely transferred, qDslrDashboard will save the file in the dedicated folder, and LR will pick it up and display the picture in a large screen, together with the shooting info (I customised it to display the exposure and lenses info usually)
6. If I needed to do any adjustment to my camera setting, I’ll then re-shoot and the new changes will be display on-screen shortly allowing the participants to see the changes and learn better.

Note:: This method is essentially similar to USB wired tethered shooting and will also work if you use your cables.

I hope this short post inspire you to make better use of the WiFi features of your camera, do share with others if you find this article useful.