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,
- Ad-hoc WiFi connection from the camera to my laptop (Windows 7)
- qDslrDashboard with the following configuration
- Connect Nikon DSLR via Wireless connection
- 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.
- The apps is then configured to automatically download the pictures and saved in a dedicated folder ( eg: c:\FromCamera )
- AdobeLightroom with the following configuration
- My LR was configured to automatically import from the dedicated folder ( eg: c:\FromCamera )
- LR will show the last imported photo.
- Enable second screen option by pressing F11.
- 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.
- 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)
- 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.
Hi
Does this softwares support Nikon Coolpix P900 camera?
I try but it does not connect.
The software unfortunately does not support newer camera models.
I opened the dslrdashboard exe. file and it was empty. Now what?
Could it be wrongly treated as a harmful file by anti virus or sort?
Do check the original page, it may have been changed as this article was very dated.
Does this work with Nikon D5600? I tried but the camera does not broadcast its SSID.
Unfortunately, this does not work with any of the Nikon with SnapBridge, as you can’t manually activate the WiFi anymore. It will only works with those older models.
Awesome!
Finaly found a way to get the Pics from my D5200 without messing aorund with cables or forgetting the SD in a reader.
60 sec setup worked out fine. Thumps up!
Well, one draw back: had to change WiFi network to post this comment 😉
Awesome, great to hear that it helps.
Yeap one of the draw back of using camera’s WiFi on smartphone is the lost of data-connection. Requiring you to have extra steps.
Newer Nikon with SnapBridge in the other way, solved this will using low power BT connection to your phone. Making instant sharing quick and easy.
So I used this software yesterday for my company’s Christmas party and it works like a charm. I was able to automatically import to Lightroom and also apply some basic filters to make the colors more vibrant. I was also able to display what I just shot via the 2d screen to my clients and that garnered a lot of happiness and excitement. It was almost immediate gratification. The only problem I had was if my wifi dropped off for any reason it would take me a few minutes to re-establish the connection and get the software to cooperate again. Overall, this works great, at least on the PC. A big thanks to Albert for sharing this…
Awesome, glad to know it worked for you.