Sofortbild is a Mac app for tethered shooting with Nikon DSLR cameras. Each camera model has to be actively supported by Sofortbild, so only models listed below will work. In addition, Sofortbild requires a ‘library’ from Nikon as foundation. Certain lower-end and older models lack this Nikon library.

Requires macOS High Sierra (10.13.x), macOS Sierra (10.12.6) or Mac OS X El Capitan (10.11.6).

Unsupported Nikon Cameras

Older cameras can no longer be supported, as Nikon does not provide libraries for those models that are compatible with recent macOS versions.

Missing Models

If a certain Nikon camera model isn’t listed here, it’s probably too new and will be added to one of the lists, soon. Feel free to make us aware of this fact.

Other Brands

Sofortbild only works with Nikon cameras. Other brands like Canon, Sony, Olympus, … are not supported at this time.

As listed in the separate article Supported Nikon Cameras, the D3x00 series are not supported by Nikon.

Nikon does not offer the library (also known as SDK) needed by developers like us in order to add support in Sofortbild. We don’t know why that is the case, there’s no official information from Nikon regarding the topic. Feel free to check the Nikon site for yourself to see which cameras can be supported in theory.

The single most frequently asked question about Sofortbild is: “Does Sofortbild support my camera?” or “When will Sofortbild support my camera?”. “my camera” is a placeholder for any not yet supported Nikon or any Canon, Sony, etc. DSLR on the market.

tl;dr: Sofortbild only works with the specific Nikon DSRL cameras outlined on the Supported Nikon Cameras page. Models from other manufacturers like Canon, Sony, Olympus or others are not supported at this time.

Since releasing Sofortbild (and Nikon Control before renaming the software) we got emails asking for support of basically every DSLR ever released.

Sofortbild currently uses the Nikon camera drivers exclusively. Canon provides SDKs for third party developers like Nikon does. Both SDKs do not have much in common, which means most of the code would need to be rewritten from scratch to add support for Canon cameras. Adding support for Sony and other DSLRs is even harder.

Sofortbild currently only has a single developer, working on it as a private side project. Although Sofortbild has become one of the most used applications for tethered shooting, it does not generate any revenue. A few people have donated some money in the past, for which the original developer was very grateful. Nevertheless, this was never enough to make a solid investment into Sofortbild. With that said, Sofortbild is still being actively developed, adding some features, fixing problems and supporting new Nikon cameras as SDKs become available.

But, unfortunately there is no specific plan to support other vendors in addition to Nikon any time soon.

There are lots of emails asking the same question: “When will you publish an iPhone or iPad version of Sofortbild?”

Short answer: This is technically impossible without dedicated custom hardware.

Slightly more elaborate answer: In order to get admitted to the iOS App Store, apps written for iPhone/iPad need to adhere to the official SDK published by Apple. Using this SDK, it is not possible to directly communicate from iOS to a camera in the way needed. There are two workarounds: 1) The USB library of iOS could be ‘hacked’ to perform as needed. Given the disclaimer outlined above, such an app would never be allowed on the App Store and therefore nobody could get it. End of story. 2) One could create a piece of hardware that mediates between iOS and the camera. Creating custom hardware is not something a small independent developer can do.

Fortunately, hardware solutions exist on the market, e.g. The CamRanger. We have no affiliation or experience with this product. Feel free to check it out.

There have been a lot of requests for a Windows version of Sofortbild. There is something that might be interesting for you: Bernd Peretzke has written a similiar application for Windows XP and Vista called DCamCapture. Bernd is using the Nikon SDK as well, his application has a similar feature set and it is also free.

Check out DCamCapture: English page | German page.

Currently there are 2 different versions of Sofortbild available. See details on the Download page.