FTP photo delivery
FTP photo delivery sends images from a camera or device to a server over FTP/SFTP: the standard pipeline newsrooms and wire services use to file fast.
FTP (and its secure variant SFTP) is a long-established way to push files to a server. In photography it's the backbone of press and sports workflows: a photographer files selects to an editor's or agency's server, often within seconds of the shot, so they can be published while the event is live.
CloudTether can deliver straight to an FTP/SFTP server as you shoot, turning a phone-tethered camera into a wire-style filing pipeline that files each frame seconds after the shutter.
- Camerashoot as normal
- Phoneuploads each photo once
- CloudTether serversdeliver and retry
- Your serverFTP, FTPS or SFTP folder
How it works
An FTP client signs in to a server with a username and password and uploads files into a folder. At a newsroom or agency, software watches that folder and pulls each picture into the picture desk's system, captions and all, so the photographer's only job is to get frames into the right folder quickly. There are three flavours: plain FTP (unencrypted), FTPS (FTP with TLS) and SFTP, which runs over SSH and is a different protocol altogether.
An example: filing from a football match
A press photographer covering a league match shoots JPEG only. Each frame is copied to the phone over USB and filed to the agency's SFTP ingest folder seconds later, and the desk crops and publishes the opening goal before half-time. The RAW files stay on the card for any picture the agency later wants at full quality.
FTP delivery in CloudTether
CloudTether delivers to SFTP, FTPS (explicit, usually port 21) and FTP servers. The phone uploads each photo once; CloudTether's servers deliver it to your server, retrying for a while if it's briefly unreachable, and after an SFTP upload the file's size on the server is checked before it counts as delivered. Each shoot gets its own subfolder by default; in app 1.1 you can switch that off so photos land in one exact folder, such as a newsroom ingest. Sign-in is by username and password — SSH keys aren't supported yet. See the FTP / SFTP destination and the SFTP and FTP server guide.
Why newsrooms still use FTP
FTP is old, but it's universal: every server and NAS speaks it, ingest software has watched FTP folders for decades, and an upload account is easy to hand to a freelancer for one match and revoke the next day. Picture desks care about one thing — frames arriving in the right place with the right names — and an FTP or SFTP folder does exactly that without asking photographers to learn a new platform.
Tips and common mistakes
- Your server must be reachable from the internet, because delivery comes from CloudTether's servers, not from the phone.
- Paths start at the account's login folder and a leading slash is ignored, so give the upload account a home or chroot that is the target folder.
- Two cameras filing to one folder can both produce IMG_0001.JPG and replace each other; give each camera its own file-name prefix.
See also
Put it into practice
CloudTether tethers your camera to your phone and delivers every shot to the cloud, live as you shoot — no laptop.