Photo Mechanic Live Ingest from a phone tether
Short answer: Photo Mechanic's Live Ingest watches a folder and ingests new photos as they appear, and CloudTether can be what fills that folder. CloudTether doesn't connect to Photo Mechanic directly; it tethers your camera to your phone and delivers each frame, as you shoot, to a Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive folder that syncs to your laptop, or to an SFTP or WebDAV server. Point Live Ingest at that folder and every shot arrives renamed, captioned with your IPTC template and copied to a second drive.
What Live Ingest does
Camera Bits describes Live Ingest as Photo Mechanic's tool for tethered and wireless shooting: you add one or more source folders, and instead of ingesting everything at once it monitors them and ingests each new photo as it appears, until you cancel it or close the app. Each ingest can rename files (text, variables and a sequence number), apply your IPTC metadata template, copy to secondary and tertiary destinations, sort into a dated folder, and open a contact sheet that fills as photos arrive. A delay setting — 30 seconds by default — waits for a file to finish writing before ingesting it, which Camera Bits says matters most for RAW files.
Live Ingest needs files to land in a folder. Usually that's the camera maker's tether software on a laptop. With CloudTether it's your phone, which means no laptop at the camera and no cable to the desk.
Setting up the folder
Simplest: deliver to Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive, choosing a fixed existing folder so Live Ingest's source never changes, and keep it available offline on the editing laptop. Each frame uploads once from your phone over mobile data or Wi-Fi and syncs down seconds later. At a newsroom or a venue with an editor on a local network, deliver to an SFTP or FTP server or a WebDAV share instead, with “New subfolder for each shoot” switched off so the files land exactly where Live Ingest is looking.
If you shoot RAW+JPEG, Live Ingest offers a pairing option for RAW+JPEG or HIF. Many sports and news shooters send only the JPEGs: JPEG only leaves the RAW files on the card and halves what crosses the mobile network.
Picks, names and two bodies
On Canon and Nikon, send only rated shots turns your in-camera stars into the filter: only rated frames leave the camera, and the star rating travels in the file for Photo Mechanic to read. Deliver with the camera's own names (original file names) and let Photo Mechanic's rename do the job-specific naming on ingest, so there's one naming rule, not two.
Running two cameras at once into one folder? Two bodies of the same make can produce the same file name. Give each camera its own file-name prefix in its menu, or use CloudTether's “Shoot name + file name” per destination, before the job — Photo Mechanic's sequence renaming then keeps everything in order.
Where each tool fits
CloudTether gets frames off the camera and delivered from a phone; it isn't a captioning or editing tool. Photo Mechanic is where you cull, caption and transmit. Together they replace the laptop-on-a-cable at the camera, and the editor can work while you're still shooting. Our comparison with Photo Mechanic covers the overlap.
How to feed Photo Mechanic Live Ingest from a phone tether
Connect the camera to your phone
Open CloudTether and tap “Connect a camera”. Plug in a USB-C cable (Sony: USB mode PC Remote; Fujifilm: USB tether shooting) or choose Wi-Fi for guided wireless set-up. Take a test shot and wait for “Test shot delivered”.
Deliver to a fixed folder
Send the shoot to an existing Dropbox, Google Drive or OneDrive folder, or to SFTP/FTP or WebDAV with “New subfolder for each shoot” turned off.
Make the folder local
On the editing computer, keep the cloud folder available offline, or mount the server share.
Start Live Ingest
In Photo Mechanic, open Live Ingest, add the folder as a source, set your destination, rename and IPTC template, and keep the default delay so files finish syncing before they're ingested.
FAQ
Does CloudTether work with Photo Mechanic?
Yes, through a folder. CloudTether delivers each shot to a synced cloud folder or a server, and Photo Mechanic's Live Ingest watches that folder. There's no direct connection between the two apps.
What delay should I use in Live Ingest?
Keep Photo Mechanic's default 30 seconds, or longer for large RAW files, so each file has finished syncing before it's ingested.
Can I send only my picks to Photo Mechanic?
On Canon and Nikon, yes: turn on “Only shots I rate in camera” and only starred frames leave the camera.
Will Photo Mechanic see my in-camera ratings?
Canon and Nikon write the rating into the file, and full-size deliveries are the camera's own files, so it travels with them.
What about two cameras with the same file names?
Set a different file-name prefix on each camera, or deliver with “Shoot name + file name”, so files can't collide in one folder.
Get every shot off the camera as you shoot
CloudTether tethers Canon, Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm cameras to your iPhone, iPad or Android phone and delivers every photo to Dropbox, Google Drive, client galleries, your own server or the phone itself — live, no laptop.
Sources
Facts about Photo Mechanic come from these pages (checked November 2026). Products change — check them for the latest.