Canon 5d Mark III and Lightroom 4.3 tethered shooting issues.

Question

I bought a new Canon 5d Mark III and upgraded my lightroom to 4.3.  I have been having issues shooting tehtered.  I'll shoot and get some frames coming in and when I start plugging away the program bar will spin and I'll only get a few grey frames and it just kind of freezes.  I don't know what to do. 

Answer 1

LR4.3 was supposed to improve Lightroom's built-in tethering, but in my experience it still has some reliability problems - especialy in recovering from broken connections (not just unplugging USB but also if the camera loses power by sleeping or when changing a memory card).
Sorry if some of this is basic info, but I'd recommend you try a different USB cable - the cable end that connects to the camera is easilly damaged in a way that makes a connection possible, but unstable (I strongly recommend finding a cable with a 90 degree downward bend at the camera plug). Also, we often have to send a camera body in to have the USB port serviced. Canon has begun to provide a small rubber boot to reinforce the USB connection at the port, but they won't sell the part outside of a repair service. Be sure to use some kind of stress-relief for the cable at the camera. Tethertools sells one, but I've made mine DIY with a little string and a small binder clip... nearly free. Finally, be sure your cable is less than about 15 feet. If you need to go longer, I've successfully tethered with two cheap powered repeaters from Monoprice, but no single link should be over 15 feet.
Oh yeah, also set your camera to not sleep for a long time.
Beyond all that, is using EOS Utility for capture and LR Auto-import a viable option for you? It works very well for me. I use the Apple "Image Capture" app to tell my system to launch EOS Utility whenever the camera is connected - and set EOS Utility to launch into remote capture/camera control mode. It's very stable and recovers from disconnects or camera power loss and the remote camera control/live view can be pretty handy.
Another plus is that if you do need to disconnect USB and shoot to card, you can just copy new images from the card to your watched folder and they are imported to Lightroom with the same settings and location.
The only downsides for me is that there is no way to have a crop apply to new images using auto import -- and I have to re-save my develop preset each time I make a change. Using the "Same as Previous" option under develop settings in native tethering is so great for this and I'd love to see a similar option added to auto import.
Hope this helps.
-Andy