iMac Not Connecting via HDMI and Card Reader

iMac computers do not have HDMI ports, and if they did they would be output, not input. The HDMI out on the Z50 is intended for displaying images on a monitor or TV.

If you want to transfer images from your Z50 to your Mac you must use a USB connection. Nikon claims that you also need to have Nikon NX Studio on your Mac but you *may* be able to import images via Apple Image Capture.

What card reader are you using (make, model & connection type)?

You haven't said which 21.5" iMac you have, so I don't know whether its video output connector is

• Mini DisplayPort
• Old-style Thunderbolt + Mini DisplayPort (Mini DisplayPort connector)
• USB-C (DisplayPort, Thunderbolt)

In any case, if you are hoping to take HDMI output from the Nikon Z50 and feed it into the 21.5" Mac, using regular display adapters, that will not work. Those adapters are designed to work in one direction: taking the video from a computer, and turning it into another format for a monitor.

If by any chance this is a 21.5" iMac with a model year between 2011 and mid 2014, and you're thinking that you will use in it Target Display Mode, think again. Those iMacs required Thunderbolt input, and there are no regular display adapters to go from HDMI input to Thunderbolt output. Other 21.5" iMacs - those released before 2011, or after mid 2014 - were never designed to accept video input at all, even in the very limited way that Target Display Mode allows.

So if you are trying to feed HDMI output from the Nikon Z50 into the iMac, you are going to need a special device - a device that I believe is called a video digitizer. Or you are going to need to skip HDMI and tether the camera to the Mac (if possible) using tethering solutions designed to use some other interface (such as USB).

gldreds wrote:

Hi I’m using the built in card reader on the rear of the iMac , can’t download Nikon NX Studio as I’m using Monterey and it’s not compatible. Thanks

You should be able to connect your Z50 directly to your iMac via USB and import images directly from the camera using the Image Capture app. Both NEF & JPEG images and MOV & MP4 videos.

Regarding the card reader, AFAIK the iMac card reader supports SDXC SD cards. Your Z50 uses both SDHC and SDXC cards, so the iMac should be able to read both. Exactly what problem and/or error message do you get when you try to read one of the cards in the iMac?

gldreds wrote:

Hi I’m using the built in card reader on the rear of the iMac , can’t download Nikon NX Studio as I’m using Monterey and it’s not compatible. Thanks

Which 21.5" iMac do you have? If it is not compatible with anything later than Monterey, that may rule out some options for tethering software.

Two programs that appear to be compatible with Monterey (for now):

• Nikon NX Tether - Version 2.5 ("free software designed to enhance your Nikon imaging experience")
• Capture One - Version 23

However, as you say, the Nikon NX Studio RAW processor and photo editor no longer supports Monterey.

Just adding, to make things explicit, that when you insert an SD card into the iMac's card reader, it behaves as a flash drive. You would use the Finder to copy the image files from the SD card to whatever location on your Mac you want to copy them to. You would not use Image Capture. The image files are normally in the /DCIM folder (and/or /DCIM subfolders) on the SD card.

No app would automatically run as a consequence of inserting the SD card. If you have Lightroom, CaptureOne, Photos or similar cataloging program you would run the program in order to import the images from the SD card.

Note that reformatting cards (after you get photos off them) is best done in the camera itself. If you'd still prefer to do it using a computer, note that the SD Association has a special formatting application for this.

SD Association – SD Memory Card Formatter for Windows/Mac

"It is strongly recommended to use the SD Memory Card Formatter to format SD/SDHC/SDXC/SDUC Cards rather than using formatting tools provided with individual operating systems. In general, formatting tools provided with operating systems can format various storage media including SD/SDHC/SDXC/SDUC Cards, but it may not be optimized for SD/SDHC/SDXC/SDUC Cards and it may result in lower performance."

SD Association – Capacity (SD/SDHC/SDXC/SDUC) (see File System row of table)

The file system that a device like your Nikon Z50 would expect to see depends on the card type. For a SDHC card, that would be FAT32. For a SDXC or SDUC card, it would be exFAT. (It is very unlikely that a Nikon Z50 would understand the Windows file system NTFS or the Mac file systems APFS and HFS+.)