onOne's DSLR Remote for iPhone fires your Canon from afar
By Chris Ziegler 
posted May 21st 2009 5:05PM
posted May 21st 2009 5:05PM
Sure, EOS Utility will let you control the Canon DSLR of your choice from the comfort of your PC, but what if you want to add one more enticing level of indirection to the equation? Well, sport, for that, you'll need a little app for the iPhone from onOne called DSLR Remote, which connects via WiFi to a utility on your computer -- which is in turn cabled to your camera. It's not on the App Store just yet, but there'll be two versions available: Professional, for an introductory price of $9.99, which allows you to control a host of camera settings, and the $1.99 Lite, which simply lets you fire the shutter. The coolest part might be Live View compatibility, which would make a great poor man's security camera (if you can call a 5D Mark II a poor man's anything) -- if only it weren't for the instant rejection the app would face had they made it 3G-compatible, right?[Thanks, Collin]
Honestly, this seems to fall into the ,"We did it because we could," category.
Older high-end digital systems were tethered two HP PDA's, so this is not an uncommon thing in the photo world. If the user can review photos on the phone, that'd be nice. That screen is slightly larger then most DSLR screens. And I wish pro cameras had touch screens because they'd help a lot.
Most shooters that come to the pro camera shop I work at already have iPhones. onOne just made the two devices work together.
@Shenanigans:
I can see a great use for this with a camera that can connect directly to the phone via Wi-Fi. However, after reading that its intended implementation (for the time being), is to tether the camera to a laptop, then connect to the laptop with your iPhone - that screams "Look at this, it's cool," more than "Here's something actually useful." Take the laptop out of the equation and the concept is great.
if it had been 3G enabled you could have watched TV with it...
I thought "cannon" was spelled with two "n's"? Oh. Ohhhhhh, you mean the company. Right. I get it.
Oh, I see what you did there.
I guess this is kind of a neat application. Not for everyone, though, but definitely more useful than all the fart/junk applications out there.
I'd pay for that app.
Looks like tons of fun. I'm buying as soon as it gets approved. It will be all kinds of useful in the studio.
I agree it sounds awesome, but what's the real advantage of it in a studio setting? Camera remotes have been around for quite a while.
I dont see the point of it as soon as you step outside a studio because you need WiFi, and why cant you just use the camera to take pictures inside a studio, instead of doing it through an App, unless you are taking pictures of yourself with your iPhone?
It could be a really high resolution "nanny cam". I would imagine that you would be able to view the computer/camera setup from anywhere as long as you had a network connection to the iphone. Not too bad if you want to take pictures of animals or birds while you're some distance away.
you can ad-hoc through wifi, you don't need a wifi router etc. anywhere to use this app
aka, you can be anywhere and still make it work, not just within range of a wifi hub
Yes finally, the best camera manufacturer and the best smartphone in the planet could interact with one another. I would be getting this as soon as it's released, a perfect software for controlling my 5D Mark II from my iPhone 3G.
huh? I didn't see Nikon's name in the post.
so i have to have my DSLR connected via USB to my computer to use this app.
Seems more like a burden, innit? I guess this would be more useful in the studio environment.
I think a decent computer with a good monitor tethered to a computer would be the most useful, sans cellphone.
i would think that this would add significant amount of shutter lag, since you got to tell the iphone to sent the shutter release to the computer, then from the computer to the camera.
So, this is better than one of Canon's remote triggers why? You're tethered to a computer, making it useless for all but studio environments, where a Canon (or even other brand) trigger will still be better. It strikes me as a bit pointless.
I thought this seemed useless at first as well, but the more i think about it, the more I like it. It'd be especially useful for self portraits. Instead of having to compose the shot, then step in front of the camera, hit the remote, then check the results, you could do it all sitting in front of the camera. And this adds even more functionality to the live view function on the newer Canon dslrs.
The main use comes from seeing what the camera sees without being connected to it by a wire. I know I'll be using this with my 5DII, because I can hook it up to a netbook, and set it up off to the side, while using a second body, and still be able to frame both shots.
I'd hope that in the next release they do support hooking the iPod touch to the camera directly, or using a second iPhone/iPod as the software server, and get rid of the laptop completely, but even as it is, it will come in handy, to me at least.
http://www.igorbass.com
This is crap. You have to lug a computer around just to get this to work. Why not just buy the real remote?
Would this work on a 30D?
Right. So your camera needs to be connected to a laptop in order for this to work? Not quite a "remote" since you can control most N/C dSRLs using laptop and software, or get third party RF controllers so you don't need a laptop.
Ah, more quota filling. Thanks for the useless post, engadget.
One look at the comments here should tell you this isn't a "useless post." Of course, if it's useless to you personally, you're welcome to move right along without wasting your time commenting on it.
So tense.
"So tense"
Such a douche
Pretty useful in an architectural or studio setting. Especially shooting interiors. When I used to shoot 4x5 I would take polaroids and then walk through the shot making alterations on the set. Being able to use live view would be perfect for getting that chair or prop or whatever just right. Their are always a billion things that need to be tweaked "just so" and not having to squeeze myself between lights, camera "risk of kicking a tripod leg" and laptop stand to see the screen, or look through the viewfinder to see or remember them would be awesome.
or when I'm in bed...with a lady. taking them candid pictures.
That link just seems to show ads. Are you a spammer? You've posted this quite a few times before....
-Taylor
All you dopes who think this has to work for you when you're out shooting flowers or puppies or whatever, or it's junk just don't get it. Lack of imagination I suppose.
I can see all kinds of cool things I'll be able to do with this. In the studio I can be working with the jewelry or gemstones I'm photographing. That's very hard to do because facets in gemstones are really hard to light without blowing out the image. And highly polished jewelry, like platinum are very hard to light correctly.
Second, I got a 5D Mark II at work, in part, to put on a microscope and shoot videos and stills. Having the camera up on a trinocular microscope makes it hard to look through the viewfinder. But not having to actually look at the laptop screen tethered to the computer might not be that important in that situation, but others can be looking at that while I'm controlling what's being viewed by the microscope while subject specialists monitor with the laptop. Who knows? It could be very handy.
As for why you would want to have the laptop connected to the camera and controlling it from the phone is two-fold. Canon and Nikon charge an arm and a leg for the wifi connections to their cameras - which are already expensive as they are. And where are the photos going to go? When you shoot tethered, the photos stream right onto the laptop's hard drive. At 21 megapixels, and 1080p video, that means no need to swap out CF cards.
Not only that, but it's the laptop that has the software (that costs well North of $100) that actually controls the camera. You have to have the camera maker's SDK to develop software that controls the camera. As far as I know, there's no Objective C SDK and no Cocoa libraries that would allow an iPhone developer to actually control a camera directly.
Did I miss anything?
Hope they come out with a Nikon DSLR equivalent!
This is a solution looking for a problem... something that merely complicates your life more.
I'd say "Great!" if it communicated with the camera wirelessly, but what's the point in having a laptop in the mix, too? You might as well just use the laptop. Duh.
What I'd like to see is a way to use an iPhone to remotely and wirelessly trigger a Panasonic DMC-GH1. Without a laptop.