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DSLR Remote review with a Canon 5D Mark II

June 2, 2009 | Tommy 15

As stated a few days ago, I bought the DSLR Remote on the day of release, picking the Pro version. For a 8$ difference, I don’t understand how someone could go with the lower-end alternative.

Installation & Setup

On One Software really did a great job to make the setup process as easy as it could be. Basically, all you need to do is download and install the server application on your computer, plug the camera via USB, start the iPhone app and voila!

Note: If you are like me and dont read instructions, you might be looking for Liveview and the intervalometer for while. They are hidden under the FIRE button. You need to press the FIRE button and hold it for a few seconds to make the options appear. Took me a moment to figure that one out!

Things I liked

1:1 zooming

Being able to zoom in at 1:1 is incredible. It allows you to review shots faster at the press of a button. The problem with the current implementation is that you either zoom at 1:1 or you dont. It is impossible to do fractional zooming like in the iPhone photo app.

Note: you can only zoom after the shot is taken and zooming is disabled in live view.

Liveview

Adjusting the exposure settings from the iPhone and automatically seen the update on the screen is very cool. Well, its like the first time I used liveview but now I can adjust the lights as I am looking at the result on the iPhone. Brilliant!

Time lapse (Intervalometer)

If there is one thing that I hate about Canon bodies, compared to those from Nikon, is how crappy their firmware are. Nikon gives its user more control over bracketing and allow them to set time lapses in ways that are even better than what you can do with the dedicated and over priced Canon remote trigger. DSLR Remote solves part of this issue by giving its user the ability to take X shots (up to 1000) at any given constant interval.

Note: if you activate the bracketing, only one picture will be taken per interval period. My suggestion to the developper would be to add a check box to set the camera to take 3 (or even better, x) consecutive shots per interval.

Things missing / Wish list

Auto focus

You have to prefocus, even the AF button of the 5D can’t be used remotely. Blame it on the Canon API.

Video recording

While I would have been happy with just the ability to press the record button and have the camera starts recording, a more advanced version would be even better. I am thinking here about the ability to zoom while recording. Doing so would transform the iPhone into the perfect follow focus screen. And, while I am at it, what about plugging the iPhone directly into the camera? (On One Software said that is something they plan to explore once the new iPhone SDK is out, cool!).

Adding filters to the live view

This is a follow up to my previous point. If it was possible to have a high pass filter on top of the video preview, it would make follow focusing even easier/better. I doubt the iPhone has enough CPU power to do this but still, everyone is allowed to dream, no? A more realistic request might be to enable/disable zebra mode with the press of a button when shooting pictures.

Big screen mode

Once the parameters are set, the only required button is FIRE. Why not then hide all the other buttons and put the picture full screen? Even better, rotate it according to the orientation of the iPhone.

Bracketing Assistant

I love bracketing. I don’t know how many times it saved me when shooting outside or in HDR. Unfortunately, DSLR Remote does not offer a bracketing assistant. I would have loved to be able to set it up like the intervalometer: assigning a number of pictures to take and the variation in exposure between each shot. This feature alone would motivate me to bring a laptop in my bag the next time I go in the wild.

Shortcuts to some user made presets

I hate switching my camera settings, even more so if the menu I need to change is deeply nested into the custom functions. Wouldn’t it be great to click on one icon and have all your HDR landscape preferences loaded? Then click another to move into time lapse mode? Of course to be really useful the software would need to be able to access the camera custom functions and I have no idea if it is possible right now…

What I couldn’t test

I wish I had the wireless battery grip to see if it worked. I think it does since it allows tethered shooting but I would love to know if someone has tried it.

Conclusion

Should you get the application? At the current intro price of 10$, it is a no brainer. It is obviously a very first try and some more iterations will be required to satisfy the more demanding users. Yet, the current version does what it is advertised for, never crashed during the 200+ shots I took and saved me from round tripping between the camera and the light stands while adjusting lights to do some product shots.

I am happy.

Buy DSLR Camera Remote

Buy DSLR Camera Remote lite

Btw, there is a trouble shooting document here in case you run into any issues and a FAQ.

Filed in: Photo, Review, Video Tags: iPhone, Review, Software

http://10100.org sp1te

I just got it also and its pretty nice, Its a super cheap wireless firing system, if you have a little laptop and an iphone already. I also want a bracketing system and would looooove the ability to plug directly into the camera.
http://timofejew.ca/ Peter T.

Well, good news – I can confirm that it does indeed work with my 5DmkII and the WFT-E4A. Note that you’ll not want to shoot in RAW… at 802.11g speeds, a RAW file will take a good minute to transfer or so to transfer to the server, and you can’t shoot again until the transfer is complete. I was hoping that I could shoot RAW+Small JPEG, and just have the JPEG transfer over (which is only a second or so), but it insists on transferring both files.

I have a feeling that this is something that cannot be changed by On One (i.e. in PTP mode, I fear it’s all or nothing with the Canon API). I’ll ask them to see if they can add an option to only send JPEGs, but I won’t hold my breath.

That said, if you don’t mind waiting for 1 minute between images if you want RAW capture, the WFT does work, which is quite cool…
- admin
  
  Thanks Peter for the info! I guess it is quite limiting as it is..
http://timofejew.ca/ Peter T.

I should check the speeds with a wired connection to the WFT – I have a feeling that it will be comparable, if not faster, than USB-2 tethering. But more importantly, ethernet cables can be run a LOT further than USB cables. Not as slick as a wireless connection, but the computer can be located much further away. I could see this being quite useful if the camera is in an awkward location (like On One’s demo video for the DSLR Remote – I’d rather not balance my laptop on the top of a basketball pole…)

It’s too bad Canon didn’t put 802.11n in the WFT-E4. That would have rocked – shooting RAW wouldn’t be a big issue then. Ah, well… maybe in a future WFT.

I know this posting isn’t about the WFT, but I just have to say that it does work really well if it’s used in FTP-mode. The camera writes the images to the CF card, and then the WFT sends these files to the FTP server. You can shoot at full speed, even if you’re sending large RAW files wirelessly – the WFT will just keep chugging away, trying to keep up, but not interfering with capturing the image. Very cool. I can imagine a day, sometime in the (hopefully near) future, where Canon will have WiFi built-in to the camera without the need for a $1000+ optional WFT. It really does open up new shooting options… just like the DSLR Remote app does…
admin

Peter, I totally agree with you. I almost picked this battery grip/remote before I realized that it was only using 802.11G.

Even event shooters might have a hard time to figure out how to use this product given the current specs.
http://timofejew.ca/ Peter T.

For what it’s worth, here’s the feature request I put in at On One software: http://www.ononesoftware.com/blog/dslr-camera-remote-feature-requests/#comment-1140
admin

Good list. But I dont know how many people have a WFT so I dont know if it is worth it for them to develop around this product. Still, I am sure some copy cats are going to pop soon and they will have to differentiate themselves from this app.
http://timofejew.ca/ Peter T.

I agree – only a small percentage of people have the WFT, so anything that’s specific to the WFT is probably right at the bottom of their list.

However, if they implement the “Save to memory card only” request that was already on their list, I can only imagine that they’ll have to send at least the preview JPEG to the server, so the iPhone can review the shots. This would accomplish the same thing (although it would only be the preview, not a selectable JPEG). And it would be good for USB tethering too, as if only the preview JPEG were to be sent, the app would be much snappier to run when shooting in RAW.

However, judging from how the EOS Utility uses PTP, I doubt that it’s even possible to direct the camera to only send a subset of the image. I have a feeling that Canon would have to enhance the firmware and SDK. Just speculating… :-)

Regardless, DSLR Remote is pretty slick, and it’ll be really cool once you can start/stop movie recording.
http://jcphotographydallas.com Jason Cypret

Hey great site! Do you have any details about using the intervalometer? I wanted buy this for time lapse, but what happens if the computer goes to sleep?

Thanks for the great site!
admin

Jason: I have no idea, but I would simply remove the sleep option from the preference before starting to shoot. I guess the application would stop working other wise.
http://jcphotographydallas.com Jason Cypret

Yeah, not sure it will work for what I want to do. I’m going to pick up this remote timer (recommended by Joe Simon). http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.19691
admin

Jason: Wow, never heard of this product! It is very cool and at a very decent price. Thx for the info.
Phil Walker

This is very interesting and I personally hate it when people have a downer on new technology so apologies in advance. The thing that I don’t quite understand is that if you have to connect to a laptop (assuming not everyone has the wft) why not use the much bigger laptop screen to view the image?
- admin
  
  Phil: for the cases where you want to see the result of the shot while being away from the computer. I think the best example for this is when placing your lights in a studio. You can see an almost live result of your setup. At least that is what I use it for.
Phil Walker

Thanks for the explanation, I hadn’t thought of the studio application. I guess it’s worth buying just for the intervalometer, not to mention geek appeal! I haven’t noticed any females raving about this yet.