May 21st, 2009
Turn your iPhone into a wireless remote for Canon SLRs
There are 748 photography-related apps listed in the iTunes App Store as I write this, but the one I’m most excited about right now isn’t in the store yet. Photoshop plug-in developer onOne Software (of Genuine Fractals fame) has created its first iPhone app, called DSLR Remote, which promises to turn your iPhone into a wireless cable release for Canon EOS dSLR cameras. I blogged about onOne back when the company acquired the super-cool image-resizing technology that eventually became the Content-Aware Scaling feature in Photoshop CS4. But this time, the plug-in developer has gone outside its box to create an app that members of its management team dreamed up over lunch one day. It was submitted less than a week ago, so it hasn’t actually been approved by Apple yet, but onOne blogger (and VP of marketing) Mike Wong has posted an intro video showing DSLR Remote in action. (The shot above was taken by Dan Harlacher, the senior product manager that first came up with the idea, using a Canon 5D Mark II and the DSLR Remote app.)
In addition to remote shutter release, the full professional version of DSLR Remote will let you use an iPhone or iPod Touch to remotely control settings such as shutter speed, aperture, and white balance. You can view your shots on your iPhone after you take them, rotate the iPhone to get a larger view, double-click on a spot to zoom in and check your focus, and if you have Canon dSLR that supports Live View, you can even view a live image stream from your camera.
Of course all of this hotness will set you back a whopping $19.99 (only a handful of current iPhone photo apps cost this much or more), though the developer plans to offer a limited-time introductory price of $9.99 as well as a $1.99 “lite” version that only fires the shutter.
Note that you have to have your Canon dSLR tethered to a computer running the companion DSLR Remote Server software (which will be available as a free download from the onOne site). And you’ll have to connect the iPhone to the computer via WiFi (either through a regular wireless network or via a peer-to-peer ad-hoc connection between the the computer and iPhone). Still, if you have a Canon dSLR and an iPhone or iPod Touch, this is definitely an app to keep your eye out for.
Janice Chen has been covering technology for almost two decades. She got her hands on a Nikon Coolpix 900 back in 1998 and has been a digital camera enthusiast ever since. See her full profile and disclosure of her industry affiliations.
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