Photos In a Good and Geeky Way

It was a good and geeky Sunday morning

When I have a visit from my mother she likes to go to the Sunday morning market in St. Feliu. I have absolutely no desire whatsoever to wander around the market looking at all that stuff. There’s not much stuff for us good and geeky types! So my wife will go with her around the market while I go to the harbour. On Sunday morning I took my Sony NEX6 mirrorless camera with me. I always have my iPhone with me for photographs anyway. I like to take pictures of the fishing boats, getting close up shots of rust and hydraulics. Most of the fishing boats were out so I only got a few shots of my preferred subject matter. So what I did was to sit in the car for a while and try to get images from the camera over to the iPad. I am only had partial success with this effort.

Downloading via the hotspot

I was having some difficulty connecting the iPad to the camera. So I did some checking on the camera have found that the software for collecting over Wi-Fi to mobile devices needed to be updated. So with a bit of good and geeky fiddling around I connected the camera to the iPhone Wi-Fi hotspot. I was then able to download the camera connection application update to the phone and I downloaded another app as well. I was looking for the camera software to show the iPad a QR code so I could use it to connect between the two devices. I didn’t need the QR code after all, because after updating the software on the camera connected straightaway to the iPad. The camera connection software on the camera connects with Play Mobile app from Sony on the iOS devices. My idea was to send some of the photos already taken during the morning trip around the harbour to the iPad to do some work in iColorama. I’m an iPad artist. Despite my good and geekiness I wasn’t able to get photos already taken from the camera to the iPad. I would need to use the iOS camera connection kit for that probably. However I was able to control the camera from the iPad which is quite useful. Shot taken directly like this do transfer directly across to your iOS device.

Controlling a Sony Mirrorless camera from the iPad or iPhone

The Play Mobile software from Sony lets you change settings and shoot pictures on your camera from your iOS device. You can change things like the aperture setting or the shutter speed setting. I quite like being able to use the touchscreen to set where I want the focus to be on the picture. There are other settings you can fiddle with also such as the ISO setting. There is a noticeable lag on the connection between the camera and the iOS device. If you’re working with the camera on a tripod then it doesn’t really matter. In any case, the most important thing is that when you press the shutter button it happens almost instantly and you’re not likely to miss the action in the scene. On Sunday I didn’t have my tripod with me so I only took a couple of shots. I was impressed that it worked as well as it did and I can see myself using it again. It would be good for candid street photography. You could put the camera in position with the desired background and take photos as people walked into the shot.