[UncleVanya]

My A7RII used Playmemories and my A7RIII does not. Playmemories was downscaled in importance by Sony over time and many very useful features are a bit lost now. But this isn't about that.

Imaging Edge (Sony) does a few things well:

1) Automatically tries to join the camera's wifi if you have already configured the phone (iphone)
(the flow is; push connect, it pops up asking if you want to join that wifi that it knows belongs to that camera... if it is on and ready it works - hopefully. Some users have problems with connectivity, that's the one thing that works ok for me.)
2) Transfers of files are reasonably fast.

Issues I have:
A) No touch to focus.
- No way to control focus point at all
- can't even change the focus zones / Can do this on tethered USB to desktop
- you can switch to manual focus however
B) Sluggish and difficult interface for changing shutter speed or aperture
- interface varies depending on the mode you are in
- slow to adjust and relies on press to change or slider not very intuitive
C) shooting modes are hard switched at the camera - can't change A to S or P or M...
D) No pixel shift mode switch in mobile
- Pixel shift is accessible in desktop tethered via USB
- Not a lot of feedback during pixel shift shots via tethered use
E) Desktop version only seems to connect via USB for remote control use

Monitor+ is a nice app that is 3rd party but only works with newer bodies...

My Pentax Image sync with my KP:

Negative comparisons...
1) Harder to connect; must remember to join wifi before launching the application
2) S-L-O-W file transfers - much much much slower than the Sony combination.

Positive comparisons...
A) Intuitive interface. Scroll bar for aperture/shutter speed with easy responsive action.
B) Touch to focus! Seems like a no brainer given the touchscreen!
C) Richer options for configuration.

The m43 Panasonic and Olympus apps have their own quirks as well. I think the Panasonic (as I recall) with my GX-8 is the easiest and the Olympus EM-1 with their app isn't bad either. But I recall the GX-7 worked fabulously with their app on one of my phones with NFC and the other with WiFi but neither would do the other... very confusing.

This entire area of remote control and remote transfer of data files seems to be a bit less than mature across many brands. I guess I'm underestimating the complexity and the R&D involved to make this cleaner and more useful?


In an ideal world - both cameras would use the same 3rd party app that leveraged api's to talk to the cameras. The apps would do these things:

1) automatically try to connect to the camera (similar to sony subject to OS restrictions)
2) allow flexible control of the camera's focusing - including manually selected a focus point.
3) permit background file transfers - tag 'em, and bag 'em.
4) faster response in all ways including transfers
5) soft mode switches - ability to override the hard mode setting (or maybe a setting on the camera like "P" could be dual purposed)
6) ability to set custom buttons like the hardware ones on the cameras
7) intuitive manual focus controls for lenses that support it

[Adam]

I agree, this area still needs a lot of improvement. I think a key limiting factor is the camera's hardware- there just isn't enough processing power to make things work as smoothly as they need to when there's a heavyweight api and communication that needs to happen wirelessly. That said, there are things that would seem simple to implement, such as unlocking more shooting modes on Pentax bodies.

[Clarkey]

This is a good topic. My experience of Pentax is not current enough to comment. I recall when Sony first introduced the play memory apps (NEX-5N) I couldn't use it as I had a Blackberry!

I would say that the Fujifilm, Panasonic and Olympus apps are now quite good, you hit on the issue though, which is the connection method being unreliable.
In theory my Panasonic ZS200 and Fulifilm X-T30 supported LE Blutooth, but I could not get them connected consistently on Samsung or Apple hardware.

Also, the amount of information the apps collect is rather ridiculous (DJI seems to be the worst, although at least they have a safety reason), my personal phone does not have data and sometimes the Panasonic and Olympus apps complain.