Happy Friday Everyone! Hope Ya'll are having a great week. This week I want to talk about something that photographers don't talk about or use that much. Their Camera's phone or tablet App. Now I admit that in the past theses apps were just an after thought of the camera companies and didn't work well at all. They were really more frustrating than anything else. Now I have used Nikon's older app and Canon's and of Course Sony's and now Leica's app. They have come a long way since I first tried to use them in years past. Maybe the connectivity of phones and camera's have gotten better. Maybe the camera companies finally figured out that photographers really wanted the apps to do what the camera companies claimed they Screenshot would do. But either way they work a lot better and if you're not using them you're really missing out on features that your camera can do for you. They use Wifi and Bluetooth to connect to your camera and can do all kinds of things. Let's see what they can do.

Remote Control. One of the coolest things they can do is remotely control your camera . Depending on your camera brand you could change Screenshot your aperture , shutter speed, iso, focal length and of course the shutter button. At a minimum you can use your phone as a remote shutter release for long exposures. You may even be able to do a time lapse from your phone depending on your camera if that is possible or not. This is a cool feature even if you only use it as a backup remote incase yours breaks or you forgot yours.

Change Settings. Depending on your camera brand and camera you may be able to go through all of your settings on your camera and change them from your phone. If your camera can do this it's an awesome feature that you can easily navigate from your phone. But it does depend on camera model and camera company on how much you can change.

Cull photos on phone. Being able to see photo's on your phone or tablet that are on your camera without downloading them Screenshot is fantastic. Imagine shooting all morning and going for coffee or lunch . Grab your phone or tablet and see all the photo's that you took. You can mark your favorites and then at the end you can download only the ones you marked and then send them to Lightroom to edit. All without hooking your camera to anything. My Leica Foto's app can do this and I only download the ones I want to my phone or tablet saving room on the mobile device. Don't know if all apps do this but I suspect they can do at least some of it. 

Screenshot Photo styles and Luts. Again depending on your camera and brand you may be able to download photo styles and/or Luts to your camera to use. We get the standard styles like landscape, portrait, monochrome but being able to download specific film simulations or different styles can really add to your creativity when shooting. Having those at your fingertips like profiles in Lightroom in your camera to use. This is really cool.

Firmware and Updates. Some of the apps can check your firmware of your camera and even update without using a SD card or hooking up to your computer following directions from a PDF and maybe even having to download software just to install firmware into your camera. We don't have to do this with our phones why would we want to do this with our Cameras? It just makes sense to me this should be on all apps and camera's but it's not. Like always depending on the camera company or your model of camera will your app be able to do this.

GPS. Global Positioning System is a way to geotag your photographs. This is the feature that I have been using the most for my Sony camera's in the past. With bluetooth your camera talks to your phone and puts your coordinates to your photograph. Then in Lightroom you can use the map feature and see where your photo's were taken. This is an awesome feature. Sometimes I can see an older photo and not know where it was taken but with this feature I can see anywhere in the world I took a photograph. This can be used to go back and maybe getting even a better photograph. I love this feature. With older Sony's I had to physically go and hook up the bluetooth at the beginning of the day but with newer camera's after you initially set it up It automatically does this when you turn on the camera which I love. Same with my little Leica D-Lux 8.

Store Camera Settings. You can save your camera settings on your phone and use them at a later time. Maybe you had to reset your camera to Screenshot factory settings for some reason. Instead of going through every menu item in your settings you can go to your saved settings and download them back to your camera with the click of a button. How awesome is that. Maybe you have a backup camera and want the same settings on that camera with the click of a button after you've connected your backup camera to the app. Nice. 

As you can see your camera's app can make your photography life easier. Whether using the remote , culling , photo styles, firmware updates, GPS or storing settings. Make sure to download and check out your camera's app it may be able to help you in your photography. Until next week Get out and Shoot!

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 posts there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link