Sony FDR-AX53 Remote Control -- Needless complexity

SonyAX53WiFi.jpg

SonyAX53WiFiThere's a thing that manufactures do to make things more complex. Say, for instance, having a custom app to control a camera. I have the Sony FDR-AX53 that would be nice to control with a remote -- set up a shot, then poke a button to start and stop recording. Literally all I need is a start/stop button. If it can zoom that might be a feature I can use, but I don't think I'd be losing sleep over it.Instead of having the one button that would take $1 to implement in terms of materials there's a janky app instead. Nope... I have to set up a WiFi connection from my phone to the camera which then turns off the display on my camera. I can no longer change any real setting on the camera other than zoom. The viewfinder is now on my phone and the display on the camera is blank other than saying the phone is controlling it. So now I have a phone that isn't connected to my own network making it a bit less useful, a camera that is kind of borked since I can't set things up, and a generally bad experience.Photo Apr 17, 10 34 57 PMThe viewfinder is nowhere as good as the on-camera one and it's a stutter-y turd.Photo Apr 17, 10 34 40 PM To make it better you could perhaps allow the feature of not having the viewfinder shown on the phone. Another simple feature would be to have the camera be able to join to an existing network. This way you could have your phone work as only a remote and function normally on your network and leave the viewfinder on camera behave normally.Less is more. Save the "features" for something useful.Yeah, you can probably scan the QR code up there and the password that I blurred out is likely there. Don't worry, unless I have the camera in the correct mode it won't even show up on the WiFi.

Previous
Previous

Optics for Photographers - Focal Length

Next
Next

Vlogging