Fuji Fuji Camera Remote app

ChangshaNotes

Regular
Location
Changsha, Hunan, China
Name
Colin
My preferred form of photography is street photography and living in China, there are always people on the streets and culturally different or unusual (from my perspective) things to shoot. However, I have one problem. I stick out like a sore thumb. Stealth is near impossible as I live in a suburbs of a city in south-central China and I’m the only non-Chinese here. The closest other foreigners are about 30km away. Wherever I am, people notice and usually stare at me. They are friendly and I speak Mandarin, so if I liked doing street portraits, it would be quite easy, but I don’t. I like candid shooting of everyday life.


I’ve been trying out the Fuji Camera Remote app for iPhone and I think it may change how I sometimes shoot and even how I carry my camera. Fiddling with your phone is a more common sight than reading a book. So if I stand in one spot and play with my phone, people will eventually turn back to what they were doing and ignore me. Without the phone, this just doesn’t happen. I need to practice and these are not great shots by any means but I see some potential for me to get more shots where my presence doesn’t overly effect the scene.


I usually carry my camera in a bag and pull it out when I want to shoot, but I can see myself slinging the camera around my body more often now.


This first shot I took with my back turned. I was using a neck strap and had the camera slung messenger bag style across my back. Using the phone app to ‘see’, I was able to shift my body to get the framing. Even with my back turned the guy is still checking the big, weird foreigner out. (or maybe just wondering what all my body convulsions were about)


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This shot, I was sitting with camera facing the dancers while I faced away.

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In this last shot I was just walking by and saw the lady picking her nose. I’m not really interested in capturing this kind of thing but I just wanted to see if I would disturb her. I was walking while staring into the phone and took the photo on a hitch step.

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The lag is not too bad and pretty easy to get used to and the touch screen focusing is excellent. I just shot on P mode for these.


Have any of you tried using the app in this way?
 
I haven't had any luck using the camera app... I think because my phone is jailbroken...

Maybe, but I'm not sure why that should make a difference.

I did have some problems when I was trying out the app in my house. Because I already had a wifi connection, I had to go into settings and manually switch to the wifi signal the camera was putting out. Then wait for that to connect, then open the app to connect again. If I did this too slowly, it would time out.

Out on the street it was easier as the phone found the camera wifi signal on its own.
 
I haven't had any luck using the camera app... I think because my phone is jailbroken...

At first I had a similar problem with the camera app. Then I realized there are two different apps for different sets of cameras. After I found the app for the right camera it's been smooth sailing since. I don't know if that's specifically the reason but that's what happened with me. I was getting so frustrated too!
 
I've done this a few times, where I set it up in a cafe, sitting next to it, and focus / shoot by phone after 60 seconds when everyone looks back down. Electronic shutter helps a TON here... sucker makes zero noise that way.
 
I've used my phone to trigger my shutter at home mostly so that I can catch my dogs in their normal antics from the next room. I like this feature a lot!
 
It's a great feature however in my experience it doesn't always work well.

I've used it on my X-E2 at home to take family photo's (including me) and it worked perfectly with almost no lag, however when I tried it sitting outside a cafe the other day (same camera / same iphone) it was unusable, the image from the camera on the phone kept freezing for several seconds and there was a massive lag (of maybe 2-3 seconds) between hitting the shutter button and the camera firing!

I tried switching everything off (phone and camera) and re-connecting but it was no better :eek:(

The worst part of it was that I was demonstrating the remote shooting capabilities to a friend (a Nikon user) after I'd been telling him how wonderfully it worked all morning...lol

Maybe it was affected by other electronic devices / wifi signals etc. in the area (I was in a city centre)?

Has anyone else experienced this?
 
Maybe it was affected by other electronic devices / wifi signals etc. in the area (I was in a city centre)?

Has anyone else experienced this?

Although I haven't actually been in a similar situation It works fine in home room. Let me elaborate though, within my room is a heck ton of electronics with bluetooth and wifi connections reaching probably the 20's in just my room. I have 5 different wifi networks in the house and my room is able to recieve from all 5 of these networks (each one has an 5ghz, normal, and guest network, so total of 15 wireless networks criss crossing in my room.) and it was working fine.

What I have noticed however was when my phone was connected to the wifi at home, and then trying to connect the the camera, that was when the lag and everything started.

I assume it's because there are networks around that do not have security (so you can just access when your phone gets close) or networks that your phone possibly recognizes and it's trying to jump between them because the fuji wifi on the camera doesn't connect you to the net and so your phone is trying to find the "best" network.

That's my take anyways.
 
I have had a problem with this too. unable to connect to the remote sitting in a cafe with wifi and heaps of other people's phones etc around. I will try it in a few other places - if I can find one with no wifi maybe that will be the answer! Bur grateful for any other suggestions or workaround
 
When I first got my X100T, it was confusing at first which Fujifilm apps would work and which ones didn't. I ended up downloading them all and tried them all out. It's not the greatest app, but it does work.

Here I used it to take a 1s exposure with the camera sitting on a table at an outside cafe so that I could get a car's tail light in the image.

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FUJIFILM X100T, 19MM (28MM EQUIVALENT), F16, 1/1, ISO 200

I also use an Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mk.II and use the Olympus app, which IMO is better implemented and more stable with it's WiFi connection.

Here I used it again with the camera sitting on a table at a restaurant to take a candid shot of a group of people sitting a table across from me using the app on my iPhone.

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OLYMPUS OM-D E-M5 MK.II, 60MM, F3.2, 1/50, ISO 3200
 
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