I’m excited to tell you that this afternoon, onOne Software submitted our first iPhone app to the Apple iTunes App Store. In case you’re wondering what kind of application we’ve developed, I’ll tell you right now that it is unlike any application we’ve developed before.

dslr_remote_coming_soon

The new application that we’ve devloped is called the DSLR Remote and it is a wireless cable release for your Canon EOS DSLR camera.

Most of us here at onOne shoot with Canon DSLR cameras. Several of us here also have iPhones. One day we were sitting at lunch and Dan Harlacher our senior product manager said “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if there was an iPhone app that let you trigger your camera?”

So, from that we convinced Craig, our company president, to let us have one of our engineers build this application and this morning, we sent it off to Apple to be reviewed for the iTunes App Store.

Okay, if you’re wondering how it works, here’s a quick run down.

  1. You need either an iPhone or an iPod Touch
  2. You need a supported Canon EOS DSLR [ 1 ]
  3. A laptop or desktop computer running the free companion DSLR Remote Server software
  4. A USB cable to connect your supported Canon EOS DSLR camera to the computer running the free server software

The DSLR Remote app running on your iPhone (or iPod Touch) communicates to the DSLR Remote Server software via a WIFI connection. [ 2 ]

From your iPhone [ 3 ] you can control settings such as shutter speed, aperture and white balance. You can of course fire the camera shutter as well. If you have a Canon EOS DSLR camera that supports Live View [ 4 ] you can even get a live stream of the camera’s viewfinder on your iPhone.

You also get an Intervalometer so you can do time lapse photography. We’ll be posting full specs and the full feature set to our web site soon but I couldn’t wait any longer to share this information with you.

Oh, the version of the DSLR Remote application that I’m talking about here is the Professional version and will normally sell for $19.99 on the iTunes App Store, but will be offered for $9.99 as an introductory price. A “Lite” version will also be available for $1.99 that only fires the shutter. The required server software that runs on your Mac or Windows computer will be a free download from the onOne website.

A while back, I posted a photo of me setting up the camera for a video shoot that we did. Here’s another picture of me (doing my best Air Jordan impersonation) taken remotely by Dan Harlacher using my Canon 5D Mark II and the DSLR Remote application.

air-wong

Photo by Dan Harlacher

I’ll be posting a couple of introductory videos about the new product in the next day or two as we finish up the editing. If you’d like to be informed of the release, leave a comment and stay tuned to the blog here. We don’t know exactly when Apple will approve the app for the iTunes App Store after we submit it.

For those of you who are Nikon shooters and are wondering “Hey, why is this Canon only?” the answer is:

  1. Because most of us here have Canon cameras; and
  2. This is our first iPhone app and we’re not sure how well it will be received

We think it will be cool and that photographers will want it but we thought we’d dip our toes in the water with this one with just one camera platform first. If it goes well and if we get a lot of feedback from Nikon shooters then we’ll look at making it available for the Nikon platform as well.

Update 5/15/09 @ 10:07 pm PST: Thank you everybody for the fantastic enthusiasm! On a feature note, I didn’t mention earlier that if you set the camera to Bulb mode, you can open and close the shutter from the DSLR Remote application on your iPhone. Perfect for long exposures and specifically for Light Painting as Ben Wilmore mentioned on my FaceBook page earlier today.

  1. Digital Rebel XT, Rebel XTi, Rebel XS, Rebel XSi, 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D, 5D, 5D Mark II, 1D Mark II, Mark IIn, Mark III, 1Ds Mark II, Mark III [↩]
  2. Either a wireless internet connection in your studio or via an Ad-Hoc network connection on location [↩]
  3. From now on, if I say iPhone, I mean iPhone and iPod Touch [↩]
  4. Rebel XSi, 40D, 50D, 5D Mark II, 1Ds Mark III, 1D Mark III [↩]

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