Using the Smart Remote or One Touch Remote

- One of the other ways to use the wireless capabilities of your camera is to actually take pictures remotely. You can go with a dedicated wireless remote, like this one here, that allows me to press a button and take a picture, or press a button and have a two-second delay, and then you can take the remote, put it in your pocket, and smile for the camera when you're taking a family portrait. Of course, this works great as long as you have batteries in it, or they haven't gone dead. But there is a more advanced remote that you can use right on your smartphone. It's that same PlayMemories mobile app.

Let me walk you through how to set it up. On your camera, just press the menu button. Then navigate to network and select the option here of control with smartphone. Turn this on. Now select the connection. It's going to go into wifi standby mode. Now, on your device, just launch the Sony PlayMemories mobile app.

What you'll want to do is connect. Scan the code on the camera. And just point it at the screen and tap join. Once this is done, the device is actually connected. Now we've got things connected, and what you're seeing is a live preview on the screen. You might be saying, "How do you know it's live?" There's my hand, it's really there. What I can do here is actually make adjustments. I see a lot of controls. If I tap the menu button here on the camera I can actually adjust all of my settings.

I can go in and choose a white balance setting. Let's go with an auto white balance, and it adjusts. I can tap the screen here and take a look at other options such as shooting in continuous burst mode. I could decide to use the flash if I have it. Do I want to review images, should the images transfer to my smartphone, et cetera. Do I want to hand back GPS data from my smartphone to my camera. There we go.

You see here that there's data transfer with cellular. Let's go ahead and switch to manual mode. You see the settings come up here, and I can adjust. So, for example, I could change the shutter speed right here on the camera. I could adjust the aperture. Let's go with increased depth of field.

Go to f/9. And the ISO, or sensitivity. And dial that in right from the camera remotely. Again, this could be quite useful. Maybe you have the camera mounted in a place where you're taking a shot remotely like nature or wildlife. Or you've put it on a tripod and you're trying to capture a family portrait. You could actually see what your camera's seeing. The settings here are all controllable in how you're actually shooting. Burst or non-burst.

Do you want a self-timer. And you see you can actually make those changes. As we change camera modes you'll see that different controls become available on the screen. So you could find the mode that works for you or even go with a nice easy mode, like auto mode, and just have the camera do the settings for you. When ready, press the shutter button. The camera will set focus and trigger the shot. You'll also see that it downloads the image directly to your device as a resized image.

Let's just go ahead and flip this into burst mode. (shutter clicking) And then stop it when you're done. As you can see, this gives you some interesting options, particularly for remote camera operation. Maybe if you're shooting time lapse and don't want to touch the camera. Or you're shooting a group shot, or nature shots where you've placed the camera and are sitting a little further back not to scare the bird off, or the squirrel. In any case, it's an interesting option that allows you to connect your camera to your smartphone, and as soon as the images are done, they actually transfer and they're ready to share.

Perfect for vacation memories and social media.