DSLR Camera Remote 1.1 Feature Set

Posted on July 27, 2009

I know many of you are patiently awaiting the official list of features added in the 1.1 release of the DSLR Camera Remote app, so here it is. Before you run off to the iTunes App Store though, please note, contrary to what many people are twittering out there, we have not yet submitted the app. More on that in a moment. Here's the list of new features that are being added to version 1.1.

  • Nikon DSLR Camera Support (see complete list here)
  • Canon 500D/T1i/Kiss X2 support
  • Auto Bracketing for HDR shooters
  • Burst Mode
  • Auto-Focus during LiveView
  • Updated user interface with improved horizontal view mode
  • Lightroom Auto-Import support
  • Changed the naming system for downloaded images to prevent accidental overwriting
  • Raw+JPG are not treated as a single entity rather than appearing on the phone as two files
  • Auto-update added to the companion server software in case there are updates available
  • Fixes to various bugs reported by users

I've said before that we would release this in mid July and here we are at July 27. At least 12 days past the most common interpretation of mid July and still no 1.1 update. There have been several comments left here or emails sent to me that we are either lazy; stupid; liars; or some combination of the three. To that, I say we're none of the above. :-) If anything, perhaps we were a little optimistic. Maybe I shouldn't have shared anything with anybody, but I did, so it's out there. Here's a little insight into what's going on and why the update isn't out yet.

First and foremost, we are doing best at getting this 1.1 update complete and out the door. Our developer is working full days (8+ hours) plus weekends on this 1.1 update (which technically could be called a 1.5 update, but I digress). Our QA Engineer is doing the same as well as working on testing all of the other updates and projects we're working on for our Photoshop plug-ins. But we also want to make sure that what we send out there is good and is going to work. To do this, we have to test each new feature that is implemented on every camera that we support tethered to on both a Mac & Windows computer. That "Mac & Windows computer" portion translates into 5 different OS's to test with.

  • Mac OS X v10.4.x
  • Mac OS X v10.5.x
  • Windows XP (32-bit)
  • Windows Vista (32-bit)
  • Windows Vista (64-bit)

That's 27 supported cameras and 5 operating systems times the number of features both new and old (you have to make sure implementing a new feature doesn't break an existing one). That's 135 camera & operating platform combinations to test each feature on. Multiply that times the number of features and I'm hoping at that point you might realize that there's more to releasing an application that meets the eye.

So I'll repeat. We are neither lazy, stupid or liars. I'm not taking any of those comments personally and I don't hold any ill will or grudges against those who have made those comments. I understand the frustration at wanting something when you can't get it ((It probably didn't help when people interpreted Rob Galbraith's review of a pre-release version of the 1.1 update as a review of a shipping version)). We've all been there in some form or another about something we were interested in. If anything, we're flattered that so many people want this update.

Further, this 12-day delay shouldn't give anybody any cause to doubt our intentions or make you less confident in us. There's a reason we've been in business for 4 years now during less than ideal economic conditions. We do what we say we're going to do. Yes, sometimes it takes longer than we think, but rest assured we have lots of other projects we want to be working on so the sooner we get done with this update, the happier everybody will be. We do our best to NOT have to do a bunch of maintenance releases by trying to catch bugs, fix them and generally make things work right the first time. Nobody likes to do things twice and I doubt most of you would want to get a buggy piece of software.

Well, this was much longer than I thought it would be, but now at least you know the official list of features in version 1.1 and hopefully have gained a little insight into why it's taking longer than any of us would like.

For anybody out there reading this who purchased version 1.0 recently in the iTunes App Store, thinking you were getting version 1.1, don't worry. You'll get the 1.1 update when it's available as a free update.