6D2 WiFi and bluetooth interfacing to a tablet

[Don Haines]

I have a 6D2 and an iPad. I wanted to use the iPad to remotely control the camera and to be able to pull pictures off of the camera.... These are my observations.

My first step was to download the Canon Connect app to my iPad.... easy!

Turn Bluetooth on in both devices and give a name to the camera.... easy!

Connect the camera to the iPad through Bluetooth... easy!

At this point, you are connected, and when you try to do anything with the Canon Control app, you get a message that you are not connected through WiFi..... In other words, what is the use of connecting to the camera through Bluetooth, if you can not do anything? Why can you not use the Canon Control app over Bluetooth? ? ? Have I screwed up or missed some setting?

So I enable WiFi on the camera and connect. A fairly easy process.... and note that the camera is providing a SSID and the iPad connects to the camera. This means that it will work "way out in the middle of nowhere" where you do not have other WiFi to connect through. Canon got that one right.....

With WiFi enabled, you can control the camera, but not fully. It works, there is a minimum of shutter lag, you can touch the screen for focus. It is good, but could have been better. I expect that as time goes on, Canon's WiFi interface will improve.... and this could mean firmware updates in the future.

Another thing I was disappointed with in the Bluetooth is the lack of ability to connect to a Bluetooth speaker (headphones) or a Bluetooth microphone..... The lack of a headphone jack on the 6D2 sucks, but it would be so easy to connect to a Bluetooth speaker or headphones, and they are everywhere. (I have a pair on my head as I type this)

I will attempt to test out the range for WiFi tethering tonight..... anyone have some practical experience/observations?

 

[stevelee]

I have no experience with my 6D2 yet, though I have received encouragement in another thread to set up the camera remotely on my deck so I can photograph birds at the feeder next door without my presence on the deck scaring them away. I have read the separate wifi manual eos6d-mk2-wffim-en.pdf that you can download from Canon's site. I haven't considered how I might use bluetooth. I posted a picture of cardinals at a feeder taken after sunset when I could barely see a thing, and the camera took clear but noisy pictures in the almost dark. Apparently the birds couldn't see me, either, or they were so intent on feeding before they slept that they didn't care I was out there.

Last year at this time I did use the wifi on my G7X II during an extended trip to the Rockies. I didn't do any remote shooting, but I could view my pictures on the iPad rather than on the camera's little LCD screen. And I transferred a few to my phone so I could email to people. Most of the time the set up went very smoothly.

On a trip to the British Isles in the spring, I wish I had used the wifi some for GPS tagging. The G doesn't have its own GPS, but when paired with the phone, it will use the phone's location data for the pictures' EXIF. Since I was traveling on a bus during the day, I was afraid that the extended pairing would eat up the battery charge in both phone and camera before the end of the day. Perhaps I was overcautious. Some pictures are obvious in their location of course, such as a cathedral that's been in the same place for 700 years. But it would be nice now to know quite where I was on the Irish coast for a given picture.

 

[Talys]

@Don - Assuming you're just talking about ad hoc -- it depends greatly on the environment and your device. On a Surface Pro, it can be essentially anywhere in the same room, even a large one, but the speed falls off as you get further, if your room is large. It does very poorly with walls; I don't use wifi shooting outside, so I can't provide much insight there.


@stevelee - If you want to photograph birds on a feeder, I find the best way is just to be patient, and eventually they'll ignore you (this way, you get to focus and compose, too). However, if you want to remote shoot, a cheap wireless trigger that uses the trigger port is the way to go, as opposed to liveview shooting. Just sit another 10 feet away or on the other side of a window. A remote trigger uses way less battery, has no lag, and has tactile feedback / a physical button.

 

[stevelee]

@stevelee - If you want to photograph birds on a feeder, I find the best way is just to be patient, and eventually they'll ignore you (this way, you get to focus and compose, too). However, if you want to remote shoot, a cheap wireless trigger that uses the trigger port is the way to go, as opposed to liveview shooting. Just sit another 10 feet away or on the other side of a window. A remote trigger uses way less battery, has no lag, and has tactile feedback / a physical button.

I have a wireless trigger that probably would work with the 6D2, but I haven't tried it. I'm not sure where I would get to see the feed well enough to time the shot, though. That was the point of the live view. Perhaps I'll just try your method of hanging out long enough for the birds not to care, if I can muster enough patience. A cold front just came through, so it will be pleasant out there anyway.

A lot of the point of trying out different ways of doing this was for me to learn how to do them, so that I will already know what I'm doing if I ever need the skill. Trying out the wireless trigger with this camera would be a good idea, too, for the same reason.

Leaving the camera on a tripod on the deck does run the risk of a neighbor's cat, who could want to check out the new item in his domain before I could get outside to stop him.

So far I haven't tried any lens other than the kit STM on the camera. I like that lens a lot, and the autofocus is very quick. It may have me spoiled for my older lenses if they don't respond as well. The old 75-300 lens still has the solar filter on it from the eclipse, and it is still on my T3i, so I know I haven't used it since August 21. I know its optics are not going to improve from having a bigger sensor, but it should still be usable. It made surprisingly good eclipse pictures. I don't shoot telephoto pictures very often, probably in part because I don't have a great lens. I don't know whether I would use a better one more, or if I should just be satisfied with this one for such occasional use. I'm not into wildlife photography (yet?). The birds are just handy subjects behind my house.

Thanks for the ideas.

I bought the 6D2 as a birthday present for myself. Maybe I should consider the 24-105 kit lens as my Christmas present, since it is no L.

 

[Don Haines]

@stevelee - If you want to photograph birds on a feeder, I find the best way is just to be patient, and eventually they'll ignore you (this way, you get to focus and compose, too). However, if you want to remote shoot, a cheap wireless trigger that uses the trigger port is the way to go, as opposed to liveview shooting. Just sit another 10 feet away or on the other side of a window. A remote trigger uses way less battery, has no lag, and has tactile feedback / a physical button.

I have a wireless trigger that probably would work with the 6D2, but I haven't tried it. I'm not sure where I would get to see the feed well enough to time the shot, though. That was the point of the live view. Perhaps I'll just try your method of hanging out long enough for the birds not to care, if I can muster enough patience. A cold front just came through, so it will be pleasant out there anyway.

A lot of the point of trying out different ways of doing this was for me to learn how to do them, so that I will already know what I'm doing if I ever need the skill. Trying out the wireless trigger with this camera would be a good idea, too, for the same reason.

Leaving the camera on a tripod on the deck does run the risk of a neighbor's cat, who could want to check out the new item in his domain before I could get outside to stop him.

So far I haven't tried any lens other than the kit STM on the camera. I like that lens a lot, and the autofocus is very quick. It may have me spoiled for my older lenses if they don't respond as well. The old 75-300 lens still has the solar filter on it from the eclipse, and it is still on my T3i, so I know I haven't used it since August 21. I know its optics are not going to improve from having a bigger sensor, but it should still be usable. It made surprisingly good eclipse pictures. I don't shoot telephoto pictures very often, probably in part because I don't have a great lens. I don't know whether I would use a better one more, or if I should just be satisfied with this one for such occasional use. I'm not into wildlife photography (yet?). The birds are just handy subjects behind my house.

Thanks for the ideas.

I bought the 6D2 as a birthday present for myself. Maybe I should consider the 24-105 kit lens as my Christmas present, since it is no L.

I have a hunting blind about 10 feet away from the feeders. I can safely say that of all the photography related gear I have tried, that one has had the biggest impact on the pictures

 

[alvarow]

Bluetooth will work as you expect (without WiFi) on Android ... that is a restriction from iOS. This is similar to try and connect a OBD-II scanner from your car's interface to an iPhone. They all work via wireless, and the same model usually works fine via Bluetooth on Android, which is much less of a hassle.

I haven't gone and dug deep on iOS documentation and APIs, but I am pretty sure this is the case, but feel free to research it and let us know, if you think different.

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

Canon's wi-fi is a pain to operate, particularly if you connect to different devices, the wi-fi password never seems to work right after a few days.

I shot the eclipse tethered to my iphone, and everything was going great, right up to totality when I switched to bracketing 7 shots. That worked for about 5 sequences, then the camera hung up and by the time it was restarted, the totality had passed.

I had practices with both iphone and Android tablet, the iphone seemed more reliable. I tried several apps, but the Canon app was most reliable as well.

Using a remote trigger to capture something never works out well for me, I like to frame the subject rather than crop and throw away half the pixels due to inability to fill the frame.

 

[Talys]

@stevelee - If you want to photograph birds on a feeder, I find the best way is just to be patient, and eventually they'll ignore you (this way, you get to focus and compose, too). However, if you want to remote shoot, a cheap wireless trigger that uses the trigger port is the way to go, as opposed to liveview shooting. Just sit another 10 feet away or on the other side of a window. A remote trigger uses way less battery, has no lag, and has tactile feedback / a physical button.

I have a wireless trigger that probably would work with the 6D2, but I haven't tried it. I'm not sure where I would get to see the feed well enough to time the shot, though. That was the point of the live view. Perhaps I'll just try your method of hanging out long enough for the birds not to care, if I can muster enough patience. A cold front just came through, so it will be pleasant out there anyway.

A lot of the point of trying out different ways of doing this was for me to learn how to do them, so that I will already know what I'm doing if I ever need the skill. Trying out the wireless trigger with this camera would be a good idea, too, for the same reason.

Leaving the camera on a tripod on the deck does run the risk of a neighbor's cat, who could want to check out the new item in his domain before I could get outside to stop him.

So far I haven't tried any lens other than the kit STM on the camera. I like that lens a lot, and the autofocus is very quick. It may have me spoiled for my older lenses if they don't respond as well. The old 75-300 lens still has the solar filter on it from the eclipse, and it is still on my T3i, so I know I haven't used it since August 21. I know its optics are not going to improve from having a bigger sensor, but it should still be usable. It made surprisingly good eclipse pictures. I don't shoot telephoto pictures very often, probably in part because I don't have a great lens. I don't know whether I would use a better one more, or if I should just be satisfied with this one for such occasional use. I'm not into wildlife photography (yet?). The birds are just handy subjects behind my house.

Thanks for the ideas.

I bought the 6D2 as a birthday present for myself. Maybe I should consider the 24-105 kit lens as my Christmas present, since it is no L.

For bird feeders, my experience is that many birds have their favorite staging spots where they fly from (and sometimes line up at). So instead of trying to catch it when it's right at the feeder, watch their staging area, and start clicking away when they take off. You have a frame buffer of about 16-ish (on RAW), which is nearly 3 seconds, and it only takes about 1 second for birds to get from where they were to the feeder. So somewhere in there, you should get lucky and grab a couple of in-focus shots

Any Canon remote trigger with the female 3-pin should work. The ones for the non-weather sealed units (like 80D and Rebel) use the mini-mic connector and won't. The placement of the 6DII's remote trigger port is really nice too.

Canon's wi-fi is a pain to operate, particularly if you connect to different devices, the wi-fi password never seems to work right after a few days.

The 80D WiFi "pairing" with multiple devices was the bane of my existence. Every time you connect a different device, it seemed delete the previous pairing, and repairing would sometimes not work -- or take a long time -- from the Remote Shooting utility. It felt like black magic to make it work at times.

The 6DII, however, has always been really easy to pair a new device, and it allows you to maintain multiple WiFi pairings, and even remembers the device names of what you paired. It is a godsend!