Canon’s image.canon cloud service is now live

magarity

CR Pro
Feb 14, 2017
283
193
I´m trying it at home, where I have a 600mb wi-fi internet connection.
The latest 5Ghz wifi (802.11ac) gets 200Mb/s so while your home to ISP might be 600Mb/s, your wifi isn't. Even if you have a fancy router that can do that much in total, individual devices like the camera will not. Furthermore all the camera models have 2.4Ghz, which is lucky to get 20Mb/s.
Canon means for this to be used with your phone in hotspot mode or a laptop with a cell SIM while you are out and about. Using it at home makes no sense as you've discovered.
 
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Mar 4, 2020
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I have not used it either, but what I would like is to be able to rate an image in camera (or "lock" image) and set it to only upload those images. That would reduce the number of images uploaded, saving some time and providing protection for your best images. Seems like this should be easy enough to do.

I also agree that I do not understand why this needs to be a separate app from canon connect app. Again, that just seems to make things more complicated.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
293
The latest 5Ghz wifi (802.11ac) gets 200Mb/s

The latest is 802.11ax (WiFi 6) which has a theoretical maximum of 9.6Gb/s (ac was 3.5) - but those are speed with wide channels and a lot of antennas. Realistic speeds are slower, but it's not difficult to get more than 200Mb/s, many phones can do better easily. For example one of the phones on my desk is connected at 433Mb/s, and it's not a top of the line ones.

It's hard to put many antennas in a camera without having them blocked by hands. and leaving space to other needed items. Still, they may go faster than many people upload speeds. But for some lucky ones with symmetric fibre links at 1Gb/s, most have slower speeds. Some fibre//high speed coax links have usually some hundred Mb/s, VDSL usually some tens, while ADSL rarely goes beyond 1Mb. Symmetric connections are usually more expensive and often not available but to business users.

4G is usually around the lower tens, 5G should be higher, but it's still available in relatively few places.

Uploading a lot of large RAW images will take time. Uploading smaller JPEG/HEIF files will take considerably less.
 
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JBizzle

EOS R
Apr 15, 2020
3
0
I can´t see the advantages of the service. Can someone explain it to me? You need to be connected to a wi-fi or some other internet connection. I´m trying it at home, where I have a 600mb wi-fi internet connection. It needs like 45 minutos to upload 38 files. What is the benefit versus download it to my computer and then upload to my Google Drive?
Exactly. It's junk in it's current state. I have 1000 mbps and it took 90 minutes for 50 RAW files. There is no benefit. The "automated" upload/download to other services doesn't work either. Useless. I am not saying it can NEVER work, just that (as launched) it is not worth it.
 
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Jun 27, 2013
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Hi Chaitanya.
Doesn’t upload speed depend on whether you have ADSL or SDSL? SDSL should give the same both up and down.

Cheers, Graham.
SDSL(still not standardised) connections are not that common and they generally are targetted towards small to medium sized enterprises who cannot afford T1/E1 lines. In case someone is indeed using SDSL or any leased line they should get much higher upstream speeds than users using Adsl connections.
 
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You can use your phone or a mobile router as a portable wifi hotspot, and use it to transfer images to the remote server. Then you or someone else can download them to a computer from it. Or move them to another supported storage.
I get the cloud backup/redundancy benefits but this is meant to be temporary storage / single slot backup solution. If you are using your phone as a hotspot then surely saving the files locally on the phone is a better/faster and maybe cheaper (iphone flash tax vs andriod uSD card vs data plans especially when roaming) option. 512GB should be sufficient short term storage for stills until reaching a backup PC/external drive. iPhone 11 has 802.11ax now and most phones will be using it over the next 2/3 year refresh cycle. Although 5G has very high theoretical speeds (upload and download), coverage is very patchy and distance to tower makes a lot of difference. It will be the future solution but it will maybe take a couple of years to be ubiquitous in urban areas together with 5G phones.

I still think that having 2 x micro SD cards in one SD card in RAID 1 is the best option for single slot cameras. Still looks to be single slot/card and camera only reads/writes to the primary micro SD card. If the primary card fails then you can remove the other micro SD card as the backup and upload from there and replace the faulty micro SD card.
Pity no one makes such a device!
 
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You can use your phone or a mobile router as a portable wifi hotspot, and use it to transfer images to the remote server. Then you or someone else can download them to a computer from it. Or move them to another supported storage.

It's unlikely that anyone hotspotting from their phone or a portable router would have the bandwidth to spare for this. Intense uploads such as this would likely incur massive surcharges, or be throttled quickly. I agree with another poster who suggests that if there's an option to only upload starred images, then I could see the appeal for making sure that your absolute keeper shots get backed up off-site ASAP. Otherwise, you're better off just temporarily keeping the backups on your phone. And either way, it would be nice if this was an update to the existing Camera Connect App, instead of being a separate workflow.
 
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I'm already very positive that they support the R, having said that I'm confident:
1. the R5 will have 5GHz Wifi and a faster processor, I'm sure that will address the speed issue by a factor (90--> 9min)
2. I think Canon wants to establish HEIF, so that's another 2-3x factor of speed (--> 3 min for 50 images)
3. Send to Google Drive worked for me, not yet automatically
4. app itself works pretty snappy and intuitive for a first live for such a complex product (tried some use cases for myself)

Last time I was on my Japan trip, i had a portable 3G router with me for 10 USD a week, I took 3k images, so all assumptions from above thats 3h upload at once, or half an hour every day.
A wedding photographer maybe takes 500 GB of images & video's a day across 4 cameras: that's 2000 min across 4 cameras --> 8.33h upload each (probably blocking each other's upload stream), don't think that works - maybe no video then.

So as a prosumer/travel/Getty photographer, its pretty exciting!

Firstly, I think you're vastly over-estimating the increase in upload time attributed to 5Ghz Wifi and the processor here... The 90mins isn't the time it takes for the camera to shift the images off the card via Wi-Fi, the bottle-neck is the upload bandwidth provided by the user's ISP.

Secondly, HEIF isn't going to result in 2-3x smaller file sizes. In fact, it's likely that image file sizes will remain pretty similar to JPEG, but with roughly twice the image quality.

So although future advances will bring speed improvements, it's the networks that need to improve, not the cameras. And it's going to be quite a while before we see a 30x speed improvement there.
 
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I'm pretty sure the idea is to put your phone in wifi hotspot mode. I also suspect it is meant to be "not far behind" more than "instantaneous".

The only way I could see this working effectively (neither killing battery life nor maxing out upload bandwidth of a mobile data plan, while still actually providing a genuine convenience) would be if the app could be set up to work like this:

1) I quickly star an image while shooting.
2) The camera turns on Wifi, pings my phone, and establishes a connection.
3) The starred image gets transferred to my phone that's still in my pocket, which in turn begins to sync it to the cloud.
4) The WiFi on the camera turns off once more, until another image is starred which has not been yet noted by the system as having already been uploaded.

If the software gets to this point, I'd be delighted. But as it stands, the Canon Camera Connect app still requires my phone to be left on the app's menu screen if I want to maintain a connection to auto transfer images as I shoot, which renders the whole process very awkward and battery draining for both devices. So I'm not going to hold my breath on Canon making this seamless any time soon...
 
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magarity

CR Pro
Feb 14, 2017
283
193
if I want to maintain a connection to auto transfer images as I shoot, which renders the whole process very awkward and battery draining for both devices. So I'm not going to hold my breath on Canon making this seamless any time soon...
Ah, then if the phone is in your pocket what really needs to happen is not a WiFi connection but Bluetooth, which is fast enough for file transfer yet much lower power. Pretty sure the current model cameras all have BT. Unfortunately they seem to only use it to initiate WiFi or only be a remote trigger. Not data transfer. Hmm.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
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It's unlikely that anyone hotspotting from their phone or a portable router would have the bandwidth to spare for this. Intense uploads such as this would likely incur massive surcharges, or be throttled quickly.

That's strictly dependent on your internet contract and which part of the world you're operating in. Here I can get a consumer or business mobile unlimited data plan for €40/month. A lot depends on how you shoot. It's clear shooting at 10fps continuously requires a different bandwidth that taking a shot every few minutes.
 
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Starting out EOS R

EOS R5 - RF24-105mm F4L, RF70-200mm f2.8L
Feb 13, 2020
295
315
That's strictly dependent on your internet contract and which part of the world you're operating in. Here I can get a consumer or business mobile unlimited data plan for €40/month. A lot depends on how you shoot. It's clear shooting at 10fps continuously requires a different bandwidth that taking a shot every few minutes.
Your right, there are so many variables here. The biggest issue I'm sure we will encounter will be if shooting in RAW, the files are quite big and if its landscape, likely to be away from wifi hotspots meaning it will be your own phones 4 or 5G hotspot and connection, if there is any where you are. I'd love to think there is going to be some innovative solution from Canon to help with this but I'm pretty sure there are too many outside factors they cannot influence so no matter how good there platform is, it will always be reliant on the telecom companies infrastructure, mast positioning and network speeds etc. I live in hope but prepare for the worst by swapping out cards regularly to ensure images are safe.
 
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While I commend Canon for attempting to ease file management workflows, I have to agree that this solution as it stands is pretty much useless. You need to be connected to a WiFi network, so it’s not like it’s a great backup solution for when you’re on location. And so if you are in a WiFi area, along with your computer, why on earth would you use the bandwidth to upload and then download Gigabytes and Gigabytes of data to and from Canon’s servers, when it would make much more sense and be much faster to transfer directly over the local network?

Making the Canon Connect app work more seemlessly and in the background would be a much, much better solution for most photographers.

Additional functionality and expansion of features IS ALWAYS WELCOME even if some users might find it useless. The example you provide is anecdotal. One can easily give example where it can be useful.


For example.

1. I can see myself setting it up such that LR looks for images in a certain folder and automatically imports them in the correct directory format that I like. I can have this new cloud feature from canon forward and download images to that folder that lightroom is constantly looking at. This way whenever I get home from a shoot I will simply connect my camera to my network and upload, and turn on my computer... take a shower, have dinner/lunch, a coffee, whatever. By the time I get to my computer my images are in my library and ready to go.

2. For pros, I can see how they can set it up with the external wifi component to continuously push images to the cloud which forwards those images on the fly to computer that is accessed by those they delivery their images to. Sounds like very very good way to streamline their work flow and not have to even bother remembering to push images though.

3. My iphone's 4G connection is pretty quick. 5G is set to be even faster. I can see working pros invest in a large enough data bundle, tether their phones to their cameras and basically shoot on location with quick backup. Or cloud backup when they take breaks. It isn't about a second memory card, but rather actual backup in case anything happens to the camera.

4. Lets say you are on a once in a life time trip. And you happen to have the R5 or R6, so you have 2 card slots. Even then, you can come to the hotel at the end of the day, connect your camera to the network and have a backup push to the cloud. This way you have an off location end of the day back up. Just like in example 2 a journalist or pro can have images pushed to the cloud, synced with a computer in another country that is accessable by their editor, or colleague. Some people take SSDs with them on trips, back up to it and mail that to themselves as a sort of back up. Again this service can replace that.

As tech advances, if things get faster this can easily improve. I think canon is thinking about the eventual 5G networks that will allow very fast transfer rates. If you think about connection speeds of 10 years ago you might realise that the whole adobe cloud and syncing with LR mobile would be quite slow and thus useless. But at present it is a great thing to have. 2-5 years for now this whole thing might be faster and thus more useful then than now.
 
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LDS

Sep 14, 2012
1,763
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I'd love to think there is going to be some innovative solution from Canon to help with this

I don't believe we can expect any solution for this from Canon - it's clearly beyond its business areas. What they can try is to take advantage of the existing telecom infrastructure, which is inevitably different in different parts of the world. Until Musk launches enough satellites (which will start to ruin a lot of astrophotographers shots...) to give broadband coverage everywhere - and devices to use them are small enough - it's difficult to expect the same level of coverage of a city centre, when you're out in the wild. I don't see this new feature as something that can fully replace a second card or a backup disk while traveling - but it can be a nice add-on when you're in a situation you can exploit it well enough.
 
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Firstly, I think you're vastly over-estimating the increase in upload time attributed to 5Ghz Wifi and the processor here... The 90mins isn't the time it takes for the camera to shift the images off the card via Wi-Fi, the bottle-neck is the upload bandwidth provided by the user's ISP.

Secondly, HEIF isn't going to result in 2-3x smaller file sizes. In fact, it's likely that image file sizes will remain pretty similar to JPEG, but with roughly twice the image quality.

So although future advances will bring speed improvements, it's the networks that need to improve, not the cameras. And it's going to be quite a while before we see a 30x speed improvement there.
1st, maybe I'm overestimating a bit, but right now, WiFi and processor are definitely big the bottlenecks.
You can run a test on your laptop upload to google or whatever you're using, I just did:
5 CRAWs on my laptop took 90 seconds, thats 50 CRAWS in 15 min, so 6x improvement with better WiFi and processor

2nd, the 50 photos for 90 min baseline was RAW, HEIF is 2-3x smaller than that, not than JPEG.
Also, i experienced that JPEGs, esp. 10MB or 4MB are over-proportionally faster to upload, because Google has optimised out of them.

3rd, fully agreed that network speed will be the next bottleneck, let's see though where we end up after 1st and 2nd.
 
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Stuart

Hi, Welcome from an ePhotozine fan, & 6D user.
Jul 22, 2010
390
128
London & Woking
www.ephotozine.com
The android bit does not work yet :)

The PC example shown on the web is different to my old version on the PC and when i try and download a new version vie here - it still points to a 2015 version for my 6d

I need to go to the US site for a more recent EOU utility - EOS Utility 3.12.10 for Windows file is - EU-Installset-W3.12.0.18.zip https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/...ess-cameras/dslr/eos-6d?tab=Drivers&Downloads

Launched for the US only?

I'm still not yet sure this is as good as i want it to be.
 
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1st, maybe I'm overestimating a bit, but right now, WiFi and processor are definitely big the bottlenecks.
You can run a test on your laptop upload to google or whatever you're using, I just did:
5 CRAWs on my laptop took 90 seconds, thats 50 CRAWS in 15 min, so 6x improvement with better WiFi and processor

2nd, the 50 photos for 90 min baseline was RAW, HEIF is 2-3x smaller than that, not than JPEG.
Also, i experienced that JPEGs, esp. 10MB or 4MB are over-proportionally faster to upload, because Google has optimised out of them.

3rd, fully agreed that network speed will be the next bottleneck, let's see though where we end up after 1st and 2nd.

Sorry, yes, I got mixed up with all the different formats going around. HEIF could definitely be a worthy option for emergency backups, if transferring RAWs ends up being too cumbersome. A lot of people are happy using JPEGs as backups, and HEIF would definitely be a step above.

As for the WiFi, thanks for doing your test, but it doesn't really mean anything unless you also test Canon's Cloud Service using the same network. The 90minute example was from another user who's network might be very different to yours, so it's doesn't tell us a lot about the camera's limitations. Also, various cameras are all compatible, and they all have different processors...
 
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Additional functionality and expansion of features IS ALWAYS WELCOME even if some users might find it useless. The example you provide is anecdotal. One can easily give example where it can be useful.


For example.

1. I can see myself setting it up such that LR looks for images in a certain folder and automatically imports them in the correct directory format that I like. I can have this new cloud feature from canon forward and download images to that folder that lightroom is constantly looking at. This way whenever I get home from a shoot I will simply connect my camera to my network and upload, and turn on my computer... take a shower, have dinner/lunch, a coffee, whatever. By the time I get to my computer my images are in my library and ready to go.

2. For pros, I can see how they can set it up with the external wifi component to continuously push images to the cloud which forwards those images on the fly to computer that is accessed by those they delivery their images to. Sounds like very very good way to streamline their work flow and not have to even bother remembering to push images though.

3. My iphone's 4G connection is pretty quick. 5G is set to be even faster. I can see working pros invest in a large enough data bundle, tether their phones to their cameras and basically shoot on location with quick backup. Or cloud backup when they take breaks. It isn't about a second memory card, but rather actual backup in case anything happens to the camera.

4. Lets say you are on a once in a life time trip. And you happen to have the R5 or R6, so you have 2 card slots. Even then, you can come to the hotel at the end of the day, connect your camera to the network and have a backup push to the cloud. This way you have an off location end of the day back up. Just like in example 2 a journalist or pro can have images pushed to the cloud, synced with a computer in another country that is accessable by their editor, or colleague. Some people take SSDs with them on trips, back up to it and mail that to themselves as a sort of back up. Again this service can replace that.

As tech advances, if things get faster this can easily improve. I think canon is thinking about the eventual 5G networks that will allow very fast transfer rates. If you think about connection speeds of 10 years ago you might realise that the whole adobe cloud and syncing with LR mobile would be quite slow and thus useless. But at present it is a great thing to have. 2-5 years for now this whole thing might be faster and thus more useful then than now.

Jesus, dude, you don't have to go all "anecdotal" on me. This isn't a scientific research forum, obviously it's only my opinion. Also, I started out by saying I commend them for making advances, as I of course think that new features are, on the whole, good for users. And I also said that "as it stands" it's pretty useless. I'm not talking about how things will be 5-10 years in the future, I'm talking about right now.

Having said that, just for fun, to counter your examples, I would suggest that:

- In situation 1, you would be needlessly slowing and complicating your workflow. To have your camera connect to the cloud, then upload the images, and then have your computer download those images to folder which Lightroom watches and imports from... You could just plug your camera into your computer, initialise the file transfer in LR, and walk away. And as an added bonus, it would be much, much faster.

- In situation 2, it would require faster upload speeds than are currently feasable. Another user here said that it took 90mins to upload 50 raw files. I'm not talking about upload speeds in 5-10 years, I'm talking about now.

- In situation 4, this is only useful if you don't have any access to computer of any kind from which to make the transfer. Although I will agree that if you happen to not have this access, then it would be a very welcome option to be able to initiate it directly from your camera.

As for situation 3, I completely understand and agree that this is not the same as a second card slot, I recognise the benefits of off-site backup. The issue is that, at the present point in time, no working pro would be able to operate within the constraints of the upload speed bottleneck. Upload speeds are almost always significantly slower than download speeds.
 
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