I Would Like To Lodge a Formal Complaint About The Canon Camera Connect App
1y 2d ago by lemmy.world/u/dual_sport_dork in canon
I get the impression that this community is a bit dead, but I am going to rant about this anyway, because it annoys me and writing whole long rambling screeds about things is kind of what I do. I do realize this is explicitly useless because the chances of anyone from Canon A) reading this here, of all places, and B) actually caring are less than zero.
I like my new R10. It is a very fine piece of photography equipment. Canon's app for it, however, is the work of Satan.
Actually, no. It can't possibly be the work of Satan. If Satan designed it, it would be merely diabolical -- by very definition -- but at least you could rest assured that its evil were implemented competently.
Let's start with the elephant in the room which is this new dumbass requirement to have a Cannon ID account to even use the fucking thing. I don't care if they forewarned everyone about this for a few weeks ahead of time, it's still moronic. I have zero interest in any "cloud" functionality and don't plan to use any of those features, ever. So why all of the sudden do I need to register an account and be connected to the internet just to use the app as a remote release and portable viewfinder? It worked just fine for that functionality before.
Yes, I know why. It's so Canon can have an avenue to spy on you, possibly filch your images and use them to train a damn fool AI, or have the future capability to lock already existing features behind a paywall at some future date. We are well acquainted with the Corporate Enshittification Handbook around here. But it's still stupid.
Because here's exactly how it went down for me. I was at a scenic spot in the middle of the wilds and wanted to take a nice picture of myself and my wife with my shiny new(ish) camera, using the app as a remote shutter release like I've always done. Except the app had updated behind my back and now demanded that I sign in before it would even let me look at the main menu. We were in the middle of nowhere, where there was no cell signal. Which means you can't use the app. Period. For anything. No internet, no app functionality. It just sat there, login screen displayed, with both thumbs stuck up its ass and refused to let me do anything.
It's not like people take their cameras hiking with them or anything. You know, where there is no cell service.
Canon's app is so awful and so great is my wrath over this that it literally made me go out and spend real world money to buy a remote release. An aftermarket one, of course -- not an official Canon one. Fuck that, at this point.
Using an account should be fully optional, especially for local camera-to-phone features only, for the twisted subset of people who might actually want to do such a thing on purpose. Leave the rest of us out of it.
There is further stupidity:
Why, for all that is holy, does it consistently take thirty full seconds for the app to connect to my camera, displaying an infuriatingly ironic "switching to a 'faster' Wi-Fi connection" popup each time? Then, why does it not only lose connection if my phone goes to sleep (even if it is in remote shooting mode) but thereupon refuses to reconnect after I wake my phone up, producing only a vague and unhelpful error message? The only way to make it work again is to force close the app and restart it. But then, why is it implied by the message in the menus that the camera is transmitting wirelessly even when it's powered off, unless I deliberately put it in airplane mode? Even if it is, though, you still can't look at it in the app, e.g. to review images or suchlike. So no actual functionality is provided by this, other than slowly depleting your battery. So who would want that? It's precisely backwards. When the camera is off, it should be off. But if your phone falls asleep with a connection already established, it should remain connected until you power the camera off or explicitly disconnect.
Why does it take fifteen seconds per picture to transfer images to my phone, even over Wi-Fi? I think it would be faster to inscribe the ones and zeroes by hand, on papyrus, with ink and a quill.
Why does clicking "back" at the root menu of the app not close it, like every other app in the world?
The app is clearly called "Cannon Camera Connect," right? So why is its app name on your system just "Camera Connect," which inevitably just gets truncated to "Camera..." in your app launcher and has a nondescript icon that fails to differentiate it from your phone's inbuilt camera app?
I would say that whoever designed this pile of dogshit, and the manger who is prodding him to do it, should be cast into the deepest end of the lake of fire. But no, here's a better idea: They should have their cameras taken away, and they should be cursed henceforth to take every photo with an Aiptek Palm Cam for the rest of their lives.
Ty for the heads up.
Someone did notice your rant. (I didn't read it all).
Yeah the app is really not great. The requirement for a Canon ID is pure enshittification - as you said. I find it quite workable actually, but I mainly use it to tag GPS and import at most a couple of pictures at a time. The fact that it remains connected to the phone via BT while off is handy for the GPS tracking, as it never fails so long both are near each other.
I use it a lot with my iPad via USB and while transfer speed is better, there is another huge annoyance: you can only transfer pictures to Apple Photos and not into a folder of choice.
All in all, I am less critical but I have experience with other camera manufacturer apps and they pretty much all suck, so I didn’t have high expectations. GPS tagging works well enough and don’t need much else. I use the iOS app if it’s relevant (some of your points are linked to Android I think).
FYI: there are, at least on iOS, third party apps that can link to EOS cameras - but they don’t come free I’m afraid. You could try looking for such alternatives.
And last, on the community: deader than dead, I’m trying to post some discussion topics in the last weeks to liven it up a bit, it’s working a bit but the members are quite stuck at sub-100… but too soon to give up! :)
Well, for what it's worth I subscribed a couple of weeks ago. I figure I ought to now that I am the owner of a shiny new R10, plus I no longer visit the other place (and haven't since I migrated to .world getting on for two years ago.)
The GPS tagging thing I get, but that's a feature I have negative infinity interest in. I very deliberately turn GPS tagging off. I take my anonymity online probably more seriously than most and none of the photos I take which may eventually find their way online need have any kind of location identifying information in them, ever.
I always urge everyone to disable this kind of thing. The "convenience" isn't worth it. If you can't remember where you took a photo that's on you -- I mean, we managed in the film era somehow -- but the risk is too high for government gestapo types tying your otherwise anonymous photo uploads to your identity or home address via the geolocation data. Especially these days, when they might decide that because you said something mean about El Presidente now they want to get you.
Miss me with that shit. Literally, in fact.
I had a similar experience with that app while camping a couple months ago. When I got home I left a nasty review on the play store and uninstalled it. Then I got the older version .apk from apkmirror and installed that. Then blocked it from updating in the future.
Thankfully I only use it for the remote Bluetooth shutter function, which works great. Transferring images from it is so slow its useless. I just pull the card out and use a card reader on my computer or occasionally phone.