Heroes
as part of my personal workflow, I use a device called a Camranger. This little unit sets up a local wifi hotspot so that my camera can communicate with my iPad via the Camranger software. It means that I can control the camera remotely from a fair distance if required, I can preview the composition on the big iPad screen, and quickly review the shot I’ve just taken to check that everything was ok. A backup of the raw files can be stored on an SD card in the unit if required as well. I’ve employed the Camranger for about ten years now, and I have the Camranger 2 unit, as well as the original model as a backup. I actually won the thing a few years back in a competition - with a twilight image of a huge Durham house taken using the original Camranger. It’s an essential part of my workflow.
A few days ago, an update to the software was pushed to me via the Apple App store, so I installed it as usual. There are frequent updates which accommodate the use of new cameras and to fix known bugs, so I had no hesitation in updating it on my iPhone and iPad.
A couple of hours later I was in a house doing a job as usual, and when I started the app, it immediately crashed. I did the usual stuff - restarted everything basically - but it wasn’t playing ball. Trying to use the iPhone just resulted in the same thing happening. To make things worse, I’d failed to pack the old Camranger 1 backup unit. It wasn’t a huge house, and I had the place to myself, so went back to the old-school method of using the back of the camera to view things, and then shot all frames using a 5 second self-timer. This gave me the opportunity to move about to get flash where it needed to be, and kept everything still.
I tested everything when I got back in - including using different cameras. The result was always crashing the app whenever I tried to start the live-view. I could actually fire off exposures, but couldn’t see what I was shooting on the screen. Time to fly off a support request to the team at Camranger in the US.
Within the hour, I had a response from a very helpful dude called Dave. After a few back and forth messages, he confirmed the problem on “older Nikon cameras”, promised to have a fix sorted that evening, and get an update online as soon as possible. In the meantime, I checked my original Camranger to assure myself it would be ready to shoot with the following day.
When I got up the following morning there was an app update ready to go. I installed it, and tested it with my regular kit. Worked perfectly!
In this age of almost all big corporations taking customers for granted, and making the assumption that you can disregard a small number of problems involving older tech, and focus on the big money rolling in, it’s really nice to see a firm looking after their customers by addressing issues straight away with courtesy and respect. A big shout out to the team at Camranger.
