I personally haven’t found a camera’s native app from the manufacturer to ever be that good. Most are okay, but nothing special and usually riddled with odd limitations or bugs that take far too long to get ironed out in updates. Apparently, you have more options if you are a Sony camera user.
Available for iOS and Android, Monitor+ is a new app that provides remote control and monitoring for Sony cameras, including the a7S III, FX3, and more. Filmmaker Chris Brockhurst put this to the test and gives his thoughts on the app’s performance and features. As a preview, he is ready to say goodbye to Sony’s Imaging Edge Mobile.
This app promises to transform your smartphone into a professional video monitor. That’s a big selling point if true. Interestingly, the app uses a similar connection method as the default Imaging Edge Mobile app. It will even remember some connections so you don’t have to constantly go through the process.
Right away you can see there is a good deal of control. You can adjust file formats, frame rates, recording modes (4:2:2, bitrate, etc.), and the exposure settings. There is obviously a live view as well. It even improves on some aspects of camera control. For example, it shows the shutter speed alongside shutter angle measurements. White balance even has some custom controls.
Focus is even fully customizable. You can go from auto to manual, change up your focus areas, and even use tap to focus. Start/stop recording is readily available as well and there is a time recording estimate on the screen. It’s a complete set of controls.
Image Credit: Monitor+
As for monitoring, there are all the usual options you would find on a professional monitor. This includes your zebras, false color, frame guides, focus peaking, histogram, LUTs, vectorscope, waveforms, anamorphic de-squeeze, and plenty more. Each of these options has its own menu to change up how they function, too.
Going back to LUTs, the app actually allows you to add custom LUTs to be used on the live preview of the image. For iOS, you can actually AirDrop the files directly to Monitor+. This is great. One thing you might see is that you can’t have an unlimited number of functions on at once.
Considering how good the screens on many current smartphones, it actually makes a ton of sense to want to make use of it over the screen on the back of your camera. It’s quite affordable considering the feature set and if you are still without a separate monitor at this time.
This app is an incredible offering and I hadn’t heard of any third-party alternatives to Imaging Edge yet. Are you going to check it out?
[source: Chris Brockhurst]
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