Sony’s mobile app for visual creators, Monitor & Control, enables wireless monitoring, high-precision exposure adjustment, and focus control on the larger screen of your smartphone or tablet.

Sony announced the roll-out of Monitor & Control, a new mobile application for visual creators. This free application is a new addition to Creators’ Cloud and the app can be used with Sony’s compatible cameras such as FX3 and FX30. Although the application “is not guaranteed to work on all smartphones and tablets”, as Sony says, when it does visual creators have access to wireless monitoring, high-precision exposure adjustment, and focus control on the larger screen of a smartphone or tablet.

The  new Monitor & Control app includes powerful exposure assistance tools. The histogram gives you a quick view of the overall brightness/luminance. The waveform helps identify the exposure levels in different parts of your image. Both update in real time, and can be freely hidden, resized, or moved to suit your shooting needs. An optional false colour overlay lets you dial in perfect exposure for your subject.

Intuitive control of settings

Touch Focus, AF sensitivity, and other focus settings (configurable operations depend on the connected camera) can be configured intuitively. One advantage of the wireless connection that another user can tap a subject shown in monitor of tablet or smartphone to track a subject using Real-time Tracking, so that the camera operator can concentrate on moving the camera without worrying about focusing.

A control bar on the side of the screen gives you intuitive control of settings, including manual focus. The powerful control bar can also be set with upper and lower focus limits in advance, and magnified up to 350% for precise focus adjustment. When shooting with the FX6, the iris can also be assigned to the control bar, for larger screen fine-tuning of depth of field or exposure.

The new Monitor & Control mobile app, available for both iOS and Android opens new possibilities to all visual creators using compatible Sony cameras. Here are the three main features of Monitor & Control:

– Highly flexible shooting style

Use your smartphone or tablet as a wireless second screen for the camera, to set up and control the camera remotely.

– Precise exposure monitoring

Large screen can serve as a waveform monitor, false-color and histogram display, supporting more precise exposure adjustments at production.

– Intuitive focus controls

Access to various focus functions, including touch focus and AF sensitivity adjustment. A control bar on the side of the screen enables intuitive focus setting.

Number of compatible cameras will be expanded

The current compatible cameras for this app are FX3, FX30, FX6, and BURANO will also be compatible in the future. It will also be compatible with Alpha 1 and Alpha 7S III, Sony’s Interchangeable Lens Camera from March 2024. Sony adds that the functions provided by Monitor & Control vary depending on the compatible cameras. The number of compatible cameras will be expanded gradually, and software will need to be updated as below:

• FX3 (Ver. 4.00～)
• FX30(Ver. 3.00～)
• FX6 (Ver. 3.00～)

The connection provided by Monitor & Control to a smartphone or tablet opens a new option for creators, who can enjoy both wireless monitoring, and basic camera control, such as starting/stopping recording, and adjusting settings like white balance or ISO from the comfort of a large screen. It’s another step contributing to make smartphones so appealing as imaging devices.