Sony announced a significant update to its Monitor and Control (M&C) app, bringing the mobile platform to version 2.0 and adding powerful new features for content creators.
The Monitor and Control app works alongside various Alpha series and Sony cinema cameras, enabling users to wirelessly monitor video and audio and control their camera’s settings, including focus. The app essentially turns compatible smartphones and tablets into professional camera controllers and monitors.
Features include real-time exposure monitoring, customizable histograms and waveforms, remote camera control, and advanced color settings. Sony promises that these features provide creators with a more flexible workflow without the need for a separate external monitor. These specialized monitors can be expensive, so the key benefit here is that users can take advantage of hardware — like a phone or tablet — they already have.
Sony points specifically to the focus control offered by the app. The M&C app includes touch focus, autofocus sensitivity adjustments, and Real-Time Tracking, right from the mobile device. It also sports an on-screen control bar that promises precise manual focus adjustments and has configurable settings for focus transition speeds, limits, and magnification when manually focusing.
The new 2.0 version of the app supports a broader range of cameras, including the Sony Burano, FX3, FX6, and FX30 cinema cameras, plus the Sony Alpha 1, a9 III, and a7S III mirrorless interchangeable lens cameras.
Specifically for the Burano and FX6 models, Sony has improved monitoring resolution, exposure monitoring, and LUT import functionality. On the FX6, there is also a new focus map, which promises “intuitive” focus control by visualizing depth settings.
Numerous user interface improvements have been made for all compatible cameras, including an updated interface that matches the CineAlta cameras, better access to camera settings, an improved white balance selection UI, grid lines, and anamorphic de-squeeze display.
When used on iPad, the app also supports multi-camera monitoring, which enables settings adjustment, control, and display of up to four connected compatible Sony cameras. This function supports wired and wireless connections and is available exclusively on iPadOS.
Sony Monitor and Control is available to download now from the Apple App Store and Google Play Store for free. This is the first significant update to the app since Sony launched it last September.
Image credits: Sony