Getting connected

The camera and the app talk over Wi-Fi. The USB cable is used once, to switch the camera's API on (see Getting started), and never again.

The camera's own Wi-Fi is the reliable way

On the camera, Wi-Fi settings → Camera Control API → Add connection offers two ways to get on a network:

• Camera access point mode. The camera becomes the Wi-Fi network and your PC or phone joins it. This connects first time and stays connected, and it is what the field needs, where there is no other network. Use this one.
• Via an access point — the camera joins your house Wi-Fi. In practice it dropped within a minute every time it was tried (the camera's radio is 2.4 GHz only, and modern house networks often prefer 5 GHz). Not recommended.

Once a connection has been made, reconnecting is Camera Control API → Connect → the saved connection. The camera then shows Wi-Fi on and its address.

Joining the camera's network

The camera's screen shows the network name and the password. Two things are true whatever device you join from:

• The password changes every time a connection is added on the camera. A device that joined last week may refuse to reconnect; use the camera's saved connection, or re-join with the new password. This is the camera's doing, not a fault.
• Joining costs that device its internet unless it also has a wired connection. The camera's network goes nowhere else.

Windows. Taskbar network icon → the arrow beside Wi-Fi → pick EOSR50_… → type the password → Connect. A desktop on Ethernet keeps its internet on the cable, which is the comfortable arrangement.

Android. Settings → Network & internet → Internet → pick EOSR50_… → password → Connect. Android may notice the network has no internet and ask whether to stay connected: say yes, or it drops back to mobile data and the camera is unreachable.

iPhone or iPad. Settings → Wi-Fi → pick EOSR50_… → password → Join. If it keeps wandering back to the house network, turn Auto-Join off for the house network while you are shooting.

Which device has to join?

Only the one running the app. If the app runs on a PC that is on the camera's Wi-Fi, your phone can stay on the house network and still open the page: the PC is on both networks, and it is the only thing that has to reach the camera.

Keeping the connection alive

The camera is happy on its shooting screen with live view running for as long as you like. Two things end a connection, and the app handles both:

• Auto power off is 30 seconds from the factory. When the camera sleeps, the connection is gone until it is re-made on the camera. The app switches auto power off off while it is connected, and puts it back when it stops — a camera left that way flattens its battery in a bag.
• One connection at a time. The camera means it. Close Canon's own apps while this one is running.

The camera's own menu interrupts the picture while it is open; the page keeps its last readings for a moment and says how old they are.

Finding the camera

You do not type an address. When the page starts, the camera is asked to announce itself; if a firewall eats that reply — usual on Windows — every address on the PC's networks is tried in turn, which takes under a second. Where the camera answers also decides the port and whether to use HTTPS, so none of that is typed either.

Nothing answering does not stop the page. ablecamera ui says so and serves the page anyway — switch the camera on whenever you are ready and press Connect in the top right. The camera is the thing that comes and goes; the app is the thing that should already be running when it comes back.

Connect does the same search again, from any section, whenever the connection has gone.

When it is not found

It happens — a firewall plus a network the sweep does not cover — and the camera has been showing its address on its screen the whole time.

On Setup, under Find a different camera, open Or type the address the camera is showing, type exactly what the camera's screen says (for example 192.168.1.2), and press Connect to it.

Just the address: no http://, no port, nothing about HTTPS — the app works those out. Pasting what a browser shows is forgiven. What you typed stays in the box afterwards, because a camera keeps its address far more often than it changes it.

What the app changes on the camera, and puts back

Everything the app changes, it says in words on the page, and it changes back when it stops:

• Auto power off is disabled while connected and restored afterwards.
• On an R50, the app takes over the mode dial and sets manual mode itself. While it holds the dial, the camera's own buttons do nothing; it hands them back when it stops.
• On an R100 the dial is beyond the API: turn it to M by hand once per session.

A camera in a Basic Zone mode (SCN, A+, creative filters) sets its own exposure, and the page says so instead of offering controls that would do nothing.