After the damage caused to my old digital camera, I had to resort to using the 8MP camera of my smartphone. So I finally ended up buying a new Nikon digital camera (Coolpix S800c). And while reading the manual that came along with the phone I discovered a pretty nifty feature – you can connect the camera with your Android smartphone over the WiFi. Obviously for this to happen, you must have either a WiFi ready Nikon camera or attach a WiFi adapter to the digital camera (if it supports wireless adapters).
Once the Nikon digital camera is connected over the wireless network, then you can easily transfer files from your digital camera to your smartphone, and even operate the camera from the phone. It becomes very useful if you are trying to take a picture or make a small movie all by yourself from a distance.
To start with wireless connection between your supported Nikon camera and the smartphone, you have to download and install the Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility for Android or iOS. After this, you have to connect the camera to the same WiFi network as the smartphone (in case the WiFi is built inside the camera). If you are using a WiFi adapter card, then you have to just plug in the card and wait for it to become active.
After this you can simply connect the WiFi adhoc network with an SSID that starts with “Nikon”. The connection between the camera and the smartphone will be instantly established. Now you can view the pictures stored on the camera or take pictures using the camera. In the second case, it opens up the camera view and allows you to control the focus before taking a snapshot.
In the app settings, you can choose various options like synchronizing clocks between the camera and phone, thumbnails, embedded location data, image size, wireless adapter settings and so on. One important settings is for the batteries of both the camera and the phones – you can choose to turn off the live view after the battery charge drops below a certain level.
While the app is pretty basic and the camera view of the app is nothing compared to the Google Camera, it can be very useful if you want to control your very high-resolution Nikon digital camera from within the smartphone.
You can find more information about the Nikon Wireless Mobile Utility from http://www.nikonusa.com/en/learn-and-explore/article/h4spl2xm/shooting-wirelessly-with-nikon-digital-cameras-and-wi-fi-adapters.html.