Comparing Panasonic's Lumix Synch to Leica's Fotos

[scott kirkpatrick]

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I did a little experiment today, posting the paragraph below in the Q2 forum, because the Q2, like the S1 and S1R and perhaps like the SL2, uses BlueTooth Low Energy to provide a continuous connection between your smart phone and the camera, with WiFi called into play when needed for remote viewing or review and upload of files.  The Q2 folks are not happy with Fotos' performance at present.  Synch does better:

I'd like to hold Leica to a standard of getting Fotos controls to work as well as Panasonic's for the basic operations of time reference, GPS, remote trigger, and uploading images.  Leica has the advantage of not having to do everything someone has ever told them was needed, only "the essentials," so this ought to be a reasonable goal.  I took my S1R out for an hour's walk this afternoon.  Before leaving I started Synch on my(Android) phone, without initiating either remote operation or picture review, just getting the BT-LE connection going.  I put the phone in a pocket once the display on the S1R showed BT and GPS alive.  It never showed any WiFi, which was fine.  All of my shots were accurately geo-tagged.  One tradeoff that the Lumix made is that the display stayed on for the whole hour, so keeping the BT connection alive and the geodata fresh apparently prevents going into standby mode after two minutes.  But I had only used about 20-30% of the battery's capacity in the hour with 40+ shots taken. 

 

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[tom.w.bn]

Am 12.10.2019 um 17:03 schrieb scott kirkpatrick:

I  But I had only used about 20-30% of the battery's capacity in the hour with 40+ shots taken. 

 

Thanks for your experiment. For my taste this is still a lot of energy consumption. I use a workaround for years now: when I'm out and need GPS Data I document the position with a photo taken with my phone. This image is stored togehter with all the other photos from my "real" camera in the image catalogue. That is good enough for me.

[scott kirkpatrick]

2 hours ago, tom.w.bn said:

Thanks for your experiment. For my taste this is still a lot of energy consumption.

I think so, too.  There is no reason to keep the display on just to show that a GPS link exists.  In fact the GPS data for each picture is grabbed from the phone at the moment the picture is taken, and is not saved as state information in the camera.  The two displays should be bigger energy consumers than the BT link.