And now, a First World Problem: The camera has 24 megapixels and the images are so detailed that it will seem to take forever to transfer the images over to your computer (this is especially true if you’re sending RAW files). In one of my tests it took 6:34 minutes to transfer 236 MB of images; this works out to be a speed of 4.7 megabits per second.
“4.7 Mbps? Isn’t my 802.11n Wi-Fi rated at 300 megabits per second?” Well, that’s a maximum theoretical rate and your actual speed depends upon a great many factors, including the distance from the router, building materials between devices, the number of devices that are actively communicating (especially devices that are streaming movies at the same time), and what else your computer is doing. Plus there’s the protocol overhead involving preamble, error detection and correction, and packet retransmission on noisy networks. My network is pretty modest so I’d say it’s healthy to expect no more than 5 mbps throughput rate.
Sony E-mount cameras offer the ability to download apps to add additional functionality to your camera. Whether this is a wonderful thing or not depends on who you talk to – many complain that some of these functions used to appear for free in previous cameras, and now have been removed from the native menus and it cost you money to get these features back. Others complain (and I’m among them) that Sony didn’t go far enough, and really should open up a programmer’s API so 3rd parties can write apps that are truly imaginative and useful. Alas, as of now there’s no sign that will happen.
But I digress. Your camera can download applications and I’m going to show you how to download your first one. There are two ways to do it: 1) By tethering your camera to an internet-connected computer via USB cable (this is by far the easiest option if you have the right operating system), or 2) by establishing a Wi-Fi connection to your router and downloading to the camera directly (more cumbersome, but will work for everyone).