Poor/Unreliable Performance

Having a problem that isn't related to cameras or printers?
calzone
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2018 5:54 pm

Poor/Unreliable Performance

Postby calzone » Sun Sep 29, 2019 4:14 pm

I used Wifibooth two weekends ago, after not having used it since June.

I noticed that Wifibooth auto-updated. What I've noticed is that the performance is sometimes awful. I set the camera (Canon 80D) to Medium JPG and no raw (even though raw should make no difference). What I mean is that (1) the time before a the shutter releases after the 3 in the countdown is displayed is sometimes 15 or more seconds. Then after the photos are taken, the time to download them to prepare them for printing can be a whole minute. In one instance, the final step simply didn't happen at all.

Today I tried to see what I could do to improve performance. Unfortunately, I had been using Testflight a while back for Wifibooth and now am back on the normal app and lost any previous tweaks you had advised in order to improve speed.

I enabled "slower camera" and turned off auto-focus in Wifibooth. At first, performance improved. But when I left the iPad and camera unattended for several minutes and came back to it… again it did a countdown to 3… then nothing… waiting…waiting… and finally the shutter released. Then a wait… then a new countdown… then another wait… wait… wait…

So I went back into settings and saw that Autofocus had come back on by itself somehow. I turned it off and went to a different menu item in the settings and came back and it stayed off. Good. Performance became acceptable, if not snappy.

But I'm finding that whenever I go back to settings, AF is toggled back to on.

As I pointed out in another thread, this did not used to happen… so I can't see how it would be the camera. For what it's worth, the lens is set to AF = off and when I tap the AF button on the 80D, the camera reports M (manual). So the camera is definitely not stuck in AF mode in any way.


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As an aside, I wish there were a way to make settings stick for every single event. I always set up all my events the exact same way, with the exception of:
  • Event Name
  • Branding
  • Layout
  • Number of shots
  • 4x6 or 2x2x6
  • SMS / Twitter
Everything else is always the same. I might choose to change Autopilot in some cases.

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tim
Site Admin
Posts: 3068
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2015 5:14 pm

Re: Poor/Unreliable Performance

Postby tim » Mon Sep 30, 2019 10:55 am

Hi Calzone,

The issues you are describing are symptoms of poor wifi connection. This doesn't have to be distance-related: you could be in an environment with lots of interference, or your iPad might have a case on it that worsens wifi performance etc. Or you might be connected to a router that isn't great -- when performance is poor, it's always worth just quickly connecting the ipad directly to the wifi of the camera to see: if suddenly things are much better, you know the router is part of the problem!

I checked out the autofocus setting. Turns out there's an embarrassing bug there that goes all the way back to 2017 and prior: the initial value of that switch isn't loaded properly. When that switch is changed then the value is saved (and later used) correctly, but, when you first open settings the value of that switch will appear to be random (it isn't). That's now fixed for the next update. Sorry about that!

Re making setting stick: you can duplicate events to get this behavior. In the event picker, swipe a row over to the left to expose the "Duplicate" button underneath.
Please write a review for Wifibooth on the Apple App store! Indie developers like me really need people like you to review their apps. Instructions on how to write a review: http://goo.gl/w8NsDI.

calzone
Posts: 42
Joined: Wed Feb 07, 2018 5:54 pm

Re: Poor/Unreliable Performance

Postby calzone » Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:16 am

I can see no way it could be a poor connection. Using an Alcatel hotspot. The iPad, hotspot, and 80D are all sitting on a table together (all within 4 feet of each other with nothing in between). There is a stock Apple Silicon iPad Pro bumper case on the iPad. There are no other symptoms on the iPad of poor network performance.

The live view preview on the iPad also still works (not great, but just as it used to). I would think a symptom of a bad WiFi connection would be reduced Live View performance?

Anyway, as long as I can get the AF feature to stay turned off, performance seems to return to normal.

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tim
Site Admin
Posts: 3068
Joined: Fri Apr 03, 2015 5:14 pm

Re: Poor/Unreliable Performance

Postby tim » Mon Sep 30, 2019 11:30 am

Are you able to reproduce the poor performance with the iPad connected directly to the camera's wifi?
If you can, i'm interested to learn more about your setup - the 80D has really good wifi.
Please write a review for Wifibooth on the Apple App store! Indie developers like me really need people like you to review their apps. Instructions on how to write a review: http://goo.gl/w8NsDI.


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