Sony’s Touchless Shutter App Lets You Trigger Your Camera with the Eye Sensor

Apr 22, 2015

Michael Zhang

sonytouchless

Sony has released a new app called Touchless Shutter that lets you trigger cameras without touching them, or anything else, at all. Instead of pressing the shutter button, you can instead hold your hand over the camera’s eye sensor to expose a shot.

Many cameras these days have eye sensors on the viewfinder to know when to turn the main LCD screen off and the electronic viewfinder on. Sony’s idea is to use that proximity sensor for a wireless shutter triggering system.

In addition to snapping a shot by placing your hand in front of the eyepiece, photographers shooting in bulb mode can start and end their exposures by placing their hand over the eye sensor twice — once to start and once to stop.

Touchless Shutter uses Sony's eye sensors to trigger shots. — Touchless Shutter uses Sony’s eye sensors to trigger shots.

This latest PlayMemories Camera App is currently in beta and is available for a number of Sony mirrorless and compact cameras, including the NEX-5R, NEX-6, HX400V, HX60V, RX100 III, and more. You can find the complete list of compatible cameras on the download page.

Touchless Shutter [Sony via Reddit]