We’ve been working on improvements to our Recipes automation tool recently, with a few features specifically asked for by folks expecting to shoot the solar eclipse that’s coming up soon. Unfortunately, these improvements are scheduled for a larger update to the app that’s now been delayed well past the eclipse.

It’d be a shame to miss such an exciting event, so we’ve put together a special build of Cascable that’s our current app with these Recipes improvements added. This build won’t be available on the App Store (these new features will be Cascable 7 though, scheduled for later in the year), and we’re instead releasing it on TestFlight.

Important: This is pre-release software and is likely to contain bugs. Please contact customer support with any feedback - we’ll be paying close attention and hope to fix any particularly egregious issues that pop up before the eclipse comes along.

Also Important: Please take note of the behaviour of the new Recipes blocks below involving time. We’re specifically looking for feedback on this. Recipes made with the new features will not open in shipping versions of Cascable 6.x (but will work in Cascable 7 once it’s released).

New Recipes Features

• Added a “Comment” block.

• Added a “Set Exposure Setting” to directly set camera settings.

• Added an “Until Time” option to the repeat block*.

• Added a “Wait Until Time” block*.

• Various improvements to the “Wait for Input” block, including optional text-to-speech and HTTP triggers.

* These blocks will wait or repeat until the next instance of the given time. That means if you have a “Wait Until 12:00” block that gets executed at 12:01, it’ll wait for 23 hours and 59 minutes. We’re looking for feedback on this behaviour.

How To Join

This TestFlight build is available to paid users of Cascable whether you’re subscribed or purchased the non-subscription option. To apply:

1. Open the Cascable app on your device and navigate to Help → Give Feedback.

2. Tap the button to send in email feedback and let us know you’d like to take part. This in-app button will attach information to the email that lets us verify you’re a paid user.

3. Once we’ve seen your email, we’ll send an invite to the TestFlight.

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features

We’ve recently released updates to Cascable for iOS and Cascable Pro Webcam that improve support for newer Sony cameras, including tap-to-focus and live view zoom for models that support it. Live view zoom has been improved for Canon and Nikon cameras, too.

However, we’d like to bring attention to a change that appears small, but is actually a pretty large one: support for Sony’s additional layer of encryption for wireless connections.

The Sony α7R V, as well as the Sony α7 IV with firmware 2.0 installed and other newer Sony models support an additional layer of encryption for wireless communication. We’re really happy to announce that as of these recent updates, this encryption is fully supported by Cascable for iOS and Cascable Pro Webcam.

When enabled on the camera, you’ll be asked for a username and password the first time you connect to it with a Cascable app (your credentials will be securely saved for future connections). After this, the app will work completely as normal.

This encryption is interesting since it’s on top of any encryption provided by the WiFi network you’re using. Since some older WiFi encryption standards can be broken if you know the network’s password — or maybe you’re limited to a network without any sort of encryption at all — this additional layer Sony has added makes sure your images remain away from prying eyes, which may be important in sensitive environments.

In our testing, having Sony’s additional layer of encryption enabled has a slight performance impact. It’s not particularly noticeable, but if you want to go as fast as you possibly can (and are otherwise in a trusted environment), you can turn off the feature in your camera’s settings.

Cascable for iOS 6.6 and Cascable Pro Webcam 1.5 are free updates to existing customers.

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

We’re fortunate here at Cascable to be able to do a lot of photography as part of our day jobs, even though we’re not a photography company per se. “Oh, I just need to test out this bug fix!” we’ll hear as an EOS R5 heads out the door. We don’t need to set up the studio lights to write a blog post about an app update, but it sure is fun!

Unfortunately, we do have other work to do, so we can’t spend all of our time poring over weather apps, golden hour timers, and night sky apps to see when conditions would be great for a nice product photo. Even outside of work, I — your humble blog post author — would go on vacation and spend half my time trying to figure out when it was best to drag my lazy backside out of bed to take a photo of the milky way.

The idea of an app to help with this has been brewing here at Cascable for a very long time — originally it was going to be part of the Calculations feature in Cascable for iOS. However, as we worked on the idea, it was clear that this should be a standalone app — not least because it’s something that anyone should be able to use, no matter what camera they use.

Today we’re very proud to announce Photo Scout, your intelligent location assistant. The premise of Photo Scout is fairly simple: you tell it what you want, and we tell you when it’s available with homescreen widgets and push notifications — no checking and re-checking every day, letting you get on with what you need to be doing safe in the knowledge someone is keeping an eye on things for you (well, something - it’s code on servers, much as we’d love to fly out to Hawaii to keep an eye on your beach scene personally!).

It works by combining sets of requirements and a location into “scenes”. When you set up a scene, it’ll be synced to our servers, which will then keep an eye on things for you and let you know when an opportunity to capture your scene is coming up via a push notification or homescreen widget. Back in the app, you can see all of your scenes and upcoming opportunities for them over the next few days.

We’ve got some really innovative features in there — want to know when the sun is in a particular place in the sky? Frame your shot and and tap the location in the sky in AR! Want to use a drone? You can add a wind speed requirement to limit suggested times to those where it’s safe to fly.

During a weekend in Paris earlier this summer, we were able to get some really beautiful shots with Photo Scout.

Photo Scout comes with a no-strings-attached one week free trial, and existing customers of Cascable for iOS can get a discount on their first year. Give it a try!

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

We’re looking for an iOS/macOS developer to help us grow Cascable and its range of products. If that sounds like it could be you, head over to our jobs page and take a look!

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

You’ve been asking for it for years (and we’ve been asking Apple for it for years!) and as of macOS Monterey 12.3, it’s finally possible — with today’s Cascable Pro Webcam update, you can use your DSLR or mirrorless camera as a webcam in FaceTime, Safari, QuickTime Player, Slack, Discord, Webex, and any other macOS app that uses webcams in a standard manner.

This additional compatibility is the result of quite a large under-the-hood change in macOS that was introduced in the Monterey 12.3 update — if you’d like to read about the technical details, we’ve put together an in-depth discussion of what changed in our support article about the macOS 12.3 requirement for improved compatibility.

This compatibility update to Cascable Pro Webcam is free for all users, and you can download it from our Pro Webcam Download Links page, or by checking for updates in the app. Enjoy!

We’re so excited about being able to being Cascable Pro Webcam to FaceTime and all of your other apps that we made a fun little video to celebrate it. Check it out!

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

It’s finally here!

Many of you have been asking for this for a long time, and we’re happy to announce that today we’re releasing updates to Cascable’s apps that add support for a large number of Sony cameras that have, up until now, been missing from our compatibility table.

A great outcome of our work with the newer Sony cameras is that we’ve also been able to go back and add USB connectivity for most of the Sony models we already supported via WiFi, meaning you can use these cameras both wired and wireless across our line of products.

Over the span of Sony’s camera lineup, there are four separate connection modes:

• Smart Remote Control was Sony’s on-camera app that has the camera create a WiFi network that your Mac/iOS device can join. Cascable’s products already supported this mode.
• Control with Smartphone is the modern replacement to Smart Remote Control — the camera creates a WiFi network that your Mac/iOS device can join.
• PC Remote (USB) is a USB connection mode on most Sony cameras that allows a USB-connected host to remote control the camera.
• PC Remote (WiFi) is a WiFi connection mode on newer Sony cameras that has the camera join an existing WiFi network.

Cascable apps support all of these connection modes on the Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Unfortunately, Sony’s names for these modes will stay the same — using Control with Smartphone on your Mac and PC Remote on your iPhone may seem odd-sounding, but they’ll work!

In particular, the PC Remote modes are great for Pro Webcam, since you can use your Sony camera as a webcam for your Mac without sacrificing your WiFi connection to the camera. On the other hand, Smart Remote Control and Control with Smartphone are great if you’re out shooting in the field, since you can quickly and easily connect your iPhone to your camera without needing cables or an existing WiFi network. The benefit of all of Cascable’s products supporting all of these connection modes is that you can choose exactly what’s best for you in any situation!

Here’s a matrix of what Cascable supports with the update — a missing tick is almost always due to that connection mode not being available on that camera model, rather than missing support in Cascable:

Sony α7, α9, α1 Family

Model	Smart Remote Control	Ctrl w/Smartphone	PC Remote (WiFi)	PC Remote (USB)
α7
α7 II
α7 III
α7 IV
α7R
α7R II
α7R III
α7R IV
α7S
α7S II
α7S III
α7C
α9
α9 II
α1

Sony α6000 Family

Model	Smart Remote Control	Ctrl w/Smartphone	PC Remote (WiFi)	PC Remote (USB)
α6000				*
α6100
α6300
α6400
α6500				*
α6600

* Live view may not be available in this connection mode, preventing use in Cascable Pro Webcam.

Other Sony Models

Note: Older RX100 models not listed, since support hasn’t changed for those models. See our Compatibility table for details.

Model	Smart Remote Control	Ctrl w/Smartphone	PC Remote (WiFi)	PC Remote (USB)
ZV-E10
ZV-1
RX100 V				*
RX100 VI
RX100 VII

* Live view may not be available in this connection mode, preventing use in Cascable Pro Webcam.

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

It’s been a little while since we’ve had a “themed” update, but today’s update to Cascable on iOS very much has a certain shade of golden yellow as its theme. This is a big one for Nikon users!

A little under a year ago, we released a substantial update to Cascable that allowed, for the first time ever on iOS, full remote control, tethering, automation, and image import for Canon EOS cameras via USB. Of course, the first question we got was: “Why not for other cameras?”.

The truth is, we did have USB support for Nikon almost ready to go at the same time as for Canon EOS cameras. However, in testing, we kept coming across odd behaviour with all of our Nikon cameras from time to time — so we shipped support for Canon with the idea of figuring out the Nikon problem and shipping that a few weeks later.

Long story short, this turned out to be a bug in iOS itself — and one we couldn’t work around. However, over time we figured out what the problem was and were able to find the right person at Apple to help.

We’re incredibly happy that the bug has been fixed in iOS 15, and as of Cascable 6.1 users with Nikon D-series SLR cameras and Z-series mirrorless cameras can enjoy full remote control, tethering, automation, and image import over USB on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch devices running iOS/iPadOS 15 or higher!

For help getting connected, see our Working with Wired Cameras guide.

If you’re a user of a newer Nikon model — particularly the Z-series mirrorless cameras — you’ll also find that Cascable 6.1 now supports live view zooming for your camera over both WiFi and USB.

…Why Not For Other Cameras?

The iOS bug halted our work in bringing USB support to other cameras since we were unable to verify whether the bug would affect those, too. Now it’s been fixed, we can start work on others.

Canon EOS and Nikon were first for two reasons: they make up the majority of our users, and they happen to speak (mostly) the same language over both WiFi and USB — which meant we “just” needed to adapt Cascable to speak that language over USB in addition to WiFi. This isn’t the case for all manufacturers, though, so adding support for those over USB will be a much larger undertaking.

We can’t make any promises on which cameras will be next (and when that might arrive), but if you’re the owner of a newer camera from a certain game console manufacturer, do keep an eye on our Twitter — we may be in need of some beta testers later this year!

That’s Not All!

Cascable 6.1 isn’t just for Nikon users! The update adds full support for iOS 15 and the iPhone 13 family of devices, contains a number of bug fixes for Canon users, and adds an option to hide autofocus geometry if you find the grid of autofocus points gets in the way too much. You can find the full list of improvements in the Cascable release notes.

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

Today is a special day — it’s the six-year anniversary of Cascable 1.0’s release on the App Store! A lot has happened over the past six years, and today we’re celebrating with the release of Cascable 6.0.

Here’s to another six years! 🎉

Cascable 6.0 is a major update to your camera’s best friend! This update focuses on revamping and improving some of Cascable’s core features, adds support for the Phase One IQ4 medium format digital back in a special collaboration with Phase One, new icons, and much more.

Read on to find out the details!

New Camera Connection Guide

Connecting to a camera isn’t a particularly exciting part of Cascable, but it’s an important one nonetheless. Cascable 6.0 has completely rebuilt how camera connection works for an easier and more reliable experience.

The largest problem with Cascable’s previous approach to camera connection was how passive it was — it’d continuously search for cameras if one wasn’t connected, leaving you to figure out how to get the camera set up and discoverable by Cascable.

Not any more! Not only does the app not search for a camera until you tell it to — saving valuable battery power — the new connection guide walks you through the options available for your camera and provides instructions tailored to your setup right as you’re connecting. No more guesswork! For advanced users, the new connection guide supports manually entering your camera’s IP address for supported models should that be your preferred approach.

Once you’re connected, the connection guide will save your setup for a one-tap reconnect next time — even saving your manually-entered IP address or scanned QR code.

Completely Revamped Remote Control

Cascable’s remote control has been a staple of the app for years — but it’s time for something better. Cascable’s new remote control is brand new, and concentrates on clarity and ease-of-use.

Some highlights:

Support for the Phase One IQ4 Medium Format Digital Back

Cascable 6.0 adds support for the Phase One IQ4 digital back when paired with the XF and XT camera systems — for the first time, Phase One users can remote control and automate their cameras from their iOS devices, and even work with IIQ RAW files while on the go. You’ll need plenty of storage to store all those 150 megapixel RAW images!

And, thanks to a special collaboration with Phase One, users will get Cascable Pro features for free when using the app with their Phase One camera! For more information on this partnership, see our new Working with Phase One Cameras page.

New Icons!

Not a productivity enhancer per se, but Cascable now has a new icon! And, as a fun little extra for users of Cascable Pro, we’ve added some extra icons to choose from to give your homescreen a bit of extra pizzazz. Of, if you’re an old-school type of person, you can go back to the “classic” Cascable icon.

If you’re a Phase One user, there’s even an extra, secret icon just for you!

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

What a few months it’s been! 😅

We’re happy to announce that today we’re releasing updates to all of our apps, each of which brings support for exciting new technology — and in the case of Cascable for iOS, a world first feature! Let’s get to it!

Cascable Transfer 3.2

Cascable Transfer now fully supports macOS Big Sur, and runs natively on the new Macs with Apple silicon. It also supports some new cameras, including the Canon EOS R5 and R6.

Cascable Pro Webcam 1.1

Cascable Pro Webcam also fully supports macOS Big Sur, and runs natively on the new Macs with Apple silicon. It also adds supports for new cameras, including the EOS R5 and R6.

An important note here is that both the Pro Webcam app and the Pro Webcam plugin are universal, and are cross-compatible with each other. This is important because the plugin is loaded using the architecture of the app that’s using it.

For example, at the time of writing, Zoom does not support Apple silicon natively and runs in the “Rosetta 2” emulation platform provided by Big Sur. This also means that the Pro Webcam plugin running in Zoom will be running in the Rosetta emulation layer even if the Pro Webcam app itself is running natively on Apple silicon.

However, because Pro Webcam running on Apple silicon is cross-compatible with its plugin running in Rosetta, Pro Webcam can still take full advantage of the amazing performance and battery life improvements Apple silicon provides by performing all of its image processing natively before delivering the result to your apps, whether they’re also running natively or running in the Rosetta emulation layer.

Cascable for iOS 5.2

Cascable for iOS now fully supports iOS 14 and the new iPhone 12 family of devices. It also adds supports for some new cameras, including the Canon EOS R6 and R6, and full support for HEIF images. And — finally! — you can take photos using the volume buttons on your iOS device, just like with other camera apps.

And, the big one: On iOS 14.2 or later and with Canon EOS cameras, Cascable 5.2 supports full remote control, tethering, automation, and image import via USB! This is a world first for iOS apps — Cascable is currently the only app on the App Store that offers this functionality!

Remote control and automation via USB is a little more, well, tethered than via WiFi, but for some workflows — notably, performing complex, multi-shot sequences using our Shutter Robot automation tools — the extra speed and reduced latency is absolutely game changing, and we’re thrilled to be able to bring this option to our users alongside WiFi connections.

At present, this feature is limited to Canon EOS cameras — all other cameras will continue to work for image import via USB as before. We’re working on adding full USB support for cameras in the future, though!

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.

We’re proud to announce Cascable 5.0, which brings a radical change for photography tools on iOS — support for directly working with photos stored on cameras and other storage devices connected via USB, including flash memory, SSDs, hard drives, and more!

That’s not all! Cascable 5.0 contains several other new features and improvements to existing ones. Let’s dive in!

Import Photos From USB-Connected Cameras

For years, Cascable has focused on the freedom and flexibility of working with cameras over WiFi. When importing images, we even provide access to RAW images when most other apps limit you to JPEG files. However, some models of camera refuse to provide RAW images over WiFi, and importing large projects from those that do can take some time.

With Cascable 5.0, both of these problems can be solved by plugging your camera into your iPhone or iPad via USB. As long as you’re running iOS/iPadOS 13.2 or higher and your camera supports industry-standard PTP/MTP file transfer standards, Cascable will connect to your camera and allow you to view, filter, preview and copy RAW and JPEG images.

This expands Cascable’s reach quite considerably:

• It gives access to RAW images when not available via WiFi (this one’s for you, Fujifilm users!)
• It provides compatibility with cameras that don’t have WiFi
• Particularly on iOS devices and cameras that support USB 3 speeds, it gives astonishingly fast photo import!

Working with cameras via USB isn’t itself a paid feature of Cascable, but the usual limitations apply — working with RAW images, automatic import, and various other features require the paid app. You can find out which features require the paid version of Cascable in our Pro Features support article.

Getting your camera connected to your iOS device may need adapters and a little bit of setup. You can find a guide to that in our Working with Wired Cameras guide.

Important: Due to limitations in iOS/iPadOS, Cascable is only able to provide photo management features via USB. Remote control and shot automation features still require a WiFi connection to the camera.

An Important Note On USB Compatibility

Adding support for connecting cameras via USB opens Cascable up to thousands of camera models. It’s impossible for us to test all of them, so we don’t maintain a list of supported USB cameras. Cascable should work with any camera that supports industry standards, but it won’t work with every camera out there.

It’s also important to note that our WiFi compatibility table only charts cameras that are compatible with Cascable over WiFi. A camera missing from that list doesn’t mean it won’t work via USB, and importantly a camera on that list doesn’t mean it will work via USB.

Work With USB Storage

Cascable 4.0 added support for the SanDisk iXpand external USB storage device, and we’re very happy to be able to expand our support to any standard USB storage device in Cascable 5.0 as long as you’re running iOS/iPad OS 13 or higher.

Simply connect your USB storage device to your iPhone or iPad, then tap Add Storage Location… in Cascable and choose your storage device. Cascable will then automatically show that device whenever it’s connected.

USB storage devices are first-class citizens in Cascable, and work with the whole host of photo management features. As with cameras, working with USB storage may need adapters and a little bit of setup — you can find out more in our Working with Out-Of-App Storage guide.

It’s not just USB storage drives! You can add any writeable storage location available to your iOS device to Cascable — including folders in the device’s internal storage.

Much More Powerful Automatic Importing

Cascable’s automatic importing feature — Storage Links — gets much more powerful in Cascable 5.0 with the addition of two features: Filtering and Inter-Session Import.

Filtering allows you to choose whether a storage link applies only to RAW or JPEG images, and inter-session import means that storage links now apply between connections of a camera rather than just while a camera is connected.

Photo Search and Filter

We’ve also added some filtering tools to Cascable’s photo management screens. You can filter photos by date, file type, and with a text search. Text search supports the following metadata:

• File name
• IPTC artist
• IPTC copyright
• Camera manufacturer and model name
• Lens name, if provided

Other Minor Features

We’ve also added a manual focus stepper to remote control for cameras that support it, added a “Perform Autofocus” block to Recipes, and added support for a number of new cameras.

Do I Have To Pay For These New Features?

Our upgrade policy remains the same as with Cascable 4.0: If you’re currently subscribed to Cascable Pro or have purchased a full unlock to Cascable Pro in the past, everything in Cascable 5.0 is available to you.

Keep In Touch!

If you’d like to keep in touch with us, you can do so in a number of ways:

We’ll be posting handy tips and tricks on this blog, and you can subscribe to our RSS feed here.

You can follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook for byte-sized looks into life at Cascable.

You can subscribe to our email newsletter. It’s very low-volume, and we’ll use it to send you the occasional email about Cascable updates and new features.