Photos, they have become a vastly more important and shareable thing since the advent of digital photography, smartphones and even the internet. Google redefined how we can store, find and share our digital memories when they launched Google Photos.
For those of us who still use a separate physical camera, be that a DSLR or a point and shoot it’s a huge frustration to get your photos off your device. There’s cables, memory cards, copying, uploading, even for technologically literate people it’s a hassle.
Today that frustration ends for some Canon owners with the launch of Canon’s integration with the new Works with Google Photos program via their image.canon app. If you have a compatible camera you will be able to connect your camera to Google Photos for automatic backup.
For which Canon cameras are compatible you can check the Canon website, or we have grabbed screenshots below of the DSLR and point and shoot models.
If you have a compatible camera and want to use the backup feature, there is a little catch, you need to be a Google One subscriber to use the service — which is a strange decision by Google. Additionally, all photos will be backed up in original quality which will count towards your total Google data cap.
Canon is offering a free one month trial to the base 100GB tier of Google One. One month isn’t very long and if you’re an avid photographer 100GB may not last that long either.
It’s unclear if the decision to back up in original quality was made by Canon to preserve the quality of the images or if it is a requirement by Google. Either way, we’re not fans of not being given a choice as consumers.
If storage space becomes an issue, you can always upload in original quality and periodically convert them back to high quality using Google Photos on the web to change the stored quality.
We are also not sure why a Google One account is necessary, it would be a shame to see Google launch partner integrations like this, only to hide usability behind a monthly subscription. While a 100GB Google One subscription isn’t that costly, it’s a bit of an ‘Apple move’ to put basic functionality behind a paywall — don’t be evil Google (or “do the right thing”).
If you have a compatible Canon camera and want to start backing up your device to Google Photos, head on over to the Play Store and grab the app.
Getting photos in is fine and dandy, but getting them out in mass is rough, aka for a backup. Takeouts is not a good solution.
What I am not sure on is will it automatically send it from the camera to Google Photos using the inbuilt wifi and the Canon app is just used to set it up or will it be sent via the mobile phone and if so is a local copy downloaded or saved or is it just streamed through the phone.
If you didnt have Google One your free data limit would be reached in hours or days. By forcing Google One they are being transparent about the data usage and the potential ongoing charges. It is making people realise just how much data they will be backing up using original photos on a latest gen dslr.
If you use Google Opinion Rewards then you should be able to pay for most if not all of the cost with by doing surveys.
agreed, but it’s still not 100% a nice move. We need more details before we can comment fully.