The Unleashed is the swiss army knife of camera accessories: It’s tiny, but packed with features. So much more than just a camera remote, it unleashes the full potential of your camera with expert level timelapse features, long exposure capabilities, geotagging and more – in a tiny Bluetooth module and an intuitive app that simply works.

1. Turn on your camera and the Unleashed will instantly reconnect to your smartphone.
2. Control any of the numerous features from the Unleashed app. Once you’ve started a shot, the Unleashed will take care of the rest, so you can just sit back and
3. enjoy the beautiful results. It’s that simple! 

Since our last Kickstarter campaign, we’ve shipped the Unleashed ’18 to thousands of happy customers all over the world. Now, by popular demand, we’re launching the new Unleashed ’22, finally supporting nearly all mirrorless cameras as well as DSLRs: Sony, Fujifilm, Panasonic, Canon and Nikon! 

Unleasheds on Sony Alpha 7 III, Fujifilm X-T2, Panasonic Lumix S1, Canon EOS R, Nikon Z6 II

We designed the Unleashed to be incredibly smart in the tiniest package. With its low profile design, it’s never in your way and you can leave it on your camera at all times – even when packing it in your bag. Thanks to Bluetooth Low Energy, initial pairing takes less than 10 seconds and reconnection is almost instant when you turn on the camera or open the app. It only uses a minimal amount of power from your camera battery, so you don’t need to charge it, and it’s always ready when you need it! 

Our beautiful app is just the user interface for the Unleashed, whereas the brains are in the tiny device itself. This means it will keep controlling the camera to finish your shot, even if you close the app, you walk out of range or your phone battery dies.

• Incredibly tiny & flat on the side of your camera – can stay attached all the time
• Bluetooth Low Energy – pairs in seconds, reconnects the instant you open the app
• Powered by the camera battery – no charging, always ready to use
• Smart hardware with app as user interface – the Unleashed keeps going, even when disconnected from app

An entire toolset in the tiniest device

The Unleashed gives you full control over your camera from the palm of your hand and adds a ton of features to your camera – easy to use from our app.

• Remote triggering for tripod shots and family photos
• Video recording, even with multiple cameras
• Changing settings from our app, without touching the camera
• Direct in-camera geotagging
• Long exposures, perfectly timed up to 4.5 hours
• Timelapses made easy, even advanced “holy grail” day-to-night transitions
• HDR bracketing
• Focus bracketing
• Gallery with high resolution photo review
• Photo sharing, right from our app

The Unleashed enables you to easily take pro-level selfies, breathtaking astro photos, creative light-paintings and epic “holy grail” timelapses.

The Unleashed ‘18 is already loved by thousands of customers, achieving beautiful results that continue to blow us away. This gave us a solid foundation to build on, and we took all your feedback and wishes to heart.

So for the new Unleashed ‘22, we reworked every aspect of our firmware and much of our app, further improving speed and reliability. And of course we added some great new features to make it the perfect all-round tool for any photographer!

IN OUR CUSTOMERS’ WORDS

“Unleashed has changed my life. I have two, one for each Z7, use them to about 10% of their potential and they’re still game-changing.” – Josh H.

“I have been taking pictures for about 50 years and have seen and tried many technical solutions for remote control of cameras. This solution from Germany is so far the most sophisticated, elegant and at an unbeatable price I have found.” – Blue Reef

“This technology for camera control is amazing and so small. It puts all others practically out of the picture (no pun intended).” – Dr. Stephen L.

Because it can always stay on your camera and is never out of battery, the Unleashed is the perfect remote control, be it for simple triggering of tripod shots, family photos or selfies. Or use it to remotely start & stop video recording – when your camera is mounted on a gimbal or you want to start multiple cameras at once. The Unleashed app can handle up to 6 cameras with ease.

But it’s so much more than just a remote – with the Unleashed you can change all the important settings of your camera, without having to touch your camera or dig through daunting menus.

We’ve all come to love geotagged photos on our smartphones, where you can easily find photos on a map in the “places” album, as well as check the exact location of individual shots. The Unleashed enables direct in-camera geotagging for your mirrorless camera or DSLR, using either your smartphone’s location or a dedicated Bluetooth GPS receiver.

Astrophotography, lightpainting and more

Our long exposure feature helps you take perfectly timed exposures up to 4.5 hours. When the camera is set to bulb mode, the Unleashed will hold the trigger down for you for the exact time you want it to. Or you can press once to start and press again to stop a long exposure of any length. We decided on continuing the scale of 1/3rd stop steps from the camera instead of you having to set hours, minutes and seconds separately. While it’s unconventional, this makes it much easier to work with the other exposure settings in the camera: Take test shots with high ISO to nail exposure, then decrease ISO and easily increase exposure time by an equal number of stops to keep the same exposure level.

Milky Way by Derek Sturman @dereksturmanphotography

ND filter photography

We also added a setting that will adjust the shutter speed for you by the right number of stops when adding or removing ND filters, making ND filter calculators obsolete! 

The Unleashed makes setting up any timelapse a breeze, whether simple or requiring expert features. And we implemented lots of them!

Just use our default settings and hit start or choose your interval and shooting time – it’s that easy! We’ll show you the number of photos it’ll take, as well as the resulting clip length at your chosen frame rate. You can also decide to choose the number of photos to take, and we’ll calculate the shooting time for you instead.

Real exposure ramping 

The Unleashed brings “holy grail” timelapses within reach for everyone. During these day-to-night transition timelapses, the Unleashed will adjust exposure settings automatically, using one of several algorithms to choose from. We’re not limited to bulb-ramping, but can actually ramp the camera’s shutterspeed, aperture and ISO for daylight to milkyway transitions.

Minimized dark-time

All normal intervalometers have unnecessarily long autofocussing and hold times. The former is how long the shutter button is half-pressed before the interval, the latter how long it is fully pressed and held on each interval. These times need to be long enough to ensure a photo is taken, with or without AF. So to be on the safe side, intervalometers usually half-press, then press and hold for way too long. This results in unwanted “dark-time” between shots where nothing useful happens, but you also can’t view the photos. Some more advanced intervalometers allow you to change the hold time, but this puts the burden on you to find the shortest possible but longest necessary time that will consistently work with your camera. The Unleashed knows whether the camera is set to autofocus, and on most cameras it gets the info exactly when the shutter opens. So it will only half-press when necessary and can stop holding the shutter button the instant we know the camera started the shot, leading to the absolute minimal dark-time for every camera, with no configuration necessary. 

Flexible intervals

So you don’t miss any shots when exposure times get longer, the Unleashed can optionally start increasing the interval. This is perfect for day-to-night timelapses as it enables you to have a nice short interval during the day, but still allows ramping down to 30s exposures for starry nights.

Unleashed in its element with Mike Ver Sprill – @milky_way_mike

Month-long durations

You can now set intervals of up to 24h and shooting times up to 365 days!

External intervalometer support

Our autoramping will optionally work with external intervalometers, even sliders and other motion controllers.

Sync timelapses with the movement of motion controllers

Because the Unleashed knows exactly when a shot ends, it can tell motion controllers to move with perfect timing, in order to maximise the time until the next shot and therefore minimize vibrations. This will work wirelessly with selected manufacturers. We have already implemented support for the Black Forest Motion PINE controllers and Syrp devices (see the latest update for demo videos), with more to follow. With most cameras it will also work with a wired shutter cable from any other motion controller and the Unleashed set to external intervalometer.

Foolproof and fail-safe

All basic and advanced features are implemented in the Unleashed firmware, and the app just provides the user interface to configure them. Once started, the Unleashed keeps controlling the camera with precision and without missing a beat, even if you lose Bluetooth connectivity. Precise timing, complex “holy grail” calculations and camera adjustments are handled by the Unleashed itself, not the app! Even the Bluetooth connection to a motion controller is direct and independent from the smartphone. Of course you can open the app and reconnect at any time to see the current progress or make manual adjustments.

Gallery and photo review – now in HD

The new Unleashed got 10x faster. So you can now transfer high-resolution preview images to your phone! You can enable automatic downloading for quick review after each shot you take, and you can browse all photos in our new gallery view. The Unleashed quickly loads all thumbnails and you can choose to download your favorites in higher resolutions individually. To get the most out of the Bluetooth bandwidth, we added smart comparison algorithms to avoid unnecessary data transfers. We even implemented complex methods to add the EXIF data of the original image to the high-resolution previews you’re downloading! Because your GPS metadata along with all other shooting info is in the preview images when you save those to your camera roll, you’ll be able to see and search for those photos conveniently on a map in your “Places” album.

Share on location

Easily share your favorite shots taken with your camera right from our app. The new high resolution previews are perfect for sharing on Social Media or with your family and friends right on the spot.

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Extended exposure bracketing.

When we say extended, we mean it. With the Unleashed, you can take exposure bracketed shots with up to 55 images and any EV stepsize: 0.3, 0.7, 1.0, 2.0… you name it. Set up your starting exposure, and select whether you want symmetric bracketing, only darker exposures, or just brighter exposures. Choose whether to bracket exposure by changing shutterspeed, aperture or ISO – or any combination thereof, in the order you choose! Set maximum and minimum for each of these settings, to keep your bracketed shots shorter, avoid noise or limit depth of field variation and diffraction. You have full control!

Capture scenes with high dynamic range to create HDR photos with tone mapping or exposure fusion. Or use it for image-based lighting of 3D renderings to realistically place 3D objects into the real world.

The Unleashed will allow you to take a series of photos, automatically changing focus in small steps between each photo. You choose direction, step size and how many shots it should take. After stacking these photos in software like Helicon Focus, you’ll get an image with a much higher depth of field. The results are stunning macrophotos, or landscape photos tack sharp from the closest foreground all the way to infinity. 

Developers getting creative with our Unleashed will open up a whole host of great new products or software solutions. Be it DIY motion control setups, an app for Garmin GPS watches or a plugin for popular software on PCs.

We will publish our API and over time try to provide some open source examples of how to use them.

There are two ways of connecting with the Unleashed:

Unleashed as peripheral – this replaces the connection with our app.

• Advantage: In theory, everything is possible, but we still need to determine which parts make sense to publish.
• Disadvantage: You won’t be able to connect at the same time as the app.

Unleashed is central – connects to your peripheral device as an accessory.

• Advantage: The API can be much simpler, and our app can be connected at the same time. We can have different sets of simple APIs for different product categories. It’s easy to pair within the Unleashed app, and we have already implemented several, since we can already connect to GPS devices, motion controllers or triggering devices.
• Disadvantage: Not everything will be possible.

The new Unleashed ’22 is compatible with 144 camera models. To fit all those different cameras, there will be 7 different Unleashed models, as well as 7 different cables to perfectly and snugly fit on your camera. Each Unleashed model is a mere 14x16x5.5mm in size (0.54 x 0.63 x 0.20 in, w x h x d, without the plug) and weighs less than 5g. The cables are custom made with extremely flexible wires and the smallest possible right-angled plugs to make sure they never get in your way.

• N1 and N2 have Nikon specific 10 pin plugs and come with an optional USB cable. This is available with 4 different USB plugs: USB-C, USB-Micro, USB-Mini and USB-8P
• M1 has a USB-C plug that’s reversible
• M2 and M3 have USB-Micro plugs and 
• M4 and M5 have USB-Mini plugs
• All M models come with an HDMI cable. This is available with 3 different HDMI plugs: HDMI-A (Full-size), HDMI-C (Mini-HDMI), HDMI-D (Micro-HDMI). 

To make it easier, all we need to know is which camera you want the Unleashed for, and we’ll make sure you get the right Unleashed + cable combination. Just back this project and pledge to support us today, and a few weeks before shipping we’ll send you a survey through our pledge manager where you can specify your camera along with shipping details to get your reward.

The following cameras are supported. Having covered all bases, we’re sure one of our Unleashed models will fit any new camera coming to market.

Sony Alpha: α7 IV, ZV-E10, α1, α7S III, ZV-1, α9 II, α6100, α6600, RX100 VII, α7R IV, RX0 II, α6400, RX100 VA, RX100 VI, α7 III, α7R III, RX10 IV, RX0, α9, α6500, α99 II

Fujifilm: GFX 100S, X-S10, X-T4, GFX 100, X-T3, X-H1, GFX 50S, X-T2, X-T1 IR, X-T1, IS Pro, S5 Pro

Panasonic Lumix: DC-GH6, DC-GH5 II, DC-S5, DC-S1H, DC-S1, DC-S1R, DC-GH5S, DC-G9, DC-GH5

Canon EOS: R3, R5, R6, 850D / Rebel T8i, 1D X Mark III, Ra, 90D, M6 Mark II, 250D / Rebel SL3 / Kiss X10, RP, R, 2000D / 1500D / Rebel T7 / Kiss X90, 4000D, 6D Mark II, 200D / Rebel SL2 / Kiss X9, 77D / 9000D, 800D / Rebel T7i / Kiss X9i, 5D Mark IV, 1300D / Rebel T6, 80D, 1D X Mark II, 5Ds, 5Ds R, 760D / Rebel T6s / 8000D, 750D / Rebel T6i / Kiss X8i, 7D Mark II, 1200D / Rebel T5 / Kiss X70, 70D, 100D / Rebel SL1, 700D / Rebel T5i / Kiss X7i, 6D, 650D / Rebel T4i / Kiss X6i, 1D C, 60Da, 5D Mark III, 1D X, 600D / Rebel T3i / Kiss X5, 1100D / Rebel T3 / Kiss X50, 60D, 550D / Rebel T2i / Kiss X4, 1D Mark IV, 7D, 500D / Rebel T1i / Kiss X3, 5D Mark II, 50D

Nikon: Z9, Z fc, Z7 II, Z6 II, Z5, D780, Z50, D6, D3500, Z7, Z6, D850, D7500, D5600, D3400, D5, D500, D7200, D810A, D5500, D750, D810, D4s, D3300, Df, D5300 , D610, D7100, D5200, D600, D3200, D800, D800E, D4, D5100, D7000, D3100, D3S, D300S, D5000, D3X, D90, D700, D3, D300, D2Xs, D200, D2Hs, D2X, D2H. With reduced features: D1X, D1H, D1, Coolpix P1000, Coolpix P950, Coolpix A, P7700, P7800, F6, F100, F5, F90X/N90s, F90/N90 – That’s right, we even support 5 different film or “analogue” cameras!

Please check the full compatibility table here, to see which features are supported on your camera.

There are some notable exceptions of cameras we don’t officially support. Check our FAQs for the reasons why.

• Sony: α7C as well as α6300, α7 II and older
• Fujifilm: GFX-50R, X-Pro2, X-Pro1
• Panasonic: BSH1 and BGH1
• Canon: M Series (except M6 Mark II) as well as 1000D and older
• Nikon: D3300, D3000 and older entry-level DSLRs

Yes, we know each one of those manufacturers has their own app … but have you ever used one – and then used it a second time? From our own experience and for the vast majority of people we have talked to, the manufacturers apps are so frustrating to use, that few people will bother making a second attempt of getting the apps to work, let alone use them productively in the field. The biggest gripes everyone has with these apps is getting them to connect to the camera reliably. The Unleashed is the complete opposite: Even initial pairing only takes seconds, and reconnection in every day use happens instantly when you open the app. 

Check out a real-time comparison between the Unleashed versus the manufacturers’ native apps from initial connection to first photo.

“I’ve used a lot of remote triggers, but the Unleashed is by far my favorite. It’s so small and unobtrusive that it nests inside my camera’s L-bracket and I love the fact it needs no batteries or charging. The app has an intuitive, modern, well-designed interface. With the latest updates, it’s a dream to use for low light remote triggering and complex timelapse. I’m really looking forward to all the features of the new Unleashed.”

“Shutter release remotes are one of the essential components to sharp night sky images, so naturally I have used a lot of them. Some would call me a destroyer of equipment on the many trips I drag it through, so I’ve jumped from remote to remote for years. Well, since I’ve had the Unleashed that’s changed. Ever since I’ve had it, I haven’t used another remote at all, honestly. The thing just lives on my camera, I don’t think it has left my camera body even once since the day I got it. The greatest part about it is that I no longer have to constantly worry about forgetting to bring a shutter remote, or losing it along the way. I remember the constant stress of bringing batteries or forgetting them on multi day backpacking trips for other remotes. What is great about this remote is it uses your camera’s battery (which I have not noticed any difference in battery life) and now I can just focus on bringing camera batteries and keeping my phone charged which I would be doing anyway! I’ve also used a lot of the standard camera bluetooth apps like nikon’s snap bridge and would go as far as to say that I am not alone in disliking them. The interface of the Unleashed app is easy to use and very effective. It’s also so nice to finally have an app that has real usable timelapse functions.”

“For me, the thing I like about the Unleashed the most might be different than one would think. I love how easily I can use my camera remotely from my phone. I can control/change almost all settings from the palm of my hand. Since I do a lot of astrophotography and long exposure stuff, it really makes that so much easier for me. A lot of times I need to be able to start my camera and do light painting. I can set up a 2 or 10 second delay on my phone, hit start, put my phone in my pocket, wait for it to start taking the picture and do my light painting. It helps a lot more than one would think.

It’s also very nice to be able to take “selfies” with something other than a cell phone when there’s not generally people around that can run the camera for you. I have taken many family pictures with it remotely that don’t look like they were set up on a tripod. I love the timelapse and holy grail timelapse features as well. I really like that I can see visually what multiple cameras are doing at any time throughout the timelapse too. I think my favorite “moments” I have with using them is taking my own astroselfies or self-family pictures. I don’t always get the opportunity to be in the pictures because I’m usually the one with the camera taking the pictures. But with The Unleashed I can remotely control them, from a decent distance and even view the images if need be. It makes getting in front of the camera much easier and be part of the memories I’m creating.”

“Hey all my name is Josh Morgan and I’m a rural electrician from New Zealand with a keen interest on Astro Photography and Timelapse. So I took a punt on the Unleashed in early 2020 to hopefully assist me with my timelapse work. After a long Covid wait it arrived and I couldn’t be more happy with it. Really transformed my D750 into a more modern machine, gave me extended long shutter durations for crazy long exposures, GPS tagging and more importantly full time exposure ramping shutter/aperture/iso for full time holy grail timelapse work which had been a sore point for me as I had to manually ramp every setting during sunset/sunrise which has its own problems if I was tryna run 2 cameras. But also more importantly it runs off Bluetooth which was critical to me as any wifi related systems absolutely chewed up battery life on the camera. So a very welcomed bonus and so far a hell of a product.

My favourite moment so far with the Unleashed is it finally allowed me to capture amazing holy grail timelapse work coming into our prime Astro season at my holiday destination of choice Great Barrier Island. What I managed to capture was some of the most intense levels of airglow I’ve ever encountered. I have family/time constraints there so having the Unleashed work hands off was really amazing.”

Foolography GmbH, founded in 2009, is an international team located in Berlin, Germany, making use of the city’s great network and drive for technological innovation. Being engineers and photographers ourselves, we live and breathe our products. The Unleashed is not just another commercial product, it’s our baby! We use it all the time and have devoted countless hours refining every detail for the smoothest operation in all edge cases. To do so, we reverse engineered protocols and learned to control every possible bit of the cameras! This translates to a hassle-free user experience which really sets the Unleashed apart. 

The Unleashed is made in Germany and is the product of some serious German engineering! Of course some components are sourced abroad, but the Unleashed is designed, developed and manufactured in Germany.

We’ve actively been working toward this new Unleashed for the better part of the last two years. In fact, to pave the way for the new features of the Unleashed ‘22, we refactored so much code that we found and fixed quite a few bugs in rare edge cases and made huge improvements to nearly all features of the Unleashed ‘18 along the way. After a long beta testing phase, we just released all these in a major 2.0.0 update of our Apps for iOS and Android including the 2.0.0 Firmware. So not only does the new Unleashed benefit hugely from all the R&D we did on the Unleashed ‘18, the reverse is true as well.

One of the most important things we learned from the last campaign: no matter how well you plan, you’ll always need more time! So we’re only starting this campaign now that we got the Unleashed fully functional on all new brands. The current lead times for components are making it virtually impossible to promise a shorter delivery time, so we have not just included some buffers into our timeline – basically our entire timeline is buffer! So while we gear up for production and wait for components to arrive, we’ll have all that time to really polish all the new features.

After the campaign, a few weeks before we ship the Unleashed, you will get access to our pledge management system (via email) where you can pay for optional express shipping, buy additional Unleasheds or other accessories. 

Shipping costs are: Germany: 8€, Rest of World: 15€, express shipping can be added optionally. We ship our Unleashed from Germany with proper customs declarations using tariff code 85299065. This is often exempt from customs fees, but you might have to pay import VAT when it reaches your country.

We really appreciate your help in getting word out about the new Unleashed, be it to your photography buddies, your followers on Social Media or a media outlet you happen to work for ?. Feel free to reach out to press@foolography.com or come have a look at www.foolography.com/press. 

Oliver and his Dad on their photowalk through Berlin