Sony PlayMemories Apps: An AI-Assisted Hack Revives the Sony a7

The Phoblographer’s editor in chief says his original Sony a7 is now, in many ways, more capable than his own a7R III, because, within the past week, Claude helped him put back the PlayMemories camera apps Sony removed years ago. For owners of older Sony bodies, the claim is that features like multiple exposure and star trails were never hardware limits, just software Sony stopped distributing.

What Happened

In his article for The Phoblographer, Chris Gampat explains that Sony once added an app store to its cameras, PlayMemories Camera Apps, which gave early bodies such as the a7 features including multiple exposures, star trails and light painting. When Sony shut the store, the apps went with it.

Gampat used Claude to install them again. He started a session, gave it a set of links including a Reddit thread on the problem, an Internet Archive collection of the apps and the open-source Sony-PMCA-RE project, and had it guide him through setup. When the installer failed on his newer version of macOS, Claude found a terminal-based route instead, which meant giving it terminal access on his Mac. Gampat, who is legally blind, says he didn’t strictly need AI for this, but it made the process much easier on his eyes.

The Sony-PMCA-RE project describes itself as a tool that talks to Sony cameras over USB to tweak settings, dump firmware and, on cameras that support PlayMemories Camera Apps, install apps. Gampat lists the bodies he says it works with: the a7, a7R, a7 II, a7R II, a7S, a5100, a6000, a6300, NEX-5T, NEX-6, RX100 III, IV and V, and RX10 III.

Why It Matters

The restored apps are real features. Gampat loaded Digital Filter, Light Painting, Star Trail, Multiple Exposure, Touchless Shutter, Picture Effect+ and Photo Retouch. He calls the multiple exposure mode “the GOAT”: seven themes, including Sky, Easy Silhouette and Texture, plus a Manual theme with Add, Weighted Average, Lighten, Darken, Screen and Multiply blend modes. In his view it is more versatile than the multiple exposure modes from Canon, Fujifilm, Lumix and Nikon. It has limits: no Bulb mode, and the blended result is saved only as an sRGB JPEG, though RAW files can be saved too.

Not everything worked. The Light Trails app, similar to Live View Composite from Olympus and Lumix, crashed repeatedly, and recovering meant pulling the battery and switching to auto mode. Gampat suspects the a7’s processor couldn’t handle it. His a7R III can’t run the apps at all; Claude told him it is firmware-locked.

What This Means for Photographers

The bigger point is about software support. Gampat argues that Sony made photographers pay thousands for features a firmware update could have provided, and frames the hack as a right-to-repair choice for cameras Sony no longer supports. That is his argument, not Sony’s position. Stack Archive’s look at whether the original Sony a7 is still worth it in 2026 covers the body these apps run best on.

The risks are his to state too: hacking comes with your own risks, and he warns not to unplug the camera or press its buttons while apps install.

Source: The Phoblographer

Content created with AI assistance and reviewed for accuracy.