We’ve been working really hard on the Mac version of FoCal 2, and while it’s not quite ready for release yet we wanted to show you how things are coming along.
What’s New
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There are loads of new features over what was available in FoCal 1. There’s more detail below, but here’s an idea of what’s coming:
- New main FoCal window making it easier to navigate tests.
- FoCal Data Subscription – compare your results with typical results from other FoCal users.
- History – review your previous results, even those from FoCal 1.
- File Mode – run calibration, aperture sharpness or focus consistency tests on files, even from cameras which can’t be controlled by FoCal.
- Target Setup – improvements for getting the best focus before starting tests
- Fully Automatic Calibration – lots of user interface and functionality improvements
- Aperture Sharpness – lots of user interface and functionality improvements
- AF Consistency – lots of user interface and functionality improvements
- Free Upgrade – when fully released, FoCal 2 will be a free upgrade for all holders of a FoCal 1 license, so there’s nothing more to pay to get all these new features
We’ve been working very hard on “unifying the codebase” – what this means is that we’ve reduced the differences between the Windows and Mac version of FoCal, meaning there shouldn’t be delays between future Windows and Mac releases, even with big features added.
We’ve also updated the user interface on the Mac to bring some of the features from Windows (e.g. tinted buttons and panels), and added support for Mac features like Retina displays.
On top of this, there’s been a big focus on reliability and ease of use, we expect that FoCal 2 will be more stable for all users and easier to use. We’re also hoping to make the installation easier – possibly even distributing through the App Store – but that depends on whether we can crack one particular problem we’re working on now.
Anyway, on to the details…
The Main FoCal Window
The main window has been redesigned to match the style of the Windows version of FoCal 2, with a tabbed layout to make access to the tools more intuitive:
Like on the Windows version, some of the tools aren’t ready yet (e.g. Calibration Check) and aren’t enabled, but they will be soon.
FoCal Data Subscription
The FoCal Data Subscription gives you access to comparison data, meaning you can compare your results to typical results from other FoCal users. Our database had hundreds of thousands of test results in, and we process this information and send it back to the FoCal application so you can see whether your setup is behaving in a typical manner. This is more useful than absolute numbers – for instance, you might get a higher sharpness value from a $2000 Canon EF24-70mm f/2.8L Mark II than from a $100 Canon EF50mm f/1.8 lens, but by comparing with other users you might be able to see that you have a stellar copy of the cheap lens and a poor copy of the expensive lens!
The information is shown in the Compare tabs for the individual tests, and as a coloured overlay on the charts within the tests – there’s more details in the specific test sections below.
History
You will be able to review the history results for all the tests you’ve run on your computer – even from FoCal 1! You can review basic information about the test on the history window (shown below), and by clicking the Show Details button you can recreate the test window and look through all the details. You’ll also be able to save reports and/or CSV information about previous tests.
File Mode
FoCal 2 brings File Mode to the Fully Automatic calibration, Aperture Sharpness and Focus Consistency tests. You can choose a set of files – even from cameras which can’t be controlled from FoCal – and run the images through the test. You’ll get all the same results as if you had the camera connected to FoCal, including comparison with other users and being able to look at the results at a later date from the history.
Voice Prompts
The Voice Prompt functionality on FoCal 2 for Windows has been very well received. Although it sounds a bit gimmicky, in combination with the camera hotkey it means you can completely calibrate any camera without even looking at the computer. This is a very valuable feature for quick calibration of cameras which run in User Assisted Mode (most Nikon cameras and some later Canon cameras).
Target Setup
The Target Setup utility has all the new FoCal 2 features added. The Focus Controls panel allows you to run automatic or manual focus operations:
For manual focus operations, the quality indicators are now shown.
To recap, the left-hand (larger) quality indicator shows the focus quality achieved over the last 20 operations. The colour of the bar corresponds to the buttons of the operations (e.g. green is phase detect autofocus, blue is contrast detect, orange is manual near focus, red is manual far focus and yellow is a reading update with no change). The right-hand indicator shows the current quality as compared to the previous results – in the example above the black bar on the right-hand indicator is right at the top giving confidence that the lens is focused very well on the target.
All the usual features – focus point display, target search and the histogram – are all still available.
Fully Automatic Calibration
The Fully Automatic calibration tool has been fully updated to match the Windows features for FoCal 2.
Tabbed information panels for settings, individual shot information, overall test results, comparison with other users (if you have a FoCal Data Subscription) and information about your test history.
Typical comparison data is shown on the charts with the green/blue/red areas indicating how your camera and lens compare to the typical results of other users.
And information about the comparison is shown in the Compare tab:
By monitoring how the results are converging, calibrations run quicker as FoCal can stop the calibration when the results are unlikely to change.
You can also compare your results for this test with the results of previous tests you’ve run on this camera and lens:
Aperture Sharpness
The Aperture Sharpness test has been updated to being the information tabs, file mode, multiple graphs and comparison with other users.
AF Consistency
The AF Consistency test has also been updated to being the information tabs, file mode, multiple graphs and comparison with other users.
What’s Next
As you can see, there’s been a lot of work going in to FoCal 2 on the Mac. We still have more to do! If everything goes well, we are hoping to release a Test Release of FoCal 2 for the Mac around the end of this month, so not long to wait now. We can’t wait to get this out to you and let you play with all the new features!
Welcome to FoCal 2.9! This is the General Availability release of FoCal 2.9 for all users, and represents the culmination of over 18 months of development work bringing improvements to every aspect of Reikan FoCal.
| Component | Version | Type |
|---|---|---|
| FoCal – Windows & Mac | 2.9.6.5974 | Stable |
General “headline” features since the last release are shown below, with more details available in the changelog. For more information you can also see the release blog post.
New look to the UI
When you connect to a camera, FoCal now obtains much more information about the camera and shows this to you in the Camera/Lens Info panel
Camera control improvements
During the development of FoCal 2.9, we have reworked almost every aspect of the software. One area that has received a lot of attention is how the cameras are controlled.
With FoCal 2.6.5 on Mac we completely changed the communication with Canon cameras, and now we bring this change to Windows too. This means faster, more reliable communications with more flexibility of what we can do with the cameras.
Improvements to both Canon and Nikon control mean that going forward we’ll be bringing some exciting new features!
64 bit macOS
One of the primary drivers for the rework in FoCal 2.9 was Apple’s requirement that all macOS apps should be 64-bit. Over the past few versions, macOS has been periodically letting you know...
From our point of view, this necessitated the change to a new, far more modern software framework for FoCal which brings a whole host of benefits.
Not only will the app run faster and be more compact on macOS, but the code is far more common between Windows and Mac, leading to improved reliability as we pick up more issues during release testing.
Support for the Nikon Z6/Z7 Mirrorless Cameras
Nikon’s exciting new mirrorless cameras - the Z6 and Z7 - have been supported in the beta builds of FoCal 2.9 for a while, but we now bring them to everyone with this general availability release of FoCal 2.9!
Online Context-Sensitive Help
FoCal is a complex product, and up until this version it camera with a complex manual - 150 pages of details! We realised this can be a bit intimidating… and so it isn’t usually read, leading to lots of questions.
So we’ve brought the information to where it’s needed, with context sensitive online help.
Hit the “?” key from lots of places in FoCal to get information about what you’re looking at.
Within the tests, use the Chart Help link to dig into the details about the information you’re seeing.
The online help system is continuously evolving - if you find it helpful or can think of improvements to areas then let us know. We want it to be driven by you, so it gives the clearest and best information and helps you get the very best from FoCal. If you want to take a look now, the index page is here.
Software Update Channels
Focal 2 For Mac High Sierra
With the introduction of Update Channels, you can now choose to get notifications about pre-release software versions.
If you like things to be solid, leave this on Stable.
But if you’re interested in trying out new features, switch to Beta (nearly ready), or Alpha (bleeding edge!) streams.
FoCal 2.9 development has made extensive use of Alpha and Beta versions. People have been benefiting from the improvements for months and giving us invaluable feedback helping us to create this new stable version.
Lens Name Reporting
You’d think that a camera would know exactly what lens it has attached… but that’s not always the case! We’ve completely changed the way that we recognised lenses, using several internal methods to try and reliably identify the attached lens. And what’s more, if we get it wrong there’s now a way you can report it back so it’s improved in future.
The history data saved with your tests contains the raw lens information, so improvements to lens recognition will also improve the insight on your previous tests, and mean that the FoCal Comparison Data for your camera/lens will be as accurate as possible.
Speedy Analysis
FoCal has always worked in a linear fashion - instructing the camera to take a shot, waiting for the data to be available and then analysing before taking the next shot.
Overlapped Capture and Analysis significantly improves the times for tests by analysing shots while the camera takes the next ones. Tests like Aperture Sharpness and Dust Analysis are considerably quicker, and there is now very little difference in overall test time between raw and JPEG analysis.
Dark/Light Themes
macOS Mojave has introduced Dark Theme and we take note of how the OS is set up to reflect this in FoCal.
We also added a lighter theme to Windows, which you can select from the Advanced preferences tab.
Review Result and Crop Images
In previous versions of FoCal, when you reviewed a previous test from the history database you could see the results but not the crop images as these were never saved.
In FoCal 2.9, all your crop images are saved locally to your computer so you can review the complete set of results and save full reports of old tests:
Note that FoCal does NOT upload any of these images, they are only ever stored locally on your computer.
You can view these release notes at any time by clicking the Release Notes link by the software version number in the about window of the application.
Focal 2 For Mac Trackpad
This is the first Stable release of FoCal 2.9, but if you want to see back through the notes related to pre-release software you can start here: https://blog.reikanfocal.com/2019/05/focal-2-9-beta-3/
Changelog
Focal 2 For Mac Os
This is a non-exhaustive list of items fixed/changed since FoCal 2.6.x.