Reikan FoCal 1.9.6 Release – Nikon D4S (Windows & Mac)

We’re delighted to announce the release of Reikan FoCal 1.9.6 for Windows and Mac, bringing Nikon D4s support and the fixing of several bugs.

Fixes and Improvements

The following is a list of the changes since the release of FoCal 1.9.5:

New features:

• NEW: Addition of Nikon D4s support
• NEW: Changed references to PayPal Transaction ID to Password in the software to make licensing more obvious
• NEW: Improved error messages relating to disabled Drive Modes and Metering Modes on the Canon 1D X and 1D Mark IV

Fixes:

• FIX: Fixed a bug where occasionally Target Optimisation could cause the software to crash
• MOD: We’ve changed the way Raw processing works slightly to try and remove a very rare raw processing bug on Mac computers.

Nikon D4s Support

It took a while for Nikon to release the SDK for their D4s, but once it was available we managed to get our hands on a D4s for validation testing and have successfully integrated support for this camera into FoCal.  Like other Nikon cameras, it’ll run in MSC mode (so you’ll have to occasionally change the AF Fine Tune setting during calibration), but everything else is fully automatic.

Software Support Status

Mac

The following table shows the support for FoCal for Mac:

Operating System	Camera Manufacturer	Status
OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.7 (Lion)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
OS X 10.9 (Mavericks)	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional

Windows

The following table shows the support for FoCal for Windows:

Operating System	Camera Manufacturer	Status
Windows Vista	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 7	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 8	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional
Windows 8.1	Canon & Nikon	Fully functional

We no longer officially support Windows XP as this operating system is no longer supported by Microsoft.  However, we haven’t stopped the software working on Windows XP, so you should find that it still works OK if you are using this operating system, but we cannot fix any issues that might arise only on Windows XP.

Additional Information

The following is additional information specific to this release:

Known Issues

We’ve update the License Management System recently to be more secure and as such the link in the “New Software” notification window will no longer work when you’re upgrading from FoCal 1.9.5.  You’ll have to go to the LMS and log in manually with your credentials (which you can get from the License Management window in the software if you don’t have them to hand).

The following are known issues with this release of the software:

• There is an occasional error which occurs on the Mac during Raw image processing.  We have been investigating this issue but it occurs so rarely that it’s very difficult to find the cause.  If you see a message indicating a failure during raw processing (with an “Object reference” or “Object disposed” error) , you should try again but if you repeatedly see the problem then please switch to JPEG capture mode.  We will continue to investigate this and release a fix as soon as we have identified the cause of the problem.
• There may be an issue with Nikon cameras when they are in Auto-ISO mode.  It is advisable to make sure your camera is NOT in Auto ISO (you can delect this from the Shooting menu, ISO settings).  We are investigating this issue.

Other Information

• The Testing Guide is somewhat out of date and we are planning a rewrite shortly.  The general concepts are still very valid, but the operational information towards the end of the guide relates to older versions of FoCal.
• The File Camera functionality in FoCal is no longer being maintained.  We don’t believe there are many users of this feature and we will be re-implementing the ability to run tests on files in a much more user friendly way shortly.
• The version number of the Target Image files has been updated – this is purely to update the copyright text at the bottom of the target and there is no need to reprint the newer targets for analysis.

How do I get it?

If you already have a license for FoCal, you can download the software at no extra cost from the License Management System – you’ll see the link to the download near the bottom of the page once you log in.

You can purchase FoCal Standard, FoCal Plus or FoCal Pro from the links at the bottom of the version information pages.

MAC: The software is available as a disk image (DMG) file for OS X, containing the software itself, the target images and documentation in separate directories.

WINDOWS: The software is available as a ZIP file, which contains the software, the target images and the documentation in separate directories.

Installing on OS X (IMPORTANT!)

FoCal for Mac uses the Mono framework and this must be installed before using FoCal.  Please see this post for complete information on how to ensure your Mac is set up correctly to run FoCal.  If you do not follow these instructions, FoCal will NOT operate correctly!

QuickStart Guides

There are short guides available which help you through the installation, connection and first use of the software available for Windows and for Mac on the Document Downloads page.