FoCal 2.9 Beta 3 Now Available

We’ve had loads of great feedback from users of FoCal 2.9 Beta 2 which has been incredibly useful (huge thanks!). Below are changes in this latest 2.9 Beta 3 release for Windows and Mac since the previous Beta 2 release.

If you’d like more of an overview about new features in FoCal 2.9 please do check out the FoCal 2.9 Beta 1 – with Nikon Z6/Z7 Support post.

 

What’s New?

The big things in this release are:

• Reliability improvements to Mac camera communications, especially on Mojave
• Better recognition of lenses on Nikon Z6 and Z7 with FTZ adapter
• Fix to report correct focal length for longer lenses (e.g. 200-400mm with 1.4x converter)
• Fix an issue where test would fail for very long exposures during aperture sharpness or dust analysis tests
• Improved reliability of user interface operations, especially on Mac
• Improved lens name recognition – thank you to all those sending feedback!
• Improved internal camera definitions

It’s worth reading the sections below for details, and checking out the known issues. There’s information on how to download this release and give feedback below.

 

Camera Connections macOS Mojave

Some users reported seeing a problem connecting their cameras to FoCal with macOS Mojave. After a fair bit of work we think we’ve got to the bottom of this issue, it’s all to do with having a memory card with images on in the camera. If you remove the memory card and restart FoCal everything connects as normal.

We’d like FoCal to connect whether there’s a memory card in the camera or not and we’ve now added in specific code that deals with this situation. If you were having issues connecting with Mojave do check out this release and let us know how you get on!

 

Lens Identification Updates

It’s been great to receive reports of misidentified lenses from users via the new Report Incorrect link (see below) – thank you to everyone who’s reported lens mis-identification. We’ve updated our internal tables with the information and you should find they’re recognised correctly now.

There are a very small number of lenses that cannot be resolved with information available (due to third-party manufacturers using incorrect values in their lenses). We are working on a solution which we’ll add in an upcoming release.

 

Known Issues

There are a few known issues with this release:

• There is an issue on some Mac systems which causes FoCal to stop when a report is saved. This only affects a small number of users and we’re having difficulty reproducing this issue, although are adding various fixes around this area. If you experience this problem, please do get in touch with the Feedback button (see below).
• Semi Auto mode calibration is not present.
• MultiPoint Focus Test is not present.
• There is no documentation for this release – please refer to FoCal 2.6 documentation for information.
• There is an issue with some message boxes not being able to be closed on macOS Sierra and earlier. This does not affect High Sierra (10.13) or Mojave (10.14).
• With Overlapped Capture & Analysis enabled, failure cases (e.g. incorrect AF Microadjustment set in the camera, target not found etc) are not always handled correctly and may require you to quit the test and restart. If this is a problem, please disable Overlapped Capture & Analysis in the Preferences | Advanced tab.

 

Getting this Release

This release is available to all FoCal users (FoCal Plus, Pro and Commercial/Non-Profit) who were within their Included Updates Period as of 1st October 2018. You can get the software in one of two ways:

• Go to the About > Update Check option in the software, and making sure the Update Channel is set to Alpha or Beta (FoCal 2.9 onwards). From here you can hit the Download button to get the software.
• By logging in to the LMS at lms.fo-cal.co.uk. You should see a “Pre-Release Downloads” section – click this to view the available downloads.

It’s worth just checking the pre-release software FAQ to make sure you know type of software you’re getting.  

 

Feedback

Beta releases are close to Stable releases of FoCal but will benefit from wider testing with real users. We would love for users to try out this Beta release and let us know what you think!

We’ve added a Send Feedback button in the About panel of the application. Any bug reports, feature improvement, suggestions and general thoughts are very welcome.

Please do use the Send Feedback button in the software to send information back to us. This ensures the feedback is sent to the right place and that we have the right information about the release being tested.

We will read all the comments you send us, but please note that for pre-release software these are NOT handled as support requests and we won’t necessarily be able to reply or follow up.

We are going to be pretty active with pre-release updates during this period, so please send feedback and there should be a new version with fixes/improvements along soon.  

 

Thank you!

Thank you to all users who have downloaded, used and provided feedback so far. Feedback helps us to focus on the things that are important to you and makes sure we deliver high quality software to all users.