Reikan FoCal 2.11 – Nikon Z50, FoCal IQ, Mac Improvements

We’re delighted to announce the final (General Availability) release of Reikan FoCal 2.11! This release brings official Nikon Z50 support, Mac stability and camera control improvements. Also included are fixes for the Canon EOS-1D X and 1Ds Mark III, integration with FoCal IQ and lots of minor but useful bug fixes.

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What’s New in FoCal 2.11

Integration with Reikan FoCal IQ

FoCal IQ is our new data comparison website built from the results of data uploaded by FoCal users. The site currently has detailed information on the performance of over 400 lenses, and now there’s direct integration with FoCal.

Where information is available at FoCal IQ, you’ll see a link to jump in and have a look at the details.

Nikon Z50 Support

Like its full-frame siblings, the new mirrorless Nikon Z 50 camera also supports AF Fine Tune. You can calibrate the autofocus in the same way as the Nikon Z6/Z7 cameras within FoCal.

We’ve been through a prerelease testing process with 2.11 Beta 1 and Beta 2, and we now have a Z 50 in our lab and so have run the full suite of validation tests.

Canon EOS-1D X / 1Ds Mark III Fixes

There are lots of minor fixes in this release, but a couple of particular note are fixes to some older Canon EOS-1D series cameras.

Although these are old cameras (2007 for the 1Ds Mark III, and 2012 for the 1D X), we do have quite a few users who were seeing consistent issues. We managed to source a 1D X for testing (it’s one of the few cameras we don’t easily have access to) and verified and fixed the issues with both this and the 1Ds Mark III.

Mac Camera Communications

We’ve worked hard on improving the low level communications with cameras on macOS. These fixes should improve detection and connection with cameras, overall reliability and speed.

The updates in place fix issues present in operating systems all the way back to OS X 10.11 El Capitan. During our release testing of this version we have extensively verified operation on:

• OS X 10.11 El Capitan
• macOS 10.12 Sierra
• macOS 10.13 High Sierra
• macOS 10.14 Mojave
• macOS 10.15 Catalina

Improvements for macOS Catalina

macOS Catalina brought in some privacy permission updates over macOS Mojave, and FoCal could behave unexpectedly if permissions were not granted. In this situation, on macOS Catalina FoCal would not connect to cameras, typically with unintuitive errors or timeouts.

We have now integrated FoCal with the macOS permisssions system, so on startup you will be asked to grant permissions to Photos and Removable Volumes. These are both required in order to communicate with cameras. If you do not grant permission (or have previously denied permission), FoCal is now much clearer about informing you what the issue is when you try to connect to cameras.

We’ve also added a button to “Reset Permissions” for FoCal in Settings > Preferences > Advanced, so if you’re seeing unexplained issues on connection it’s worth hitting this button, restarting and then granting FoCal the permissions it needs.

Camera and Lens Database Updates

Thanks again to everyone who has reported lenses that weren’t identified correctly. With your help we have the information to resolve nearly all lenses.

We’ve tweaked the recognition algorithms and updated the database to resolve quite a few extra lenses that were previously difficult to resolve.

More details…

There are more details in the changelog on the release notes for this version.

Thank You!

We’ve released 2 beta versions of FoCal 2.11 over the last couple of months and would like to thank everyone who’s tested with those and given us feedback. It really is helpful to us in validating fixes against cameras or software versions we don’t necessarily have in the lab, as well as checking that all features work as expected across the range of operating systems and cameras that we support.

Right now, FoCal supports 18 Canon cameras and 26 Nikon cameras across 5 major versions of macOS / OS X and 4 major versions of Windows! That’s quite a combination to test, and we do our best before each release but support from the FoCal community during beta testing periods really does help to catch any issues.

How do I get FoCal 2.11

Download FoCal 2.11 for Windows or macOS by logging in to the LMS at lms.fo-cal.co.uk. Once logged in, you will see a download link to the software.

This release is available to all FoCal users (FoCal Plus, Pro and Commercial/Non-Profit) who were within their Included Updates Period as of 16th December 2019 (the release date of the first 2.11 Beta). This means you can use the software if you purchased FoCal or an Included Updates Period extension on or after this date.

If the above does not apply to you, you can purchase another 12 months by logging in to the account system via lms.fo-cal.co.uk and going to the Included Updates Period section.

You can get the software in one of two ways:

• Go to the About > Update Check option in the software. From here you can hit the Download button to get the software.
• By logging in to the FoCal Account system via lms.fo-cal.co.uk.

If you don’t own FoCal, you can purchase the software as a download or boxed product, as well as Focal Hard Targets from the FoCal Online Store.

The installation package contains the software, target images and a reference manual (also available via the Documents Download page).

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