As the first month of 2023 comes to a close, we’re delighted to bring you FoCal 3.7 with a brand new tool – Camera Snapshots – as well as lots of improvements brought over from work on FoCal Mobile.
What’s New?
[If you’re not interested in the details and just want to grab the release download info is here]
The big feature for this release is Camera Snapshots – a new way of quickly and easily setting up your camera for different shooting scenarios. But that’s not all, we’ve also brought over several improvements introduced during the development of FoCal Mobile to make things smoother, easier and more reliable, as well as updating internal information about cameras, lenses and firmware.
Headline Features
The Release Notes contain a comprehensive list of changes.
Snapshots
Let’s take a quick look at the new Snapshots tool.
What is a Snapshot?
A Snapshot is a capture of the settings on your camera – from the autofocus and exposure settings, through custom white balance tuning, bracketing, Live View setup all the way to copyright information. On some cameras, this amounts to over 250 different settings across photo and movie modes.
What can you do with them?
With a single button press and a couple of seconds, you can create a Snapshot of your camera. Once you’ve got the Snapshot, you can edit camera settings within FoCal (automatically reflecting the settings back on the camera), give the Snapshot a name and description, then have an easy way to reapply specific configurations to your camera. You can even share Snapshot files with others, so when you’ve spent a few hours testing and adjusting the best settings for shooting birds in flight or evening landscapes, you can grab those settings and share them around.
Which cameras are supported?
For our first release of this functionality, Snapshots are supported on Nikon cameras released from the latter part of 2012 onwards which includes the D600 through to the latest Z9. You can see the full list a the Supported Cameras page, under the Snapshots column.
FoCal can control the majority of camera settings, but some are not reported by the camera (AF Fine Tune being a good example!) and these cannot be adjusted.
We will endeavour to add this functionality to Canon cameras shortly and complete the lineup of Nikon cameras.
How do I use Snapshots?
The Snapshots tool is a Pro-level tool, so you’ll need a FoCal Pro or Commercial license to use it.
With your camera connected to your computer, head to Snapshots either from the FoCal home page, the Camera menu or from the Snapshots button on the Camera page (the help pages for Snapshots show more detail).
Capturing a Snapshot
With the camera connected, you can capture a snapshot of your camera in a few seconds with one button click:
Once captured, you can give the Snapshot a name and add some notes:
In the Details tab, you can do a whole lot more:
- See all the captured settings
- Choose which settings to restore
- Edit the value of settings from within FoCal, saving digging around in menus
- Interactive mode – FoCal will update as you change settings on the camera
Snapshots are saved within FoCal, but you can export and share your camera configurations, or import those from others:
Applying a Snapshot
You can choose a Snapshot from the database and set up your camera by hitting Apply to Camera. The camera will be configured from the Snapshot and you’ll see the progress and results, so you can be sure the camera is setup exactly as you expect:
There’s lots more information about Snapshots in the help, starting here. We’d love to hear how you get on with using Snapshots – it’s a new idea, and we’ll be developing it further over the coming months, so any feedback will help steer the direction of the continued development.
Stability and Performance
This is a big improvement to FoCal carried across from FoCal Mobile. The way the core of FoCal “talks” to the user interface – the bit you see and interact with – has been hugely improved.
While things won’t look different, this change will improve the speed, responsiveness and reliability of using FoCal. It removes one ongoing cause of unreliability, albeit an occasional one – where sometimes the user interface wouldn’t update correctly, showing out of date information or not allowing you to press certain buttons.
One consequence of this change is the loss of Remote Mode – the ability to control FoCal Desktop from another machine, e.g. an iPad – but we don’t think many people used this feature anyway – please do get in touch if you will miss this as we can re-implement it if needed!
Camera Control
Like it’s Mobile counterpart, we’ve added auto-detection of when a camera is connected or disconnected to FoCal Desktop – no more need to click the Refresh button to find your camera. It’s a little thing, but it makes use of FoCal a bit smoother.
As well as auto-detection, more information from the camera is stored internally to FoCal now which makes the general operation a little faster. The work we’ve done for the Snapshots functionality has led to some improvements in the control of the both Nikon and Canon cameras also.
Look and Feel
A few controls in the user interface have been given a bit of a makeover to have a nicer visual appeal, and also to make certain aspects (like tabs) clearer.
Wireless Module
There have been changes to the detection and connection with the FoCal Wireless Module to improve reliability of the connection.
Miscellaneous
There are various other improvements too:
- Improved feedback if there’s a failure early on within the Aperture Sharpness or Focus Consistency Tests.
- Extraction of full-size preview image from CR3 files (especially useful for Image Info tool)
- Improvements to the Camera/Lens information panel.
- Fixes to the Live View image during Target Setup, especially around starting and stopping.
- Fixed missing RGB data in reports.
- Updates to internal Camera and Lens databases, improving camera and lens recognition.
- Improvements to detection of firmware updates for cameras.
Operating System Support
The following are supported Operating Systems:
Windows (64-bit)
- Windows 11
- Windows 10 (20H2 and later)
FoCal can be installed and should work on the following versions of Windows, but as they are no longer supported by Microsoft we only do limited testing:
- Windows 10 (pre 20H2) – Microsoft support ended 10th May 2022
- Windows 8.1 – Microsoft support ended 9th January 2018
- Windows 7 SP1 – Microsoft support ended 13th January 2015
Mac
- macOS Ventura (13.x)
- macOS Monterey (12.x)
- macOS Big Sur (11.x)
FoCal can be installed and should work on the following versions of macOS, but as they are no longer supported by Apple we only do limited testing:
- macOS Catalina (10.15) – Apple support ended 12th September 2022
- macOS Mojave (10.14) – Apple support ended 25th October 2021
- macOS High Sierra (10.13) – Apple support ended 1st December 2020
- macOS Sierra (10.12) – Apple support ended 1st October 2019
iOS/iPadOS
FoCal Mobile will run on any device running iOS/iPadOS 12 or later.
Android
The Android version of FoCal Mobile can be installed on all devices running Android 9 (Pie) or later.
There is a huge variety of Android devices and we can only test on a small subset. FoCal is an intensive application and we recommend using newer mid- to high-end Android devices with at least 4GB of RAM.
The free version of FoCal Mobile offers the ability to connect, Verify Setup and run AF System Check, so you should ensure that these all run reliably before purchasing a subscription.
More details…
There are more details in the changelog in the release notes for this release.
Thank you!
Thank you to all our users past and present who’ve used FoCal for their calibrations. An extra special thank you to everyone who’s got in touch with feedback, a lot of changes are driven directly by what you tell us!
Get Reikan FoCal 3.7
Download FoCal 3.7 for Windows or macOS by logging in to the account system via lms.fo-cal.co.uk. Once logged in, you will see a download link to the software.
FoCal 3.7 is available to all users within their Included Updates Period as of 31st Jan 2023. You can get the software as shown below:
- By logging in to the FoCal Account system via lms.fo-cal.co.uk.
- Go to the About > Update Check option in the software. From here you can hit the Download button to get the software.
If you’re outside of the period above you can purchase 12 months of updates by logging in to the account system via lms.fo-cal.co.uk and scrolling to Included Updates Period.
If you’re not yet a FoCal user you can purchase the software as a download or boxed product, as well as FoCal Hard Targets from the FoCal Online Store.
Get FoCal Mobile
FoCal Mobile is available for free on the Apple App Store and Google Play now!
FoCal Mobile is a free app, allowing connection to a camera, Autofocus System Check and time setting of your camera. With a FoCal Mobile Pro subscription you can add a lot of extra functionality including full Autofocus Calibration, FoCal Comparison Database integration, Test History, Import/Export of results and more.
Reikan FoCal on Social Media
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4 comments on “FoCal 3.7 – Snapshots and more!”
Does 3.7 support the Canon EOS R7 ? I currently have 3.5 but unwilling to renew my update period until there is support for my new camera.
The R7 (and R10) are not yet supported, but will be shortly. However, it should be noted that there is no calibration capability on these cameras, meaning that you can use all the tools except Autofocus Calibration.
Snapshots is the feature I am primarily interested in, for the Nikon Z9. Is that available in your $59.99 version of FoCal? Thank you.
Hi Eric.
Snapshots is a pro-level tool, so only available in FoCal Pro or Commercial.