It’s here! FoCal 6 is the biggest update to FoCal in years. It has a completely new look on Windows and Mac, a big round of work on camera control for Nikon and Canon, and much faster image processing. Best of all, FoCal now keeps an eye on how every camera and lens you own is performing, and tells you when something needs attention.
Our first release of FoCal back in 2012 did one job, which was working out the right AF Microadjustment for a Canon EOS 5D Mark II or 7D. Today FoCal has automatic control of 62 Canon and Nikon cameras. Over the years we’ve added Aperture Sharpness, AF Consistency, Dust Analysis, MultiTest, the Stabilisation Test and FoCal Comparison Data, and every one of those tests has been saved to your History. FoCal 6 finally puts all those results to work.
How to get FoCal 6
FoCal 6.0 is a free update for everyone within their Included Updates Period as of 5th November 2026. That’s everyone who’s bought FoCal or renewed their updates since 5th November 2025.
- Log in to your FoCal Account and choose the download for your computer, or
- In your current version of FoCal, go to Help > Check for Update and click Download.
If your updates period has run out, you can buy another 12 months from the Included Updates Period section of your FoCal Account. If you’re new to FoCal, you can buy the software and FoCal Hard Targets from the FoCal Online Store.
What’s new in FoCal 6?
- Kit History and Analysis (FoCal Pro)
- The new Compare tab (FoCal Pro)
- A completely new look, and a faster start
- Much faster image processing
- More reliable camera control on Nikon and Canon, over USB and Wi-Fi
- Better reading of image files, and better lens identification
- Tools for commercial users
- Rewritten help for every test, and a new manual
The full list is in the Release Notes, but here are the highlights.
The Kit Health Check
Calibration gets you sharp. A Kit Health Check keeps you there.
You’ve put a lot into your cameras and lenses, and they don’t stay the same for ever. They get knocked, they get serviced, they travel, and autofocus can drift. It usually happens slowly enough that you don’t notice until a shoot comes back soft.
A Kit Health Check is a routine rather than a new test. Every few months (monthly if you can, and before an important trip), set up as you would to calibrate and run a Fully Auto calibration. Then, while everything is set up, run FoCal’s other tests too. AF Consistency, Aperture Sharpness, the Stabilisation Test for stabilised lenses and a Dust Analysis for each body all use the same setup, so it only takes a little longer.
FoCal 6 keeps every one of those results, and the new Kit History and Analysis tools show you what they mean.
Kit History and Analysis (FoCal Pro)
Back in FoCal 4.4 we rebuilt the History Database, and we said at the time that it set the stage for analysis across all your previous results. FoCal 6 delivers it. It works with the results you already have, going right back to your first test, so there’s nothing extra to do to get started. The first time FoCal 6 opens your history it updates the database once, which can take a little while if you’ve been testing for years.
Kit Insights
The Home page now opens with a strip of Kit Insights: how many camera and lens pairings are due a calibration, which cameras are due a Dust Analysis, how much kit you’ve tested, and when you last ran a test. Click any of them to go straight to the details.
Kit Status and Maintenance Watch
Kit Status shows every camera and lens pairing you’ve tested: when it was last tested, when it was last calibrated, and whether anything needs attention. You can look at it by camera or by lens, or narrow it down to a single camera or lens. The History menu on the Camera page also opens it for whatever you’ve got connected.
Maintenance Watch also looks at how each pairing has changed. It picks out pairings whose AF fine-tune is drifting, whose focus is becoming less consistent, that are losing sharpness, or that are simply overdue for a calibration. Zoom lenses are tracked separately at their wide and tele ends, because they often need different values.
Analysis
The Analysis page covers a single camera, a single lens, a camera and lens pairing, or your whole set of bodies.
The Lens Personality and Camera Personality charts are the first thing you see. They sum up sharpness, AF consistency, how stable the AF fine-tune is, how recently it was calibrated, stabilisation and more, with a plain-English explanation of what each score means for that piece of kit.
Underneath are the trends over time:
- AF fine-tune drift, with any sudden changes marked, and the likely cause when the evidence points to one.
- Sharpness over time.
- Sharpness against aperture, showing the sweet spot, how the lens does wide open, and where diffraction starts to take over.
- AF consistency, dust, Stabilisation Test and CalCheck results.
On the charts for a single camera and lens, FoCal Comparison Data bands show the typical range, so you can see how your copy of a lens sits against everyone else’s.
If you have more than one body, two charts are worth a look. Body focus bias shows whether a body consistently needs more or less AF fine-tune than your other bodies with the same lenses, which usually points at the body rather than the lens. The body / lens matrix is a grid of every lens against every body, and clicking a cell takes you straight to that pairing.
If a chart needs more history to be useful, FoCal says which test to run, and a “Tests you haven’t tried yet” section explains what each test you haven’t run could tell you about your kit.
Reports and Manage Kit
You can export PDF reports for a camera, a lens or a pairing, from the Analysis page or from Manage Kit. Manage Kit is also where you retire kit you’ve sold, so it drops out of your analysis.
You can find out more about the routine on the FoCal Desktop page.
The Compare tab (FoCal Pro)
FoCal Comparison Data comes from results uploaded by FoCal users, grouped by camera and lens. It’s what lets FoCal tell you whether your result is good for your kit rather than just good in general. FoCal 6 replaces the Typical tab with a new Compare tab on Calibration, AF Consistency, Aperture Sharpness and CalCheck results.
There’s one row per score showing where your result sits against other users of the same camera and lens, with a link to the full score card. A “Worth knowing” section picks out anything notable about your result, and for a calibration you can see the spread of AF fine-tune values other users have, with yours marked on it.
We’ve also made the scores fairer. The descriptions now say where your result sits (“better than most other users of this camera and lens”) and only suggest a fault when results are repeated. Where the comparison data doesn’t cover a measurement, FoCal now falls back to its standard scoring instead of giving you the worst possible score. AF Consistency has a new Scores tab as well. There’s more about how the data works on the FoCal Comparison Data help page.
A new look
We’ve redesigned every page in FoCal. It’s cleaner and more modern, but we’ve been careful to keep the menus, pages and buttons where you’d expect them, so if you know FoCal 5 you’ll find your way round straight away.
FoCal also starts much faster, showing the new start-up screen almost immediately. Long lists now scroll instead of splitting into pages, with History results grouped by month. If you’re on an older computer, there’s a new Reduce Visual Effects setting that turns off the translucent effects and animations, and FoCal follows your system’s “reduce motion” setting too.
Faster image processing
We’ve rebuilt the way FoCal works with the images from your camera: reading them, analysing them, and drawing the crops and result charts. It’s far quicker and uses much less memory, so FoCal runs faster even on slower computers, and it makes the biggest difference with high-resolution cameras. The 3D charts are smoother and properly shaded and lit, and the charts in the app and in PDF reports have a more modern style.
Camera control
We went through the Nikon and Canon camera code against the manufacturers’ specifications for every supported body, and then re-tested it on real cameras (a lot of real cameras!).
The result is faster, more dependable testing. A few examples:
- Putting your camera settings back is now rock solid, at the end of every test and even when a shot fails or focus can’t be found.
- Nikon Z series, D6 and D780: AF failures are now detected, so an out-of-focus shot doesn’t get into your test.
- Nikon D850: each shot is about a second quicker.
- Canon: each setting change is about 0.2 seconds quicker, and FoCal checks that each setting, including AF Microadjustment, has really changed.
- Wi-Fi has been completely revamped, and it’s much more reliable. Connections cope with network hiccups, and a RAW file downloads about 40% faster on a 5D Mark IV.
- Nikon on your home or office network: FoCal now finds the camera automatically. Turn on Enable Nikon WiFi in Help › Settings and leave the IP Address empty (see Nikon Network: Infrastructure).
- A pulled cable is handled cleanly. Unplug the camera, switch it off or lose the Wi-Fi part-way through a test, and FoCal notices straight away and tells you, instead of sitting there waiting.
- Windows: no more freezes when a camera stops responding over USB.
If the camera does disconnect part-way through a test, the new manual has a section on what to do next.
Image files and lens names
FoCal’s image information reader has been brought up to date and checked against thousands of real images, which helps tests run from files as well as tethered tests. It’s more robust with damaged or unusual files, reads Nikon AF point information correctly on bodies such as the D850 and D500, and reads focus distance more accurately on Nikon Z.
Lens identification has had a lot of work too. Some lenses report the same ID to the camera, and FoCal now tells them apart by the name the camera records. For example, the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II and III are no longer mixed up. The improved names show up for results already in your History as well.
For commercial users
If you calibrate other people’s kit, FoCal Commercial now has a Customers page that groups tests into visits. It also asks which customer a camera belongs to when you connect it, makes a PDF job sheet for each visit, and puts your own logo on PDF reports. Customer names stay on your computer: they’re never uploaded.
There’s more on how it all works on the Using FoCal Commercial help page.
Help and documentation
We’ve rewritten each test’s help to cover what the test is for, how to run it, how to read the results and when to run it. There’s also a brand new manual for FoCal 6. Some good places to start:
- Your first calibration
- The FoCal Setup Checklist, a printable checklist for getting set up
- Calibrating with FoCal, our guide to location, target and camera setup
- The Target Distance Tool
- Connecting over camera Wi-Fi or Ethernet
- The full help index
- FAQ
System requirements
FoCal 6 needs a 64-bit Windows PC or a Mac:
- Windows: Windows 11 (24H2 or later). Windows 11 23H2 and Windows 10 22H2 may work, but aren’t officially supported.
- Mac: macOS 15 Sequoia or later, including macOS 26 and macOS 27. macOS 14 Sonoma is the minimum FoCal 6 will run on, but it isn’t officially supported. Intel Macs are supported up to macOS 26.
Full details are on the Tech Specs page.
FoCal Mobile and Snapshots
FoCal Mobile 3.0 and Snapshots 3.0 came out in October. The main improvements:
- The same camera control work as FoCal 6: your Nikon and Canon settings are put back reliably, there are fewer hangs, and Wi-Fi is faster and more dependable.
- Wi-Fi cameras are found automatically on your network. For Nikon, you choose between the camera’s own hotspot and your home network, instead of typing in an IP address.
- Better handling of subscriptions on both Google Play and the App Store, including renewals.
- Updated for Android 15 and 16 and iOS 18, and the apps recover from problems instead of closing.
FoCal Mobile lets you calibrate, check your AF and sync your camera clocks from your phone. FoCal Snapshots saves your whole Nikon camera setup so you can edit it on your phone and put it back on the camera. If you have an active FoCal Pro licence, log in to either app with your FoCal account and you get the Pro/Premium features at no extra cost.