Hot on the heels of FoCal 3.7, we’re delighted to bring you the next release which adds support for the two missing Nikon Z cameras – the Zfc and Z30. There’s also improvements to the new Snapshot tool, look and feel updates and quite a few bug fixes.

What’s New?

[If you’re not interested in the details and just want to grab the release download info is here]

Headline Features

• Nikon Z fc and Z 30 camera support
• Snashot Tool Improvements
• User Interface Improvements
• Miscellaneous updates

The Release Notes contain a comprehensive list of changes.

Nikon Z fc and Z 30 Support

We’ve added support for the only 2 cameras that offer focus adjustment and were missing from our lineup – the Nikon Zfc and the Nikon Z30 mirrorless cameras. Now, we’re back to 100% support of all Canon and Nikon cameras that allow focus tuning!

The delay has been down to waiting for support documentation from Nikon Japan, but sadly this hasn’t been forthcoming. We got in touch with the excellent team at Nikon UK and got our hands on these two cameras – with them in the lab, it doesn’t take too long to add control to FoCal.

Both cameras support the same AF Fine-tune capabilities, offering tuning at wide and telephoto ends of zoom lenses (the Zfc in the photo above has the 28mm f/2.8 prime, hence only showing a single value).

And for a first, especially in a very much consumer level DX format camera like the Z 30, both cameras have USB-C connectors.

Supported FoCal Tools on for the Z fc and Z 30

FoCal continues to offer all the tools for use with the Nikon Zfc and Z30:

• Target Setup
• Calibration Check
• Focus Calibration

and for FoCal Pro users:

• Focus Consistency
• Aperture Sharpness
• MultiTest (2D focus and aperture testing)
• Stabilisation system testing
• Dust Analysis
• Camera Time synchronisation

The new Snapshots functionality is available for both cameras also, so you can save complex configurations and restore at the touch of a button.

Snapshot Tool Improvements

We released the Snapshot tool in FoCal 3.7 and have had fantastic feedback – thank you for trying it out and letting us know how you’re getting on!

The tool uses a set of specially crafted decoders which contain information about all the settings available across all supported cameras, including their possible values and what they mean in “human” speak rather than just as a bunch of numbers.

Across the board, these decoders contain information for thousands of settings, and whilst we test and verify everything we generate, there can be occasional omissions.

In FoCal 3.8, there are updates to the decoders for all cameras bringing better interpretation of some focus-related settings. There’s still more work to do in order to ensure we have a decoders capable of processing all settings – if you notice any errors (e.g. a setting being reported as a number instead of, for example “Pinpoint AF”), please do let us know and we’ll get it updated.

Note that the omissions in the decoders will not affect the settings captured and restored back to the camera – they’re just used to show you, on the screen, what all those settings actually mean.

User Interface Improvements

Side-by-side Crops

We had a request from one of our commercial partners, CameraCal, to be able to display the crop images in tests using a similar fashion to how they were presented in FoCal 2 – side by side, rather than on top of each other with an interactive slider. So, in FoCal 3.8, you can now choose to view the crops side by side:

To enable this, head to Help > Settings and in the General Test Settings section, next to the option to limit the crop side is the new Side-by-side Crops option:

If you’ve got any requests for changes like this, please do let us know as we’re more than happy to add improvements which will make life easier for our users!

Cards

This one is a a purely cosmetic improvement – we’ve improved the look of the various cards which indicate the features of FoCal:

Miscellaneous Improvements

There’s always things to fix and improve in complex software like FoCal. In FoCal 3.8 we’ve:

• Improved adjustment of the zoom position on Canon cameras when using Calibration Check. If the zoom rectangle is not centred, previously it was very unclear how to adjust, but we’ve changed the on-camera display and enabled the appropriate controls so you can easily adjust.
  
• If AF Microadjustment/Fine-tune was disabled on the camera, you could be presented with warnings about an incorrect adjustment value applied – not very intuitive! We’ve made this much clearer now.

• While adding support for the Zfc and Z30 cameras, we found a bug in the code for the Nikon Z6ii and Z7ii cameras to do with enabling Live View – the fix will improve reliability of testing on those two cameras.

• We’ve made detection of cameras a little quicker on Windows.

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

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 10^th May 2022
• Windows 8.1 – Microsoft support ended 9^th January 2018
• Windows 7 SP1 – Microsoft support ended 13^th 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 12^th September 2022
• macOS Mojave (10.14) – Apple support ended 25^th October 2021
• macOS High Sierra (10.13) – Apple support ended 1^st December 2020
• macOS Sierra (10.12) – Apple support ended 1^st 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 3.8

Download FoCal 3.8 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 3.8 is available to all users within their Included Updates Period as of 9th Feb 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.

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