How good is Reikan FoCal?

[rdalrt]

I have had excellent results with FoCal Pro on all my bodies and lenses.

[redhead65]

Has anyone successfully used the Reikan Focal Fully Automatic AFMA with a 50D and Windows 7 (64 or 32 bit versions)?

I've tried Focal versions 1.70W, 1.80W and 1.81W with my 50D and 50/1.4 and just after starting the Fully Automatic AFMA the following message is displayed "An error occurred trying to get analysis information: Out of memory.". Given that my desktop PC has 8GB RAM the issue is not with a lack of memory!

I opened a support ticket with Reikan in early January but have not had any feedback other than a form reply stating that the problem is assigned to the developer.

[RGF]

Has anyone tried Focal Tune?

As I understand Focal Tune, you shoot a target multiple times (refocusing each time) and then make large AFMA adjustments (5 steps).  FT analyzes your shots, discards outliers, and plots curve to show sharpness vs AFMA.  Repeat the process, with smaller steps and narrower range, to get setting.

I have not tried it, software was $29 recently.  Manual procedure, not sure how zooms are handled

[Hydrogen]

Also on the 5D3, it unfortunately goes to semi-automatic mode where I have to manually change the AFMA settings because Canon for some strange reason left that out of the official SDK. Works for the 6D, but not 5D3/1DX. Every time I've put in a support request saying "it's not there, fix it!" I get a response saying "the SDK is what it is, we'll take it under advisement". Which more or less, to me, says screw you, we don't give a crap.

As a software architect for a Fortune-sized corporation, I would like to come to FoCal's defense.  I have my own peeves about their product, but actually it *is* the Canon SDK's deficit...

When Canon added the combination of Wide and Telephoto AFMA adjustments new to the 1DX and 5D3, this would require them to expose a new set of routines within the SDK that would enable setting the respective setting for either Wide or Tele.

Canon has not done so.  I have a copy of the SDK.  It's not there.

I think it would be great if people on this forum would start writing Canon and/or posting in their forums asking Canon to bring their SDK up-to-snuff with their camera bodies which are now a year old!