Hacking Photography - one Picture at a time
I guess Eye-AF is the future. Following Sony’s and Nikon’s Eye-AF releases, Canon could not afford to be left behind. So, Canon is releasing their own firmware for the Canon EOS-R which mainly includes a new eye-AF functionality.
While Canon HK published the news about two weeks ago, the actual update became available via Canon Canada only now.
Canon Asia has “pre-announced” that there is to be an upcoming v1.2.0 firmware for the Canon EOS R mirrorless camera. I’m not sure what a “pre-announcement” is. An announcement to say there’ll be an announcement? Isn’t that still just an announcement?
Anyhoo (yes, it’s a word), there’s a new firmware coming. And it’s coming at some point around the middle of April. It offers improved Eye-Detection Autofocus supporting Servo AF when shooting still images and provides fixes for several EOS R bugs.
Announced in January, the first of two new firmware updates for the Sony A9 is now available. Sony A9 firmware v5.0 adds real-time Eye AF as well as specific eye preference detection, better low light autofocus performance, increased AF accuracy, and a whole host of other new and updated features.
Blackmagic has just announced Blackmagic Camera Setup 6.1 which brings a firmware update for the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K. They say that it brings improved autofocus performance, better battery life, USB-C external SSD fixes and a host of other issues. There’s no sign of Blackmagic RAW yet, though.
There’s been a lot of buzz around the new real-time Eye AF and AF tracking on the recently announced Sony A6400. Even more exciting, though, is that this system is also coming to the Sony A9, A7III and A7RIII full-frame mirrorless cameras in a future firmware update.
Photographer Patrick Murphy-Racey recently got the chance to try out the new real-time autofocus tracking with version 5.0 of the firmware for the Sony A9 in Los Angeles. And, fortunately, he filmed it for the rest of us to see.
It looks like Sony are taking a leaf out of the Fuji playbook by introducing new substantial features through firmware updates rather than entirely new bodies. The Sony A9, A7RIII and A7III are about to get quite a significant feature upgrade with new firmware updates coming out over the next few months.
The first firmware update for the Sony A9 is due in March bringing the realtime Eye AF performance expected in the newly announced Sony A6400. The Sony A9 will see Animal Eye AF added in a second update coming in summer. The A7RIII and A7III will also receive these updates in a single firmware in April.
As good as Godox equipment can be, it has one fatal flaw which puts many photographers off using their equipment. There’s no easy, native way to update the firmware on a Mac. And firmware updates do come fairly regularly for their various models of flashes and triggers. It’s a question I see pop up regularly in Facebook groups, and I’m asked personally quite often, too.
But there is some hope, using an application called VirtualBox to run a virtual Windows operating system inside your MacOS desktop. This video from photographer Ken Falk walks us through the process of updating his Godox firmware on the Mac.
Sony recently pulled Firmware v2.0 for the Sony A7III and A7RIII that was released in October due to the discovery of two fairly major bugs. These bugs would cause photographers to lose RAW images they’d shot along with random lockups of the camera.
Well, now, Sony has released firmware v2.1 to resolve these issues. It also seems to fix a compatibility problem with certain memory cards. They don’t call SanDisk out by name, but they do cite “specific third-party memory cards”. So, presumably, that’s this issue, reported shortly after the V2.0 release.
New firmware updates for various pieces of Godox kit show a couple of very nice additions. The big news for most Godox shooters is that 1/10th stop support has now come to the XPro triggers & AD600 Pro strobe. The big news for Pentax shooters is that Pentax X flash system support has now been added to the AD600M, AD600 TTL and AD600 Pro strobes.
Canon 6D Mark II users can come in out of the cold. Canon has released a firmware update which now prevents the freezing issues that some of you may have experienced. The issue would be that in certain circumstances, the touchscreen and buttons would become unresponsive.
While this firmware update isn’t exactly feature-packed, only solving this one problem, it is an important problem that needed to be solved. And it’s one that those who’ve been affected by it will be welcome to see.
You can find out more about John on his website and follow his adventures on YouTube and Facebook.
can change a lens mid-rappel, swap a memory card while treading water, or use a camel as a light stand.
To see more of his work please visit his studio website blurMEDIAphotography, or follow him on Twitter, 500px, Google Plus or YouTube.
JP’s photography is available for licensing at Stocksy United.
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