Feature Update 8 for Phase One XF, XT and IQ4
Today Phase One officially announced a first time in a long time, full Feature Update that applies to the XF & XT camera bodies as well as the IQ4-100, IQ4-150 and IQ4-150 Achromatic digital backs. No road time available on this firmware package as of yet, but look for a followup post next week once we can explore the new features and capabilities. – BK
Here’s the cheat-sheet of what’s new:
The trigger response of the XF, especially while utilizing Leaf Shutters has always needed a margin of improvement compared to shooting Focal Plane Shutter only. High hopes that the update provides an enhanced response time especially for action photography.
Full stop.
Mobile App Coming.
This is BIG news
Since the introduction of IQ4 two years ago, we have not had access to iOS mobile control of the digital back as we did with Capture Pilot on IQ2 and IQ3 series units. Beyond camera actuation, Capture Pilot allows for ISO, Shutter Speed Aperture control and Image Review remotely from your iPhone or iPad with no need for a Local Area Wifi Network to connect to. On IQ2-50 and IQ3-100 units, Live View worked excellently on the remote screen to see details far beyond what you could see on the LCD of the digital back itself.
Capture Pilot works as a wonderful, wireless extension of the IQ2 & IQ3 series screens, solidly working from a ~12′ radius around the camera wirelessly.
We have high expectations for the soon to be released product that will take advantage of the newly enabled AdHoc network being broadcast by the IQ4, since the IQ4 can already transfer full raw files wirelessly to established WiFi networks.
We’ve long been waiting for the CFexpress storage to become enabled, since it has the exact same footprint of the XQD cards we’ve been employing so far and in some cases are priced cheaper. Available in 3x the speeds* and 6-8x the capacity, CFexpress will displace any need to use XQD.
(*While XQD has not been the bottleneck for shooting speed, enjoying 3x faster download speeds off of card to computer will be welcome)
Ok, I’m set to f9 and the camera automatically chooses an appropriate shutter speed… sounds nice. How accurate will it be? Has the Live View pulsing we’ve seen previously in composition mode been eliminated so this feature can be accurate? Interested to see..
Always a fan of Phase One playing around with new features. Given the absurd dynamic range of Phase One digital backs I’ve been a proponent of exposing to the right for quite a while to utilize all of the raw data to the furthest extent. Interested to see how this feature is going automate this process.
• 4k JPEG – nice… especially if you can sling them to clients approving remotely, directly via your iOS app
• USB-C Powerbank Support? hmmm, we’ve already been doing that. How about proper Power Sharing with the XF?
