I’ve had a GoPro HD Hero 2 for a while now and done some cool videos and timelapses with it, there’s been a couple of times where i’d like to be more precise with the framing, or to set it somewhere and be able to trigger it when the bride walks down the aisle (the battery typically only last an hour so you you have to be precise with the timing). The Wi-Fi bacpac promises to change this. So how does it cope? Read on to find out.

Firstly what is the Wi-Fi bacpac? well it’s an accessory that fits onto your gopro video camera and lets you control it via WiFi (and Bluetooth later reading the manual). So you can shoot full 1080p video at 25fps and control it with the wi-fi remote. With a future app for the iPhone (and other smartphone presumably too) you can frame the video or stills and trigger from the app. At least that’s the theory. Also promised is live streaming via the internet via Facebook and YouTube. Though as of today that isn’t supported – you just get a ‘coming soon’ on the screen. I’ll let others give you the full technical run down but this is a light and small accessory.

My first gripe isyou have to update the software on the gopro, the Wi-Fi bacpac AND the wifi remote before you even start. This process is a bit fraught. Here’s what you need to do to get it to work.

1. Install cineform studio.
2. IMPORTANT ** REBOOT ** without this you’ll not be able to see the bacpac plugged in and it will download the update and hang updating it. I reboot fixes this.. come on this is 2012.. either say you need to reboot or fix it.
3. update firmware on your GoPro HD HERO 2 camera
4. update firmware on your GoPro Wi-Fi Bacpac
5. **IMPORTANT** leaving the bacpac plugged in also plug in the remote with the silly cable (why it doesn’t use a USB cable i don’t know) and update that too.

I like firmware updates they’re good. but the need to update it when you get it seems odd. It doesn’t happen with anything else I know. Not to get it to work at least anyway.

Second gripe. A large reason why I purchased this was to be able to control/setup via my iphone/ipad. This as of writing isn’t available so i can’t comment on this part of the equation yet. Had I purchased it without the remote I’d just have a way to drain the battery quicker.

That aside I can still use it for starting/stopping the video and turning the camera on/off in a hard to reach location which will be handy for my wedding video and anything else I can’t get access to it during the event. There is a noticable lag when taking stills, so you need to plan ahead quite a lot. I’d say it’s more suited for video and time-lapse usage than stills right now.

So my conclusion is that this has a lot of potential and can only get better. If you were buying for the smartphone integration then i’d wait for now, but if you want to experiment with remote locations and are happy to use the Wi-Fi Remote than it’s a good accessory to get.

Feel free to leave comments below or share on Social Media

Thanks to GoPro for the following stock images of their product.

An Interview with FOCAL author Richard Meston

First a bit of background. There was a time when people took photographs with cameras and printed things 6×4″ maybe 8×10″ at a push. At these sizes it was often hard to tell if the photograph was out of focus. Even if the photograph was slightly out it could have been the famous ‘operator error’. However with the advent of modern digital SLRs and the ability to take far more photographs and analyse (pixel peep) then it was easier to see if the lens and camera were out of alignment. I remember with my Canon 1D mark 3 I had some fast primes (135L) that back-focused, the only way to fix this was to send the camera and lens back to canon (at my expense) and for canon to calibrate it correctly (similar with nikon setups too). Now this is obviously a time consuming process and means i’m without that camera/lens for as long is takes, and if i buy a new lens i have to send everything back again if they are slightly out.
Some of this is to do with tolerances. Everything is manufactured to tolerances. However it’s possible for a body and a lens to be at opposite ends of tolerances and cause a noticeable front of back focus (where the focus is either always in front or behind or where you want it to be).
So how to solve this problem without constantly sending the lens and cameras to the manufacturer? Well both canon and nikon came up with an option in the camera menus to let you microadjust the focus either by a fixed amount on the camera or on a per lens basis (in fact canon’s latest cameras let you adjust at both ends of the zoom range). So this meant that you could adjust the lenses yourself without having to send it back to canon. Of course it also meant another thing to do, and there were many ways to do this floating around on the internet. I used to put a pattern on my laptop and camera on a tripod and try various adjustments until i got the sharpest looking image (by eye). Of course this is subject to human error and time consuming. This is where Richard Meston and Focal came in. He allows you to do this in a repeatable and scientific fashion that also now allows you to compare how your lens performs compared to others so means you don’t have to worry about the old bad copy problem either.

I’ve known Richard for a while now and have been involved in testing and giving feedback to Richard during the development of FOCAL so I asked him if he’d mind sharing a little bit on my blog. He of course agreed. 🙂

Here’s the questions and answers I asked him about – feel free to comment/ask questions below and i’ll do my best to get some answers.

Hi Richard – Tell me a little about yourself, whats your background?

Well, I’m a software engineer by trade, having first started “coding” on a ZX81 at the age of 4. I did an Electronics degree back in the 90’s, but I’ve always liked the link between hardware and software so I’ve generally worked in embedded software, mostly in mobile phones and the networks and also bespoke development with smaller microcontrollers.

From a photography point of view I got my first DSLR in 2007 (a Canon EOS 400D) and immediately fell in love the the fact that you could be both technical and artistic. I’ve pretty much had once camera or another glued to me since then! I’ve had some success with shots in papers, with one shot in particular of a Swan and Cygnets selling worldwide, and dabbled with wedding, portraiture and some commercial work.

What gave you the idea to develop this Fo-Cal software?

When I got my 400D, I managed about 3 months before I downloaded the Software Development Kit from Canon and started trying things out. I didn’t really have anything in mind – more to see just what you could do with a camera and a PC. The Canon SDK is a bit of a nightmare to use, and it’s taken me years to get to a stage where I can reliably get things to happen.

In 2009, I started playing with the ideas needed for FoCal – not initially with any commercial ideas in mind, but more to try and solve the puzzle of automatic AF microadjustment. Conceptually, it’s an easy problem, but in practice it’s somewhat more difficult to get working.

A change of work in 2011 gave me the time to actually start playing with it properly. FoCal (or AFMAC as it was known then) was born about 2am on an April morning back in 2011, and became a complete addiction.

Did you enjoy writing it? What were your biggest challenges?

I always enjoy writing code (sad as that may sound!). It was great to start putting the pieces together. I went through 4 different iterations of camera control code (the stuff that actually makes the camera do the work), and 6 different variants of the analysis maths (to determine the highest quality images and predict where the best microadjustment value would lie). The algorithm to control the camera has been through about 100 different revisions to get the best results possible without just going for a brute force approach of shooting thousands of shots.

There were times when I pretty much gave up. The numbers just didn’t stack up and I couldn’t get any consistency in the results. But each time I hit problems I looked at how far I’d got and thought I’d just give it one more go… And finally, with tweaks to all those parts things started coming together and making something that really worked.

The unique thing about FoCal – above all other AF microadjustment calibration methods – is that it takes into acount the shot-to-shot inconsistency of the AF system, and with a few shots cleverly determines the most likely real-world shooting performance. If you shoot against a static target the focus on each shot varies enough to make AF microadjustment something of a black art to get right, and FoCal strips all this complexity and makes it easy.

What do you enjoy taking photographs of most?

Because photography isn’t my main profession, I get to choose what I photograph. I love shooting weddings – it’s an exciting time and great to be part of something so special, and the buzz during the day is immense. I like landscapes, but in a lot of ways they’re a bit too much effort – you don’t have to manage people (which can make it easier), but you do generally have to get up early or stay out late and travel a fair distance. I think my favourite thing is macro photography, mainly nature and insects. I love seeing things I’ve never seen before, and learning the behaviour of insects and animals to be able to get the shots.

Whats been your highpoint so far?

I was blown away by the success of FoCal, and while there have been a few niggles to iron out I’ve had a lot of emails saying how fantastic people think the software is and how it’s turned lenses they were never very happy with into top class ones. It’s brilliant not only to have created something successful, but for it to really help people get the best out their kit.

What future plans do you have for Focal?

There are several big things in the pipeline. Support for the D3, D3x and D4 is first on the list, along with making sure the 5D Mark III support is reliable as it can be (Canon won’t actually release the software development kit until the middle of May, but due to demand FoCal does have 5D Mark III support now).

Soon, you’ll be able to compare your results to other results from the same camera and lens combination and see how your’s performs. This is a really exciting feature because you can immediately see if your set-up is behaving as you should expect.

There’s also plans to allow the camera to be a lot further away from the PC too and the techniques used will bring a whole host of benefits, but I don’t want to say too much about that yet.

When will there be a Mac Version?

Oh yes! It wasn’t planned originally – which in hindsight was a bit daft. It’s under development at the moment but there are changes that have to happen to both the PC and Mac version in order to have a common code-base, otherwise it becomes 2 separate products to maintain. I’m hoping to have a first Mac release available around July/August.

Do you plan on supporting other cameras other than Canon/Nikon?

The big problem with that is that only Canon and Nikon have released SDK (Software Development Kits) as far as I know. The other manufacturers that support any kind of microadjusment for focus (Sony, Pentax and Olympus) don’t give you any help with getting their cameras to be controlled from a computer.

Whilst this doesn’t mean it’s impossible (I have a lot of expertise in this area now!), it would take a lot of time and trial and error the I don’t have right now. If there’s significant demand for it then it will certainly be looked at.

Why can’t it automatically adjust on certain cameras?

Ah, this is an interesting question. In order to be able to completely automate the process, the computer needs to be able to instruct the camera to change it’s internal AF microadjustment setting. All Canon cameras that support AF microadjustment have allowed this (although not deliberately), and early Nikon cameras that support AF Fine Tune also allowed this to be controlled (the D3, D3x, D3s, D300 and D700).

However, the Nikon support was a bit overly complex and I don’t think was well tested as it wasn’t a feature anyone was using. While it works on the D3s, the D700 just doesn’t respond correctly to the commands. In later cameras – the D300s, D7000, and now the D800 and D4 – this feature has been removed.

The 5D Mark III is still an unknown – until the documentation is out I won’t know for definite that you can’t control AF Microadjustment, but my gut feeling after hours of analysis of the available information is that it will not be possible. I do hope I’m wrong though.

I wasn’t going to let that stop FoCal being useful though. One of the key things that makes FoCal so good is that it analyses each setting to try to remove inconsistency in the autofocus, and this can still be done automatically even if you have to change the AF microadjustment or AF Fine Tune setting.

I introduces Manual Setting Change mode, where you are prompted to change the camera value, but everything else runs automatically. So you get the AF consistency validated, you get the measurements statistically analysed and you get a predicted AF microadjustment value that will be good for the real world, not just against a test target in a studio.

Are you worried that Canon/Nikon will build in this functionality/release some software that does what yours does?

Not really. The biggest issue for the camera manufacturers is that something like FoCal allows you to quantify the camera autofocus performance – actually see how well or not it works. And it’s been a bit of an eye opener to me as to how variable it can be. I don’t think the manufacturers would want to you see that!

Integrating this into the camera is a possibility, but then there will still be plenty of cameras about that don’t have this feature. It does seem a bit daft that the manufacturers don’t assist a bit more with setting of AF Microadjustment.

Whats your favourite bacon?

A really nice smoky one. Especially if you chop it up, fry it with some mushrooms, add the lot to cooked pasta and cover with a whisked mix of egg, Parmesan, single cream and black pepper. Perfect Carbonara 🙂

Do you have any other interesting projects you can tell us about?

One of the challenges of FoCal has been getting it work with so many cameras, and that’s something that can be used time and time again. I’ve got quite a few ideas, and being able to support basically anyone with a DSLR is a massive benefit.

FoCal has also developed into a bit of a camera testing tool outside of AF Microadjustment, so there’s likely to be a variant which offers these features for a wider range of cameras. There’s also further work to do on the analysis algorithm and once I crack one particular irritation then it will open the way for comparative lens sharpness, lens field curvature, MTF measurements, sensor analysis etc – all with the ability to compare with results across the world.

I’ve been playing with something called HyperDoF which allows you to create photos that you can refocus. That’s already been developed and it’s something that I’ll publicise soon.

Thanks Rich – feel free to ask any questions or share this article on social media.

Also you can buy/find out more about FoCal on their home page.