Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder 5.0 Available

January 19, 2017 by

Version 5.0 of my Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder app is now available on the App Store. It took quite a bit longer than I first planned, but if you look at the sheer number of new stuff, you’ll understand why. More work went into this update than it took to develop the original version 1.

I wrote about the black & white mode and exposure compensation, and the question of RAW capture in former posts, now it’s time to reveal everything else. I’ll touch a few new things in this post, and highly recommend to take a look on the complete list in the release notes. And pay attention to the “Changes” section.

Quick Control Screen

The are a few subtle visual changes to make it less cluttered, and to make room for two new icons. The half dark/half light icon in the upper right toggles black & white mode. The 2x icon switches to the telephoto camera if you have an iPhone 7 Plus. The telephoto camera and wide converter use are mutually exclusive (as one would logically expect).

Icons for parallax correction/shift simulation and aspect ratio changing are now white when a non-default value is set for these (in the above example I set the 5DS R virtual camera to 16:9 aspect ratio).

Album -> Catalog

We had to rename the Album to Catalog to avoid a name clash with the thing that Apple calls an album in the Photos app. Now ours is named Catalog, since it would be extraordinarily hard to convince Apple that they should change…

And while we are talking about the Catalog, there are performance improvements here and there, meaning that an update may be required to the new format. The app automatically detects if this is the case, and will update the Catalog automatically.

Availability

This is a free update for existing Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder owners. New user can purchase the app from the App Store.

We offer upgrade bundles for former Viewfinder Basic/Pro/Cine edition owners, so they can upgrade for a reduced price.

The Viewfinder Handbook was also updated to cover all the new features.

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Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder 5.0 is Coming

December 13, 2016 by

The biggest update to my Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder app since its introduction three years ago is around the corner, so I’m going to post quite a lot about the new features. Let’s start with what I consider the most important: black & white mode.

The new black & white mode and exposure compensation in action.

The new black & white mode and exposure compensation in action. Click the image for larger view.

Luminance only black & white

The ability to view in black & white was the single most requested feature – so here it comes. It works by showing luminance information from the scene (just like when you convert to Lab in Photoshop and turn off the a and b channels leaving just L). There’s a new button on the Quick Control Screen to switch it on or off, and of course you can assign this function to the Fn Key (or to the EL/FL override). It’s that simple. But there’s more… The app now applies both the black & white conversion filter and wide converter distortion correction to the saved high resolution JPGs, not just to the preview image!

Exposure compensation

Since day one there was the EL key to cope with difficult lighting conditions, but now you can also set exposure compensation. Tap the main screen until the number right to the AF/AE point lights up, and then slide your finder up and down to set the actual compensation. You can set it in third stop increments. When you finished, the compensation number on the screen will become transparent. To quickly reset compensation back to 0, press and hold the screen for a second.

— ooo —

This is just two of the 18 new features version 5.0 will bring to the table – more on the remaining 16 in later posts :)

When and for how much?

Version 5.0 will be released soon. It’s feature complete at the moment, but needs to pass testing, validation and Apple’s review. It will be a free update for existing Mark II Artist’s Viewfinder users! But with the release we’ll increase the price slightly, so it’s worth buying it now and get the free update later on.

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Kuuvik Capture 2.5 with 5D IV Support Available

October 11, 2016 by

The latest update to Kuuvik Capture is now available on the Mac App Store. It brings complete Canon EOS 5D Mark IV support, including the ability to shoot and display Dual Pixel RAW files. I’d recommend to check out my former notes on 5D Mark IV RAW files.

This release also boosts RAW decoding and camera communication performance – you can find more details on these improvements in my previous post.

A new preference

As a first step toward JPG support, you can now shoot RAW+JPG (Large/Fine) in the camera. Since Kuuvik Capture works from the RAW file only to display the histogram and highlight/shadow warnings, just the RAW files are downloaded even if you shoot RAW+JPG. JPG files are saved to the memory card.

The new "Image quality" preference

The new “Image quality” preference

You can switch between RAW (the default) and RAW+JPG Large/Fine in Preferences.

Notes on macOS 10.12 Sierra

Usually I’m not doing this, but this time I highly recommend NOT to upgrade to macOS 10.12. At the time of writing the new OS has way too many bugs, two of which affecting Kuuvik Capture users specifically.

1) Connecting the 5D Mark IV via USB to an app, and then quitting the app will leave the camera in an inconsistent state, and no app will be able to connect to the camera until the USB cable is disconnected and plugged in, or the camera is turned off and back on, or the memory card door opened and closed.

This only happens with the 5D Mark IV and on macOS 10.12 with the USB connection. The same camera on 10.11 works fine, all other cameras we’ve tried on 10.12 work fine. Even the Wi-Fi connection works fine – well, it’s not a surprise since it doesn’t use the flaky macOS PTP/IP stack.

It seems that macOS forgets to close the session with the camera. There is no workaround to the issue, other than the things mentioned above that actually break the session on the camera side.

2) On some computers (MacBook Pro 15″ Retina Mid-2012 for example) 5DS/R files are not displayed at all.

Update 10/30/2017: The new display engine in Kuuvik Capture 3.3 is immune to this issue.

Availablity

The update is free for existing Kuuvik Capture 2 customers. New users can download Kuuvik Capture 2 from the Mac App Store.

For more information about the app, please visit it’s microsite, or check out my posts.

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Dual Pixel RAW and Kuuvik Capture

August 30, 2016 by

Dual Pixel RAW is Canon’s new invention that will see its first release with the EOS 5D Mark IV. There’s some vague marketing info floating around, but haven’t seen a concise description of these files yet. So while updating Kuuvik Capture’s (website, my posts) RAW decoder to support the 5D Mark IV, I had a chance to dig deeper into Dual Pixel RAWs.

To understand the following discussion, you need to know how Canon’s Dual Pixel AF works, especially how these Dual Pixels are divided into two separate photodiodes. This article by Dave Etchells gives you a thorough explanation.

What is a Dual Pixel RAW file?

Normal CR2 files contain the following sections:

  • Metadata
  • Previews
  • RAW data

The DPRAW file is a CR2 file that contains one more additional section:

  • Metadata
  • Previews
  • RAW data
  • DPRAW data

This organization have a very important implication. Any RAW processing software that does support the normal 5D Mark IV files will be able to open DPRAWs. If the app is unable to interpret the DPRAW data part, it will simply ignore it and will work with the file as a normal RAW. There’s no risk or penalty in taking DPRAWs (besides the huge buffer drop from 21 to 7 frames).

The DPRAW file contains the normal RAW data section to make this compatibility possible, plus one side of each pixel in the DPRAW data section.

The RAW data section contains pixel values with the sum left and right sides of the photodiode, while the DPRAW section contains pixel values from just one side of each photodiode.

The RAW data section contains pixel values with the sum of left and right side photodiodes, while the DPRAW section contains pixel values from just one photodiode of the two.

But how do we get the other side of each pixel to let Dual Pixel aware processing apps do their tricks? It’s easy: since the RAW pixel value is the sum of left and right pixel sides, just subtract the DPRAW pixel value from the RAW pixel value.

This is an unusually clever implementation from Canon, where I’m used to see all kinds of inflexible hacks that look like as if they were designed in the 1980s.

Size-wise, DPRAW files are slightly less than double the size of normal RAWs (since metadata and preview images are stored only once).

How will Kuuvik Capture 2.5 handle DPRAWs?

Not being a RAW converter, Kuuvik Capture needs the RAW data for two purposes: the RAW histogram as well as shadow/highlight warnings (the image displayed on the screen comes from the preview embedded in each CR2 file). For these the RAW data section is totally sufficient, and the app will ignore the DPRAW data section if present in a CR2 file.

The app will display normal RAW and DPRAW files equally fast, but downloading DPRAW files from the camera will take almost twice as much time as normal RAW (because of their larger size).

I assume that there will be a possibility to switch the camera into DPRAW mode remotely (I can’t be sure until my rental unit arrives). If that is the case, then a new preference will let you specify whether you’d like to shoot RAWs or DPRAWs.

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5D Mark IV File Support Added to Kuuvik Capture

August 29, 2016 by

5d4rawisobugThis morning I had finished adding EOS 5D Mark IV file support to Kuuvik Capture (website, my posts), and would like to share a few observations with you.

In short, all bugs introduced with the latest Canon camera releases are present in the RAW files.

First, just like the 1D X Mark II, ISOs above 51200 recorded in the EXIF incorrectly as 65535 by the camera. The screen shot on the left shows an ISO 102400 file from the 5D Mark IV. This is something that affects users and can’t be corrected in Kuuvik Capture. So if you are running into this: it’s a problem with the camera firmware, not with the app. Update: Version 3.2 fixes this, as we now can decode private Canon metadata from the files.

Second, internal lossless jpeg headers are corrupt exactly the same way the 5DS/R screws these up. Kuuvik Capture works around this bug, so it’s not something you’ll notice, just annoying to witness.

Third, the whole question of ISO 32000. Since 1/3 stop ISO values are digital trickery, the camera’s top ISO is still 25600. But it seems that marketing folks were not satisfied with that. So the fake top ISO was born. I saw this in the 7D Mark II for the first time (ISO 16000), and it seems that they are so fond of this that the 5D Mark IV also got it. The app handles it correctly, it’s just something you need to be aware of as an informed user.

Of course the upcoming version 2.5 will have full 5D Mark IV support, just wanted to share the progress with you. We plan to release version 2.5 later this fall. It will be a free update for all Kuuvik Capture 2 users.

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Performance is a Key Kuuvik Capture Feature

August 19, 2016 by

Since I took over Kuuvik Capture last year, one of my top priorities is to provide the fastest, highest performance tool possible. While the original company arrangement did not allow for costly, time consuming optimizations required to reach the speed I wanted, now I can spend all my spare time on it. And the results are stunning. Just think the brutal improvements version 2 brought to the table…

These days I’m doing some groundwork that will make exciting new features possible in Kuuvik Capture (and also serve as a base for upcoming products). And improving performance along the way.

Kuuvik Capture 2.5 Beta

Kuuvik Capture 2.5 Beta

No more Windows leftover

Originally Kuuvik Capture was designed to be able to run on both OS X and Windows, and we used a bunch of readily available software components (Canon’s own SDK and libraw for example), which turned out to be a bag of ugly worms. I had spent several long days on wrapping those components to make them usable and reliable.

This “wrapper” was able to run on both operating systems. On top of this, the operating system specific “engine” connected the “wrapper” to the user interface and provided services to the “wrapper” (such as proper asynchronous camera communication – something that Windows completely lacks).

With version 2 I had already replaced these problematic components with my own code, but parts of the “wrapper” and the “engine” were still present. Since we decided to drop any and all Windows plans, there was no need for them – my Digital Camera Library and the user interface could talk directly. So I started to gradually remove them, which task is finished by now.

During the removal I had not just eliminated several thousand lines of code, but since there’s less machinery involved, camera communication became faster and consumes less battery. Image download from the 5DS R is 1% faster compared to version 2.4, and overall communication is up to 5% faster compared to 2.0 (measured on my mid-2012 15″ Retina MacBook Pro). This seems a small number, but think about it this way: you can take 1-5% more shots on a charge.

Even faster RAW decoding

I’m using a lossless jpeg decoder based on dcraw‘s routines to open the RAW files. This had one drawback: dcraw was not designed to be able to work on multiple images simultaneously – something I need for my future plans. Not to mention that I also had to work around this limitation in Kuuvik Capture.

Fortunately I found and fixed the issue, and my decoder not just works parallel on multiple processor cores, but also crunching numbers faster. I measured 5-6% faster file opens (with 50 megapixel files on my MacBook Pro).

When?

These improvements will be available in Kuuvik Capture 2.5 later this fall.

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