Firmware Friday: Sigma updates lens, USB dock firmware; Blackmagic expands in-camera formatting

 

 

Friday is here, and once again, it's firmware time! For the second week running, our Firmware Friday roundup doesn't include any consumer cameras, with the majority of this week's news instead consisting of lens updates. Japan's Sigma Corp. has new firmware for five lens models, as well as for the dock used to update them. Australia's Blackmagic Design, meanwhile, has updates for two of its Cinema Camera models.

We'll start with Sigma's updates. In all, five lens models are updated as below:

• Sigma 17-70mm F2.8-4 DC MACRO OS HSM C013

• Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014

• Sigma 24-105mm F4 DG OS HSM A013

• Sigma 30mm F1.4 DC HSM A013

• Sigma 120-300mm F2.8 DG OS HSM S013

Only the Canon EF-mount variants of each lens are affected by the new updates, which actually landed last Friday, but only came to our attention after the last Firmware Friday roundup was published. Autofocus is now supported with all five of these lenses when mounted on the Canon Digital Cinema Camera EOS C100, regardless of the aperture value set.

Also updated by Sigma is the company's USB Dock accessory in Sigma SA-mount and Canon EF-mount variants. For these two mounts, support has been added for the SIGMA 150-600mm F5-6.3 DG OS HSM S014 and Sigma 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 DC MACRO OS HSM C014 lenses.

You can get the updates through Sigma Optimization Pro on either Windows or Mac OS X platforms. The app can be downloaded here in its latest incarnation, version 1.2.

Blackmagic Design, meanwhile, has taken the in-camera formatting capability of the Production Camera 4K -- as introduced in the recent Blackmagic Camera Utility 1.9.5 -- and extended it to the Blackmagic Cinema Camera and Pocket Cinema Camera models. In-camera formatting in the Production Camera 4K is also further improved in the new Blackmagic Camera Utility 1.9.7 update, which you can download here for Windows or Mac OS X machines.

That's it for this week; check back next Friday for more firmware news!

(Camera parts image courtesy of Kelly Hofer / Flickr; used under a Creative Commons CC-BY-2.0 license. Image has been modified from the original.)