Firmware Friday: Faster focusing and more for Canon G5X II, Ivy Rec, 400 / 600mm L lenses and camcorders

by Mike Tomkins

posted Friday, November 8, 2019 at 7:30 AM EDT

After a mammoth article last week, our Firmware Friday roundup this week is a rather more modest affair. In fact, if you're not a Canon shooter you can move along now, because all of this week's news comes from Canon alone. A fair few different product categories are included, however.

First of all, we have news of a planned update for the Canon PowerShot G5X Mark II, currently slated to arrive by year's end. The update should bring improvements to video autofocus speed and accuracy, as well as to subject detection performance. Watch for more on this in a future roundup!

Next up, we have another planned update, this time for the Canon IVY REC outdoor camera. Slated to ship from the middle of this month, this update will improve auto white balance performance, and also reduce motion blur in certain unspecified shooting situations. And hand-in-hand with this planned update is a new version of the Mini Cam app for Android and iOS devices in concert with an IVY REC camera. This new version 1.0.1 release will prevent incorrect orientation of the live view feed, improve Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity with some unspecified mobile devices, and also brings "minor performance improvements". You can get the update for your device in either the Google Play Store or the Apple App Store.

Continuing down the list to lenses, there are updates for both the EF 400mm F2.8L IS III USM and EF 600mm F4L IS III USM lenses this week, in both cases carrying firmware version 1.1.2 and bringing the same two changes. Manual focusing speed has been increased if the manual focus speed switch is set to the 1 or 2 positions -- but not for the slowest-speed 3 position -- and image stabilization when shooting handheld with the EOS 5D Mark IV, EOS 6D or EOS R cameras at slow shutter speed should now perform better. Firmware for the 400mm lens can be found here, and firmware for the 600mm lens is to be found here.

Finally for this week, Canon has also shipped version 1.0.4.0 updates for its VIXIA GX10, XF400 and XF405 camcorders. In all three cases, the sole change is an improvement to focus following speed during zoom operation. VIXIA GX10 shooters can get the update here, XF400 shooters will find it here and XF405 shooters can grab a copy here.

And that brings us to the end of this week's roundup. Check back next week for more firmware news!

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