03/18/19 IQ4-150 Firmware 1.03.26 – Released–It’s official now!!

It’s now official.  You can update your Phase One IQ4 to the latest firmware which is 1.03.26.

The process itself will take approximately 8 to 10 minutes and the last four minutes, the back will power off the LCD and only gives a blue light blinking at the bottom.  I found that a bit disconcerting, but overall the process did work as it’s supposed to.

With this update you gain a few new features for the IQ4 and get back a couple of IQ3 features that should have been there from the start, (unless Phase One replaced them with something better which the did not).

Old IQ3 features that have now been returned:

1. Power share: which allows the XF and IQ digital back to share power.  Important for field use as the IQ4 uses about 1/3 to 1/2 more battery in normal use.  Power share allows the XF to send power to the IQ4 once the IQ4 battery reaches a certain level of discharge.  This is a good thing since the XF takes very little power compared to the IQ4.
2. Auto Gain for Live View: simple feature that has been in place with all IQ CMOS backs, since the days of the IQ250 back in 2012.  Left off the IQ4 for some reason.  With auto gain Live View you the back will pick an ISO level depending on the ambient lighting. It also added a bit more contrast to the Live View screen which I felt helped in critical focus.  This feature was removed with the IQ4, and has not been available since December 2018.  Instead Phase One offered Exposure simulation which showed allowed the Live View to display a representation of the currently selected ISO/Shutter Speed/Aperture.  Great in good light outdoor, not so great in low light (sunrise  or sunset).  I have not tried the new Auto gain yet, but hopefully it will work as well as it did on the IQ2 and IQ3 backs.  You also have the ability to use the Auto Gain Live view with your selected aperture, or wide open which is a great feature.

New IQ4 features that have been added:

1. Live View zoom up to 400%.  You now have the ability to zoom into your Live View screen as much as 400%.  The details are still present and the ability to achieve very sharp critical focus on smaller distant details in a scene has improved.
2. Self timer for ES (electronic shutter).  Pretty straight forward, you now can trip a self timer while in the ES.  Not that big a deal for me as I have a remote 12 pin that allows me to fire the ES without having to press the shutter button on the IQ4 LCD.
3. While in Live View,  3x (triple) tap will take you all the way to 400% and or you can use a two finger pinch to zoom to any level from 0 to 400.  Nice addition.
4. The brightness slider for Auto Gain Live View is easily accessed view a single swipe from the left side of the LCD.
5. AFr Zoom to Focus on the IQ4 with the XF Focus & Recompose feature

Overall, these are great improvements for the new IQ4, and hopefully they will assist photographers in the field.

However a few pretty important features still seem to be lacking surprisingly.

Auto Rotate: Simply stated if you take a vertical image the image will be displayed vertically in playback.  Currently the IQ4 displays such an image horizontally.  I still find this really disappointing as I show a lot of panoramas and use the vertical orientation to stitch with.  I cannot think of any $99.00 point and shoot camera that can’t do this, and it surprises me that Phase One did not include this in December and now almost 4 months later still can’t implement it!.  This is shooting preview 101, basic stuff and Phase One will require yet another firmware update to implement this.

Adhoc, where is it.  Phase One seems to have a totally different direction now.  I guess more pointed at studio work.  Since day 1 of the previous IQ backs that had wifi, there was an adhoc option.  Simply and clean created a static ip address that you could connect to in the field and thus use Capture Pilot from an iOS device.  Phase One now only allows Capture Pilot use if you are connected to wifi over a router, again what the heck?  Who thought this was a good idea?  You have a great solution for field use of your software tool for iOS devices and then you just cut it off.  Phase One has made limited low level statements that “adhoc” will return with a later firmware update.  I still feel this won’t be possible as much system boards on PC’s or Mac, have all the networking capability hard wired in.  Hopefully Phase had a way to implement adhoc without issuing an EC (engineer change) which would require all existing IQ4’s to be returned to the factory.

Heat and battery life, no mention as to if anything is being done to help on this.  Currently a 3400 millamp Phase One battery will show totally drained when there is still over 20% of the battery left.  The IQ4 also gets considerably hotter than the IQ3 and Phase One left out the feature that showed existing heat of the back that was quite popular for the IQ3.  I wonder why?

written for www.photosofarkansas.com by Paul Caldwell please do not reproduce any of this content without permission.