(If you want to watch the video go to The Slanted Lens on YouTube!)
Get your lenses under control! The new Tamron Lens Utility Mobile, it’s version 4.0 for Android, Android phones and tablets, allows you to completely control your lens. 
Everything from firmware updates, to how they focus, to some really great focus pulling features that automate your lens with an app on your Android phone or tablet. 
Going all of them through the USB-C port. The ability to control focus and to control focus pulls makes this into a cinematic tool. And so your lens now is controlled through your app. So let’s take a look at how we set that up and how we make that happen.
To use the app, you’re going to need to update the firmware on your lenses. In order to update the firmware on your lenses, you’re going to have to go onto a PC and use Tamron’s Lens Utility App on the PC to update the firmware on your lens. Now you can bring it into the mobile app, where you’ll be able to perform all these different functions.
So when we start working with the app, the one thing that I think is a good caution to know is that if you get their USB-C cable from Tamron, you know you’re going to have a cable that’s going to carry the data. It’s going to work correctly with the lens and with the app. If you put it in some other USB-C cable, there’s so many different things out there, it’s really hard to know if what you’ve got is going to work. I love the fact that the Tamron version has the 90 degree plug in, and it allows me to hook it onto the lens. I take it around the lens and into the Android. So I think that’s really smart to stick with the cable you get from Tamron.
So just like in version 3.0, the new 4.0 has the Digital Follow Focus. It’s going to allow you to set points, focus points for video. And that really makes this a video type application. So you do have the button on the side of the lens, and you can change that to A-B focus, and you have some control there. 
But I think the real genius in the, really the value of this, is that you can get onto an app, and that allows you to control the focus on the app. And to be able to set focus points, and to make this into a video type application that allows you to have focus sets and focus points, and that’s really important. In the app you can also go back and forth between auto focus and manual focus, and some of the features like DFF, you’ve got to go to manual focus. And that allows you to make that change in the app.
The app also allows you to switch the focus ring from focus to aperture adjustment if you want that kind of aperture control on a ring. Which is really a nice thing to do in some situations. And you can assign custom functions from the camera body to the focus set button. Its functions of the focus set button can also be cleared.
I’m going to just quickly go through the app. A lot of these things are not unique to the new 4.0 version, but I just want to hit them really fast. So I’m just going to connect this to my camera, wake up my camera. It brings me into my first setting here. So the focus set button. If you look at this right here, if I hold this, I’ve got several different options on that focus set button. I can clear the settings. I can assign the function to the camera. I can select auto focus or manual focus. If I want that button to do that focus presets, if I want to do focus preset, or AB focus, I can change between those different options. We’re going to look at those and talk about them individually. You can also change the ring function, whether it’s going to be at focus or aperture. You can do both of those. So you have focus stopper, it’s going to stop the focus between two points. 
And then you have Astro focus, which is going to focus just on infinity. That’s actually a really great feature, because a lot of times when I’m out, it is dark, I can’t see, I can’t tell if things are in focus. 
The little points, the stars, are starting to move in and out, that’s really hard to see. And on auto focus lenses, it rolls past infinity. So this allows you to focus. 
It says it’s going to put it at infinity, and you know, it’s going to be in focus. So that’s a great feature.
So that leads us to the two parts of this app, first, which is remote. That’s pretty much the same as what 3.0 was. But the DFF is really interesting, and that’s something I want to look at. 
The focus easing, that it kind of eases in and out of focus rather than quickly jumping. So it feels more organic. It’s going to be more video friendly. It’s going to really work for that application. We’ll take a complete look at that DFF in detail to see exactly how to do that.
Let’s just touch really quickly on remote. The remote feature in this app is not that different than 3.0 so we’ll go through it very quickly. We have several different options here. I’ve set my focus at three different points. I’ve set my focus up front to be able to come right up to the front of the bread. It’s going to go through that process to pull it up. I have it on the second point, which is going to take us to the pickles in the middle. And then I’ve got it on my third point, which is going to be all the way to the back. 
And it’s going to take like eight seconds to get back there. So it’s going to be really slow to go back. So those are the two things you can set. Each one of these. You click on a little wheel right here. We can go between eight and however many you want, up to 100 seconds, 99 seconds. So we’re going to set this at eight. So that’s the travel time. How long you want it to take to travel to the next focus point. And then you have here the delay, how long do you want to wait before it goes to the next focus point? So we have those two different options there.
So now, once we get into this, we’ll hit record on our camera here. Okay, I’m in position number one. I’ve got a three second delay. So when I hit number two, it’s going to wait for three seconds, then it’s going to take three seconds to get to the focus to the pickles. 
When I hit the next one, I’m going to have a delay at three seconds, then it’s going to take eight seconds to move the focus back to the back olive oil. 
And you can make this as long as you want, up to 99 seconds, a long time to choose between the moves. When I hit number one, it’s going to just bring it back up, and it’s going to come up pretty quick. Because I don’t have a delay here. I’ve just got zero. So that’s how this is set up. It’s just really easy to move the focus points.
This is really useful when you got a camera that’s up in the ceiling and you can’t get to it, so you can change your focus points. It’s also great for camera shake so you’re not trying to touch the camera when you’re trying to change the focus. It just gives you the ability to make those changes. If you know a person’s walking in, they’re walking up, you can make it look very organic. And it doesn’t matter if it misses them a little bit, it almost looks better if it misses them just a little bit, if the timing is not perfect. But then it pulls the focus to the item in the foreground, where they come up to touch it. So that works together for a focus pull.
But the thing that’s missing is what we have in the DFF and that’s that ease in and out. And that DFF is more like working as a focus puller for video. It gives you complete control of just the way it eases in and out of the move. You can choose when to make that move, and it’s just more like focus pulling. So let’s get to the DFF.
Hi, my name is Yasi. I’m a touring music photographer. And here is what’s in my SKB Case. I’ve got two camera bodies. One is digital, the Canon 5D Mark IV. Over here I’ve got the Canon EOS III, is my film body. 
And I keep my lenses all over here, the 70-200mm, the 35mm, the 85mm and 16-35mm. I’ve got a whole stack of batteries over here. I’ve got my big flash the 600. I’ve got a little back up flash just in case. Very, very, very important are my fitted ear plugs. Also very important are my snacks. Don’t forget your charger and your cards. 
That’s literally it. So, yeah, that’s what’s in my SKB case!
This is my favorite, and for a couple reasons. One, it’s just really intuitive. It looks like a lens and it acts like a lens when we work on it. But this is connected now via the USB-C cable to the lens, the 90 millimeter. So first thing I’m going to do is I’ve got three options here. I’ve got an ABC, so I can set three focus points. If I go to A here for my first focus point, it’s right there. But I can make that change. 
If I look at the label there, I’m going to just see, I’m going to just move it back and forth to where that’s really nice and in focus. Right there is really good. Now I’m going to set that as my focus point. That’s my first focus point. 
Now I can just take my slider and I can bring my slider across to my second thing. I want the bread to fall into focus, so I’m just going to roll this until the bread falls in focus. There’s our focus on the front of the bread there. And I’m going to make that my, not quite there, right there. Now I’m going to let that be my B point. I’ll put that as my B point. 
Then I’m going to slide it across even further, and I’m going to come to these pickles in the back, and I’m going to pull the focus to the pickles. Once I set my focus point where I like it, then I just simply, there it is. My pickles are in focus now, right about there, and I’m kind of missing it there. There we go. Now that’ll be my C spot. Now, when I go back to A, it’s going to pull the focus back to A.
So I have now the ability to do a couple things. I’m going to start with four seconds on the first, on A, as the camera sits there, and then I’ve got an ease out, an ease of plus two. So it’s going to just kind of slowly pull the focus. I don’t want it to be too fast. I want it to feel pretty organic. Then I’ve got a half second on B. I don’t want it to go. I want it to go when I want it to start. I don’t want to go a second or two seconds so it takes too long for that focus to move to the next point. I’m going to make that half second so it’s going to go quicker. I could say I want it to take three seconds. So when I hit B, it’ll take it 1, 2, 3 before it starts to move. So it becomes very slow. I’ve got these at a half a second on each of them. Then my C point. So now let’s go ahead and record.
So there’s our first on my slider. I’m going to go ahead and start to go to my second, my position one as it starts out, and just as I start to leave the olive oil, I’m going to pull the focus to my bread. Then I’m going to as I leave the bread, I’m going to pull my focus to the pickles in the back. 
And now it’s going to go past the pickles that are out of focus and end up on the honey in the background that’s on the same focus plane as the pickles. And there’s my final move.
So it’s really nice because I can set each one of those focus points. It’s just really easy to do. And I can adjust them. I can really focus. I can change the focus right here. This is going to go back to my first focus point, although my slider is on my last point. But my slider, now I’ll go back to my first point so I can see it. You don’t have to use an automatic slider. You can have, you can be pushing the slider and then hitting the focus points as you go. It’s just kind of easy with an automatic slider. But this just gives you, on a tripod, you could set this up to have a focus point in the foreground and then push to a person in the background, then pull it to the foreground. You can kind of go back. You’ve got three points. You can do them one, two, three. I could end up with another bottle up front on that A focus point. And I could go back to that a focus point. So basically, I would have changed the focus four times on that camera move.
So that’s one of my favorite this DFF, the ability to change the focus and then set those points, ABC, and then every time you hit the next one, A, B, C, it just moves the focus to the next point. So excellent, excellent way to use the app. So great to be able to use an app to use the lens, to pull focus internally. That’s like a focus puller is really it’s hard to pull focus, and this gives you the ability to do a lot of that move yourself as you set focus points.
You don’t have to have a slider to make this work. You can have things lined up, pulling away from you, so that something’s in the corner really close. You focus on that, then you rack the focus to the next point, then to the next point. I mean, you can do something like that that causes focus to push away from you, and then you come back to the front point again. So it doesn’t have to be a slider going across. It can just be on a tripod, and the focus going in and coming back out. There’s a lot of different ways you could use this, but it’s the ability to choose and to pick points that you can ease in and out of, and choose the speed you want it to ease in and out of, that makes this really useful.
All right. So now let’s do one where we’re not doing a slider, we’re just pushing in. I’m going to use, like, one or two things. I can use this to do the focus. It’s in manual focus. You have to be in manual focus to make the DFF work. Or I can jump up on the lens and I can say, OK, I want to be right there. I’m going to set that as my point A, and there it is.Then I’m going to move my focus to the bread, and I can make that my point B, right there we are. And then I’m going to move it back to the Goya in the back and make that my point C. Now I’m going to lengthen these out. I’m going to say, okay, I want this move to take a little longer. I’m going to say, that’s like two seconds for each of these. And then I’m going to do two seconds again. That’s going to mean now that I’ve got a little bit of time in between each one of those moves. Ok, so I’ve got my three points. I’ve got my first one up front with the olive oil, oil in the front. 
So now as I’m going to hit my second point, it’s going to give me a little longer move. It’s going to slowly move to the back. There we go. That’s nice. I’m not going to touch the camera. I won’t bump anything. And then the last one goes to the Goya in the back. And that just gives us nice, smooth moves. You don’t have to have this thing, you know, on a slider. You can do just locked off like this. It keeps you from having to touch the camera, and it gives you solid points you can hit every time. So let’s pull it back up front, to the front. There it is, and to the middle, and there we go and to the back. I could do this all day. I like that as it kind of rolls in. It’s just really pretty.
So there’s just a simple push in or push back. We can start at the back. Let’s start at C, back there. Well, you get the point. When you start at C, and we can pull the focus all the way up to the front. We don’t have to hit the middle point, just let it slowly come up front to that front point. So there’s DFF. You can either set the focus point on the lens right here, or you can set the focus just set the focus point on here and then set it. And that just gives you each focus point as you go through the ABC setting. You can do two. You can just use it for just one. You can have it on one. You can have it on one. You just say, okay, I just want to get it back to this every time. I want it to go back to the front and I’m going to hit record. That just resets my focus for me. All right. So there’s a look at the DFF.
So I have loved how the Tamron Lens Utility has really progressed from the first versions to where we’re at today. I mean, the option to be able to change how the lens functions with regards to what the buttons do, what the rings do. It’s had that app that’s kind of been growing as we moved along. We’ve now hit a point. I just, I absolutely love the Astro thing, because I do star photography, and sometimes that is one of the most stressful things for me. I’m going “Did I hit the focus?” You know. I’m almost wide open always, because I don’t want to have such a long shutter speed. I just want to know I’m on infinity. This gives me the option to do that. So that’s been progressing. 
But what really moves us into a video type feature is the DFF. If you have a little knob that turned, you could use this as like focus. You could pull focus on people as they walk across the room. I see that. I see that coming. But right now it’s really set up so you can you can set focus points. You can choose when you focus to those points. And you have control. It’s really the ability to control the focus of the lens with you as the operator. On a slider, it’s moving back and forth, and I can change the focus while it’s moving. And I have complete control of that, and complete control of the timing, complete control of how fast or slow it goes, because I can ease it in and out. Just have all those options in that DFF. So that’s a real step forward. I think it’s something you’re going to want to play with and just see how it works for your workflow. But I find it really useful and something we’re going to use here at The Slanted Lens. So you keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
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