Cinevate's Follow Focus - Patent Pending :-)

We just broke our FF for the second time this weekend. I think its an indie focus. Yours looks bullet proof from the pics.
 
Joseph the holes are there to lighten the unit, and allow access to the pivot yoke assembly. You'd need this access to flip the unit around for reverse/forward drive, or to orient the gear forward or back.

For those wondering how solid this thing is, we shot a quick clip today:

http://www.cinevate.com/images/ffloadtest.mov (720p, 42MB)



Aram, I don't think you'd ever break this thing :-)
 
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Dennis! That's very impressive in terms of quality. I also love the size of that kip lever. It seems to be a very solid unit. Will there be a video soon showing how the reversing gears work? It's great to see a indie level product with that feature.
 
Joseph, the video university overview of the FF was shot last week. Our man Chris is doing the editing on it and should be done in a few days.
 
Thanks Richard :-) If I recall correctly you're an HPX500 shooter, right? You'll like one of the video university segments showing our Fujinon lens geared up for use with the FF.
 
Good memory Dennis, I actually don't have my hpx500 anymore but I was planning on using the follow focus on an Aaton a-minima, I think it would be a great match because of its size. Cant wait to try the follow focus out.
 
Great unit for the money. One of (if not the best) single wheel design in this price range. If you decide to step up, consider the new Arri FF1 for 2X the money. Its fantastic and features hard stops. If you are serious about camera work, these are important investments. I'm amazed at how people pass on a good follow focus and then make their AC's struggle or allow an entire shot to get blown.

Dennis I suggest using a knurled thumb screw for the drive gear, similar to the movable indicator (which is a great design btw). This will allow faster gear removal, crucial for fast sets where lens changes and configurations require adjusting the gear.
 
Thanks guys for your feedback. Av, the knurled thumbwheel would be snap to implement....good idea. In our analysis of possible sources of lash, we identified issues with even expensive FF units in terms of how the gear mounts to the shaft. The Durus design uses a very unique taper-splined shaft system that results in a rock solid, zero play gear mount. The downside is that you can't just yank it off (without removing the fastener), but the upside is that it's on there 100% solid.

What we've tended to do here is spend time permanently gearing up each of our lenses, even making sure they're at the same distance where possible from the mount flange. On our last shoot with 5 Zeiss lenses and 3 Nikon zooms, all except one of the zooms was set up this way. Because our aluminum focus gear lens diameter does not change, you don't even need to touch the FF during lens swaps. With rental cine lenses of course this may not be possible...but even our vintage Lomo's are fitting with our standard .8 pitch gears. The lens gear design is being tweaked to the point that it may be easier to gear a problem lens with our gear, as opposed to swapping focus drive gears out.
 
Joseph, the video was shot a few weeks ago and Chris has been sneaking in editing in the few breaks from craziness here. I'm thinking it should be done any day now. That said, we just negotiated another 1400 sq/ft to allow for an expansion and 1 to 2 new hires. This will free up some video production time for us as we plan for the 2009 video university shoots :-)

By idler, what are you referring to?
 
Isn't an idler a gear that reverses the direction of pulling focus. So you could pull focus on still lenses with cinema-correct directionality?
 
An idler is typically a pully (or in this case gear ) that is not driven, but there to take up belt slack...as in the idler pully typically found on cars with timing belts. In the case of our FF, direction is reversed by popping the transmission/focus wheel module off it's mount, flipping it 180, and replacing. In most cases you can actually do a quick/dirty version of this by rotating the focussing head and reversing the clamp. In that case, you don't have to reconfigure the FF, but our nicely machined-in logo ends up facing the lens :-( I realize that makes about as much sense as snowshoes on water, but our upcoming video segment will make it clear.
 
Thanks LBB :-)

Part 1 of the Durus follow focus overview is up: http://www.cinevate.com/website/index.php/videouniversity/

An iPhone (H264@640x360) friendly encode is now a standard for us, in addition to the Flash web streaming version, so folks on the run can download the clip. Chris had a bit of fun with the editing. Enjoy :-)

A few weeks later than we hoped, the first of the units headed out today. Our apologies to those who waited so patiently, but rest assured you got the units at the reduced introductory pricing to help make the wait a bit more tolerable.

Cheers,
Dennis.
 
SM prefers to shoot with Canon products, and your picture has the A1 on it as well. Why then you gave the EX1's to SM to shoot their all-adapter video? Does Cinevate have an agreement with Sony or you think that the EX1 works better with your adapter than the A1?
 
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