David Ford Founder of ErgoCine has passed away

Run&Gun

Run&Gun

Veteran
I know some of you are familiar with David Ford's company, ErgoCine. For those of you that may not be, he built great 'Aaton Style' wooden handgrips and other custom grips and controls. http://www.ergocine.com

David was a very smart and talented guy who believed in great craftsmanship and workmanship and would go out of his way to help you. I purchased my first grip from him for my F55 in 2015. Around the end of 2016/beginning of 2017 I approached him about creating a grip with integrated zoom rocker, record and "quick zoom" buttons for the Canon 17-120 cine-servo. David made several prototypes and versions, ultimately coming up with a final custom version of the grip he named after me, the "Bell Rocker". I don't know how many he made, but there is at least one other person out there with a regular version. News shooter also did a write-up before NAB on David's creation. https://www.newsshooter.com/2018/04/07/ergocine-bell-rocker/

While I never met David in-person, I had corresponded with him via email countless times and had many FaceTime conversations with him. From my interactions with him, he seemed like a really great guy and my sympathies go out to his family and friends. According to the post from his brother, it was a very sudden occurrence back in August. Not only is this a great loss to his Family and friends, it's a loss to our community, as well.


Some of David's great work: Custom Bell Rocker with handstrap
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Very sad to hear this! I always admired his work, was some of the most beautiful I'd ever seen, and I was obsessed with who crafted those Lion rigs ever since I saw them shooting the America's cup a few years back. Recently I contacted him about a custom Eva1 grip and never heard back. Now I know why :/. Wood has gotten a lot more popular in the last few years, but I haven't seen anything that came close to Ergocine.
 
groveChuck said:
He did beautiful work- what kind of wood is that?

Edit: nice new avatar... :)
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I believe it is black walnut. It's a little scuffed on the bottom now from use and setting it down while shooting, but it's even nicer looking in person. It makes you really appreciate the craftsmanship.

Lol. It's actually one of the pictures he took of it before sending it to me.

Kellar42 said:
Very sad to hear this! I always admired his work, was some of the most beautiful I'd ever seen, and I was obsessed with who crafted those Lion rigs ever since I saw them shooting the America's cup a few years back. Recently I contacted him about a custom Eva1 grip and never heard back. Now I know why :/. Wood has gotten a lot more popular in the last few years, but I haven't seen anything that came close to Ergocine.
Click to expand...

Yes, very beautiful work. And not just "mechanical" pieces. He was a very smart guy who was also integrating electronic controls into these beautiful organic pieces, giving us better control over our cameras.

It's ironic that you mention that he had not contacted you back, because that is how I just found out(I'm not on social media). I had really only talked to him once or twice since getting the grip this summer and I wanted to really put the grip through it's paces before talking to him again to let him know how it was performing. So I emailed him a few weeks ago, after a few days of intense shooting, with some ideas/tweaks for another version of the grip and also sent him some pictures of it on my camera. He was always very prompt at responding, but I never heard anything back, either. So after a few weeks, I decided to go and look at the website and FB page that he had for the company to see if any of the pics had been posted or maybe a note saying he was extremely busy. What I saw shocked me. At the top of the page it was a post from his brother saying that David had passed away suddenly in August. I had to read it again, to make sure that I was reading it correctly.
 
I don't have any 3D printing or CNC experience, but David posted 3D printer files for anyone to download for the normal 'Aaton style' grip for both left and right in medium, large and X-large on the homepage of his website.
 
Just curious, anyone know who was doing it first out of ErgoCine, KinoGrip, and MoviGrip?

If memory serves, I came across ErgoCine first, then Kino, then Movi.
 
I had an email conversation with Ray from KinoGrip. I believe David Ford of ergocine was the the first to produce the "sphere" and then later it was picked up by other companies. Unsure of who started doing grips first.
 
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