C100: Does Anyone with a Tilta Base Plate and a 100 or 300 use Follow Focus Wheels? (Erik?)

[nedcam]

Ugh! Well, there goes Kwanza! I had purchased the new Zacuto Tornado & Z Drive so when going hand held documentary (which I do a lot) I could focus with my left hand not leaving my shoulder rig handle. I was so excited and drove downtown to Zacuto to pick it up today and they would help install the gear rings and low and behold, the Tilta Rig base plate raises the lenses too high for it to work when using the C100 (or a C300), which has a high vertical body. Very disappointed but they were gracious and refunded my money. That was my holiday gift to myself ($915) and the editors who receive my footage would have appreciated the smooth racks. Oh well...

So, who here is using a Tilta Rig base plate and has FF? I had originally bought it for the Panasonic AF00, figured it would be a generic, ambidextrous rig that I could use with Panasonics, Sonys or Canons. I am freelance so it's important to field whatever ball comes my way. If I ditch the Tilta system (which I have tricked out to have an Anton Bauer Battery, BEC Box for the radio mic receiver, etc.) and buy the Zacuto alternative that will be an additional $900, which I cannot justify merely to use the Tornado because that would bring the Tornado to $1815.

I am willing to buy any manufacturers FF wheels but it appears that the Tilta's distance from rod to lens is much greater than what is normal. Does anyone in the C100 & 300 family here have had success? Do I need to reconfigure or buy something new? I really don't need FF about 70% of the time, in fact I am about 50% handheld usually. But it seems that the distance from the rods to the lens is too high for most manufacturers when combining the Tilta & C100-300, correct?

Appreciate your experience.

Thanks

 

[eiker_ir]

Getting a 15mm rod riser and two shorter rods should put the follow focus at an usable distance from the lens.

 

[Loren Simons]

Ned,

That's a pretty big distance, considering industry standard rail-center to lens-center is 85mm. Since the tornado is a single rail mechanism, a nice simple solution would be our Dogbone. I believe that will give you around 30mm of additional height, but I can measure it tomorrow in the office.

Of course, you could always go with our microRemote Fingerwheel system, whose motor should reach that lens no problem, but that's a whole other ball game :happy:

 

[DDirector]

Yeah, it looks like the 19mm studio rods should be where your current rods are at now. The 15mm LW rods should be right underneath the camera.
Get an adjustable 15mm rod riser. They are fairly cheap on eBay.
That dogbone rail clamp from redrock looks cool too, but WOW thats expensive!

I purchased the Tilta rig, but I have the 19mm studio version. The 19mm rods are pretty much where your rods are.
You can also get it in the 15mmlw version.
I have the Tilta C300 cage + the dovetail shoulder mount. It comes in 15mm LW & 19mm studio as I mentioned.
I got the 19mm studio because the shoulder mount dovetail is arri standard. So I can use it on any camera with a bridgeplate.
The shoulder mount is fantastic! Its super light and rock solid!! Best shoulder mount I have EVER used.
I had a redrock before but sold it. It was really heavy and the shoulder pad was bad way too front heavy. and it didnt feel right.

The design of the Tilta shoulder mount you have is great, but it does look poorly designed. As in, not proper rod heights.

 

[nedcam]

Thanks all. And yes Loren I'd appreciate if you could send me more info. I may buy one and see if it works based on your response.

The reason this is important is, for example, I'm filming next week children moving around in class, so I will have the very heavy 70-200mm on for reach, and if I release my left hand from my handle to focus the viewer will see that jerk and the editor has to cut around that moment, so being able to focus without moving the left hand is very important and Zacuto's Tornado is the first product I have seen that addresses and corrects that.

 

[Loren Simons]

Ned,

The Dogbone measures 45mm from center of one rail to the other. One of our Lens Gears for your 70-200 will also get you a bit closer as it essentially widens the diameter of your lens.

so being able to focus without moving the left hand is very important and Zacuto's Tornado is the first product I have seen that addresses and corrects that.

The microRemote Fingerwheel was actually designed specifically for this application. Here's a quick demo of it. The benefit to having a digital system too is that it will actually expand the rotation of your lens to 270˚, so no matter how short throw your lens is, the system will expand it to the two hardstops in the fingerwheel (or wireless system), giving you more precise control over shorter throw lenses.

Another benefit is you can place the controller anywhere, pan handle, 3-Axis Gimbal, Steadicam Yolk, giving you the complete range of your lens literally at your fingertip.

There's just a lot of room for the microRemote system to grow with you.

However, even before the fingerwheel controller came out a couple years ago, to pull my own focus I would configure my rig like this:

 

[DDirector]

Flip your handle upside down? so your hand is closer to the lens barrel.
You dont have the Tilta handles from what I see, so Im not sure how well it'll work. But it could be good?
Basically doing what the picture above my post is showing. Getting your hands closer to the FF

 

[Erik Naso]

Flip the rails mount on the base plate the other way and they will then go closer to the lens. Not sure if that will be enough. Strange because I had the opposite issue with my Tilta and a matte box. The C100 sat so low that I couldn't center the lens in the matte box.

I have the Zacuto recoil and it's pretty darn nice. Z-Drive and Tornado are crazy good.

 

[nedcam]

OK I will try that and report back. Thanks

 

[DDirector]

Saw this in a BTS clip. Looks like they have the same shoulder mount & camera and same problem. From what I can tell, they have the rod riser attached to the bottom rods. It looks like it places the rods in the correct height for 15mm LW.