follow focus recomendation

Patryk_Rebisz

Patryk_Rebisz

Veteran
Anyone can recommend a good follow focus that wouldn't break the bank? I have experience with either high end (ARRIs) and low end (dfocus) and both are not acceptable (Arri because of the price and dfocus because of the stiffness of the gears).

SO far i came up with:
dfocus - $150 - CONS: made out of plastic (won't last) and stiff when moving the wheel
Cavision - $320 - CONS: the is a significant amount of drift when moving the wheel back and forth
Genus - $490
Redrock - $550

Any other suggestions, recommendations?
 
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The only FFs I've used were Indifocus and RR.

I haven't used my Indifocus on manual lenses (like Nikkors) but I guess the stiffness that it presents on my 14-140 won't be totally gone. I wouldn't recommend it. On the other hand, I've used a RR (v2 If I'm not mistaken) with Nikkors and it never was a problem during the shoot, the whips are pretty good too, not springy. I think the best compromise between cost and quality would be to go with RR.
 
The Cinevate Durus seems to be well reviewed. less than half a millimeter of play. can't recommend it from personal experience but it is the one i chose to go with after researching needs for my AF100 kit. it's currently on sale for $1000.
 
Cinevate has horrible shipping record (ordered one of their sliders almost a month ago and i'm still waiting for it to arrive... each day it's shipped next day...) so i would rather not do business with them again unless i had to.
 
Ah... I'm taking a trip to B&H today and testing out Cavision, RedRock and Genus. Will lets you know which one i purchased.
 
i played with a genus FF at the local camera store the other day. not sure if something just wasn't tightened or what, but if you held the gear with any real force (like with a cinema lens or old sticky manual), it caused the gearbox to slip. the focus knob turned without spinning the lens gear. again, something may just not have been tightened down (and i never actually had it attached to a geared lens), but it didn't instill any faith in the product for me. i had a similar experience with the d-focus when it was really cold outside. this was shooting with a canon 50 1.2, so the focus ring should have easily turned, but the geaerbox kept slipping up.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
Cavision - $320 - CONS: the is a significant amount of drift when moving the wheel back and forth
Click to expand...

Since I follow these sorts of threads to find out more... when you say 'drift', are you refering to some form of 'slippage', or 'lash'. The latter being due to how well the gearing meshes together, and so small 'gaps' in the gear teeth produce a situation where when one moves the 'control' gear, the 'controlled gear' doesn't move immediately, or come to rest at the exact same spot. Where as slippage would be due to some sort of mechanical situation where the gears were not moving, but the shafts involved were, or alternatively one gear's teeth skip over the other gear's teeth...

Lash can sort of be compensated for, by finding out how much there is and sort of over turning the controlling gear. Slippage on the other hand, may sort of be random, or tending to 'one direction'.
 
I bought Genus.

Here are my conclusions:
Cavision:
Pros:
good rod mounting system

Cons:
quite a lot of drift when holding the gears in place - might be important when doing the precise focus


Genus:
Pros:
smooth operation without any perceived drift
comes with a free lens gear

Cons:
"standard" port is not so standard - i had to fill my speed crank on the edges to be able to insert it (the more expensive version of the Genus follow focus accepted the unfilled crank no problem)
rod mounting system is so-so

RedRock
Pros:
rod mounting system

Cons:
heavy
drift a little when holding the gears in place (checked two display units to make sure it wasn't simply the display unit that was faulty)

In a way it's quite of a surprise to discover that even at $500 there is no perfect solution. If anything there IS a reason why $1k + follow focus units do exist. You DO get what you pay for.
 
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Zak Forsman said:
The Cinevate Durus seems to be well reviewed. less than half a millimeter of play. can't recommend it from personal experience but it is the one i chose to go with after researching needs for my AF100 kit. it's currently on sale for $1000.
Click to expand...

From personal experience, the Durus is a beautifully machined piece of kit, you won't go wrong with it. My philosophy is buy it once, buy it right.
 
Matthew, to some extend i agree, but then i would be kicking myself in the butt for using photo lenses with my $1k+ follow focus...

All things considered i have medium sized job coming up on Monday where i know we'll be using the unit so i'll manage to report from the field about it's potential.
 
So after a recent shoot the Genus went back to the store - there simply was too much slack for a pro focus pulling - it was so "bad" in a way that my AC chose to pull focus on the barrel of the lens instead.

I purchased Cinevate and so far so fantastic. I have a shoot that will require some focu pulling next week - i'll let you know then how it performs. In mean time i've reach a curious conclusion - any focus system that is to be used with DSLR has to be the find that has the gear swinging to the lens (rather then tightened to the lens - as this forces too much pressure against the lens forcing whole body of the camera to move while puling ficus on static shots).
 
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