Lens Motor for Red....

Yeah BMW has developed such technology for the idrive system. A free spinning rotary encoder with programmable hard stop endpoints and clicks. Pretty cool technology.
 
One of my college friends works at immersion (the company that developed the technology for BMW) I was playing with the iDrive mechanism when I visited him a couple weeks ago. Its really a simple design. For digital end stops it gets even easier - no motor invloved.
 
Curt, just wanted to chime in and say that I think that your taking feedback much like the Red team is commendable and should make for a very exciting product when finished. I hadn't really thought of owning a remote follow focus before but reading this thread and seeing your concept renders, you have me thinking seriously about getting your system down the line, especially since I KNOW it will work with Red out of the gate :) Great thing is that as you mentioned, it can effectively be an on camera follow focus as well for a single operator by just mounting the remote right next to the drive motor. Flexibility options just like Red! Keep up the good work, can't wait to see the finished product in the hands of some people here.
 
Now, all we need is for a zoom/focus controller to include ramps to counter breathing in a lens. Pull focus, the zoom motor counters to eliminate the breathing. That could be done with a user-built 2D grid of focus/zoom points for each lens.
 
Thanks Paul. We definatley want to follow Jim's lead and do things different. We figure that if you are going to make an accessory for a camera that costs a 1/4th of what it should that the accessories should too :) Typically companies wait until a few weeks before shipping and then work out all the user feedback issues -I'm into Jim's philosophy of opening up the design process and getting user feedback before the product is finished, its much easier to make changes when theres still time to do so.

Michael -I'll have to start doing some research and dig out all my optics books... As far as I know that can be explained mathmatically so we could apply dependencies to one axis so that its value drives another axis. I'm not sure if we can get it squared away by NAB but just keep in mind that we are going to have firmware upgradability that doesn't require you to send in the units... think linksys routers. :) Great idea though!
 
It's possible the breathing at one end of a focus range will be mathematically different than at the other end so simple math may not do the trick. Hence, the idea of a grid of focus/zoom points defiining the ramps. These could come from you for a variety of popular lenses or could be created by the end user. Pull focus and the zoom migrates through the defined grid points using a bezier algorithm.

I'm really looking forward to this tool.
 
Ok Michael, that doesn't sound so bad. We'll have to take a stab at it see what happens. I love this stuff. Maybe we'll call it the morlan profile ;)
 
Curt, if packaged without the remote would there be much of a price drop or would it hardly be any cheaper that it wouldn't be worth buying without it?

So the package would just consist of
lens motor(s)
break-out box
cables/gears
storage case

I'm warming to the idea of using a laptop, I can see far more scope for ease of use and options available in some instances.
 
Homer.. the price would drop by about $1200ish. We'll get a better price list together as time goes on. The laptop will be a cool way of doing moco shots but for realtime control it can be a little unwieldy.. try using you mouse to control a motor in realtime. The other issue with controlling via the web interface is that the latency of the laptop is an unknown... we can keep the latency down on our setup but we have no control over your computer. We will have the same functionality of the remote mirrored in the web interface though.

Gerald... Yes.
 
I'm not 100% certain yet. As soon as I get an opportunity I will bring the protos to a chamber and do some testing. I haven't ever seen any published numbers on other lens motors so it would be nice to know what you guys would like. My gut feeling is that its somewhere between 25 and 30 db (A weighted).
 
visceralpsyche said:
:) Great thing is that as you mentioned, it can effectively be an on camera follow focus as well for a single operator by just mounting the remote right next to the drive motor.
Click to expand...
:thumbsup:
 
Michael Morlan said:
Now, all we need is for a zoom/focus controller to include ramps to counter breathing in a lens. Pull focus, the zoom motor counters to eliminate the breathing. That could be done with a user-built 2D grid of focus/zoom points for each lens.
Click to expand...

This is what Canon and Fujinon have done with some of their newer digitally controlled lenses.

Martin
 
Yeah, I was reading up on their features.. I was able to find a document from some guys over at panavision that goes over the math behind lens breathing and how to counter it. I'm already working out how to correlate the zoom to focus so we can characterize it into a data file that our system will be able to read. We'll probably put a "remove lens breathing" check mark in the web interface and the remote. Then you just select the lens you are using and away you go.
 
We're working on our remote and have come to the point where we are picking out the display. I'm leaning towards an OLED display but I'm not convinced that its very good in sunlight (see the attached PIC). Has anyone used the Preston Hand unit (the newest one) that has an OLED display - in direct sunlight? http://prestoncinema.com/products_FIZ-HU3.html

EDIT: forgot to attach the image :)
 

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One cool feature of the Preston is a small luminance sensor, that will adjust the display brightness and button illuminators to the surroundings.
So in daylight, full brightness on the display, no button illumination.
On a dark set lower display brightness, and button illumination.
 
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