cuervo
Veteran
I just received a DitoGear Lens Drive Bundle in the mail, 3 days after placing my order over the internet. I bought the economy realtime bundle, which includes a "Smoothwheel", a "LensDrive", a breakout box, and some RJ45 cables. The entire package was $920.61 including shipping from Poland. There is no VAT, if you give them an address in the USA. All the owner's manuals for the equipment are available from the DitoGear website.
Unpacking the hardware, the first thing I notice is the high quality of all the components. Everything is black anodized, machined aluminum, except for the drive gear, which is plastic for obvious safety reasons. There isn't anything here that looks or feels flimsy or "cheap". The system interconnects with a single RJ45 cable between the Smoothwheel Controller and the LensDrive. Power is 14.5-10 vDC, provided to the Smoothwheel. I'm powering directly from my Anton Bauer brick. thru D-tap.The optional breakout box allows a remote electronic shutter release, but, I chose not to put the breakout box inline.
Glancing at the owner's manual, the system is very well protected against overloading the motor or the driven element, whether it's a focus ring, an aperture ring, or a zoom ring. The system will beep when overloaded and incorporates a release to prevent damage, but, if you follow the calibration procedure, the system will stop short of the mechanical stops on the lens. The Smoothwheel controller is a realtime position controller that also has adjustments for motor speed and start/stop damping...very cool!
My initial test was with a Canon 24-105 EOS lens attached thru a Metabones adapter to my FS700. I'm really happy with how this works. It's infinitely smoother and butterier(is that a word?) than the standard SELP18-200 Sony lens. Setup and mounting of components was very easy. The lens drive mounts thru a single 15mm clamp on my rig. The drive gear is a standard toothed wheel that works on any 0.8 pitch drive gear, of which I have several. There is no audible motor or gear noise, but, I need to recheck this at higher motor speeds. (edit: the gears will whine when run at too high a speed, altho' the audio recording detects no noise at slower speeds). Zoom speed can be adjusted from snail slow to rabbit fast. I love the S~L~O~W crawl during a push in I can get with this controller. There's a small lag in motor response after turning the controller knob, especially when the damping is turned too high. This is a little problemmatic and takes some getting used to.
I have 2 complaints:1- the Smoothwheel Controller is designed to be handheld. There is no provision to mount it on my rig, except with the ubiquitous gaffers tape(at least I can be color coordinated or go for that cinematographer's black tape)
and 2-every time you power up, the controller wants to be recalibrated. This is pretty inconvenient. It won't let you use the same settings from the previous power-up.
I still have more testing, but, this looks like a real solution for a powered zoom for the FS700. Initial results look really cool, especially with a significant amount of damping on the start up and stop. And, the great thing is that it's mountable on any of my Canon and Zeiss lenses, for focus and zoom.
As a side note, Ditogear also sells an Evolution style wireless controller and a programmable controller. The programmable controller is really interesting for anyone that does a lot of slide-rail work because it controls automatic and pre-programmed zooming/focusing while sliding on the slider.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with DitoGear. I paid the full price and am posting my experience just to share with others. If there's interest, I'll post some pics of the rig.
Unpacking the hardware, the first thing I notice is the high quality of all the components. Everything is black anodized, machined aluminum, except for the drive gear, which is plastic for obvious safety reasons. There isn't anything here that looks or feels flimsy or "cheap". The system interconnects with a single RJ45 cable between the Smoothwheel Controller and the LensDrive. Power is 14.5-10 vDC, provided to the Smoothwheel. I'm powering directly from my Anton Bauer brick. thru D-tap.The optional breakout box allows a remote electronic shutter release, but, I chose not to put the breakout box inline.
Glancing at the owner's manual, the system is very well protected against overloading the motor or the driven element, whether it's a focus ring, an aperture ring, or a zoom ring. The system will beep when overloaded and incorporates a release to prevent damage, but, if you follow the calibration procedure, the system will stop short of the mechanical stops on the lens. The Smoothwheel controller is a realtime position controller that also has adjustments for motor speed and start/stop damping...very cool!
My initial test was with a Canon 24-105 EOS lens attached thru a Metabones adapter to my FS700. I'm really happy with how this works. It's infinitely smoother and butterier(is that a word?) than the standard SELP18-200 Sony lens. Setup and mounting of components was very easy. The lens drive mounts thru a single 15mm clamp on my rig. The drive gear is a standard toothed wheel that works on any 0.8 pitch drive gear, of which I have several. There is no audible motor or gear noise, but, I need to recheck this at higher motor speeds. (edit: the gears will whine when run at too high a speed, altho' the audio recording detects no noise at slower speeds). Zoom speed can be adjusted from snail slow to rabbit fast. I love the S~L~O~W crawl during a push in I can get with this controller. There's a small lag in motor response after turning the controller knob, especially when the damping is turned too high. This is a little problemmatic and takes some getting used to.
I have 2 complaints:1- the Smoothwheel Controller is designed to be handheld. There is no provision to mount it on my rig, except with the ubiquitous gaffers tape(at least I can be color coordinated or go for that cinematographer's black tape)
and 2-every time you power up, the controller wants to be recalibrated. This is pretty inconvenient. It won't let you use the same settings from the previous power-up.
I still have more testing, but, this looks like a real solution for a powered zoom for the FS700. Initial results look really cool, especially with a significant amount of damping on the start up and stop. And, the great thing is that it's mountable on any of my Canon and Zeiss lenses, for focus and zoom.
As a side note, Ditogear also sells an Evolution style wireless controller and a programmable controller. The programmable controller is really interesting for anyone that does a lot of slide-rail work because it controls automatic and pre-programmed zooming/focusing while sliding on the slider.
Disclaimer: I have absolutely no affiliation with DitoGear. I paid the full price and am posting my experience just to share with others. If there's interest, I'll post some pics of the rig.
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