remote follow focus controler

[Christopher Barry]

that's a good one chirstopher. I hadn't seen that one. how do you like your's? how far can the remote control be from the camera?

siniarch, my Camera Turret motor FF is not wireless. Have a look at my photo gallery on my website, you can see from various shots what the FF looks like, kind of.

The servo motor version is $600, whereas the stepper is $800, as per their website. The servo has limited rotation, so can not do the full range of most of my lenses, however, you rarely need the whole range and you can also position the range start and end point to suit the area of the lens you want to use anyway. The Camera Turret is mostly designed for Canon or Fijinon broadcast lenses, as the pitch on the servo gear is designed for them. I was fortunate enough to have Joel Arthurs of HysonFilms.com put a custom gear on the servo, to match the pitch on lens gears he made for all my Nikon lenses. Top guy Joel, I hope he is back in the US and well.

More and more product choices evolving now, so it is looking good for purchases as we move forward down the timeline.

 

[siniarch]

AHH, so you are using the turret FF for your Jib. I see. I think you are going to love RedRock's Wireless FF then.
Man that is one long lens. Whats the Fstop on that 50-500 lens?
Also how do you like your dell monitor to view the camera output? how do you have it connected? are you going from the camera through the component cable to the dell with an adapter (from component to VGA???)
I just bought a samsung HdTV 23" for that purpose, but it doesn't underscan and it cuts off the image. Also even though it has a 3000:1 contrast ration, I'm having trouble calibrating it to my lcd on my Hvx. its just not that easy to adjust the red-green-blue and brightness and contrast on it.
If anyone has a better monitor for this that doesn't cost 1700 or more please let me know.
Thanks.

 

[SomewhereinLA]

siniarch- actually the unit they showed at the screening only had a motor for focusing, but it was a very small motor, and when I talked to Jaime (the guy actually designing the unit) he mentioned he wanted to put a slider on the remote for other functions. Maybe even for iris and to handle a zoom lense as well. (now these were even further in development so I'm not sure if they will have that on the initial units.)

That's sound good to me.

 

[Christopher Barry]

siniarch, yes, the RR wireless FF is a likely purchase, no doubt.

The long lens is a 100-500mm Super Cosina f5.6 - f8. See these images:
500mm (Super Cosina 100-500mm) note silver car far left
1500mm (added a 3x Soligor tele converter to the 500mm)
'The Weapon' (500mm and 3x tele con) cost less than US$100, and it shows.
The more you stop down, the more the image will vignette. This lens is either broken or has a design fault. Normally, you zoom right in on a subject to get sharp focus, then zoom out to optimal level for the shot. This lens, when you zoom in for focus, then zoom out and focus is completely wrong. Not good. The intended use of 'The Weapon' is for surfing footage, at long point breaks.

As for the Dell 2405, yes, you can see I have a converter box sitting at the stand of the Dell. That is a component to DVI converter, here or here. The problem I have is I shoot 1080p24, and the HVX places it in a 1080i format (yet it is progressive), however, the converter/Dell does not deal with 1080i signal, so my YUV to DVI converter is creating an image from my 1080p24 that is only 1920x540, so the vertical resolution is half gone because the Dell/converter box can not deal with the 1080i signal. In HVX 720p mode the image is fine, it is progressive, converts well. I tried to configure the HVX to output the 1080 signal as 720p from the menu, however, it seem to only work the other way, from 720 to 1080, so that did not help me. Now the other point to note is that with this box, you are converting a YUV signal to DVI, and the color space conversion or the A/D are not doing a very good job imo, so the resulting image is poor imo and you probably could not trust it for color representation, yet there is none of the noise/crawling that is indicative of the Dell component inputs. I would use the converter over the Dell analog inputs, if I could get the 1080p conversion at full vertical resolution.

Observations for a Monitor:
1. Pana LT-1700, I want it, concerned about the reports of green cast in the blacks, so waiting.
2. Marshall 7", I want it, but wish it had the ability to enter a mode to show pixel for pixel (with left, right, up and down buttons to allow move across image on screen,... nice). This would be good for added ability to focus check, when practical.
3. Dell 2405, good for big image size, poor A/D analog inputs. Good for low cost 2nd monitor for director/crew to observe the take.
4. Dell 2405 with YUV/DVI converter box, clean image, removes the noise/crawling, but the color is not right.

Sorry if this thread going off track, perhaps we can discuss this in a new thread if we want to discuss a wish list for various cost effective cine items.