Will I Be Struck By Lightning If I Don't Use a Follow Focus?

amber

amber

Active member
so there isn't a way to buy the ff i want till next week,
but we've got a shoot this weekend...
so should we forget trying to focus by hand, and not shoot till
we can get a follow focus?
or will we survive the process?

we're using a letus fe and nikon lenses, btw.

what have your experiences been?

thanks,
amber
 
Last edited:
Yes, you will get struck by Lightening...

I've been pulling focus on my M2 (Nikon) for awhile without a FF. In my opinion, worry first about getting a good monitor/DV Rack/ScopeBox...Something that you are 100% sure your in focus, because a FF is useless if you can't judge the focus accurately. If you have a good way to judge focus then practice with the setup. If you think you can do it, go for it. But I would not twist on a 50mm 1.2 and shoot wide open, because you will be in for a longgggg day. Also, I would not suggest using plastic Nikon primes because of how light the focus rings are (they can make it pretty tricky to rack focus).

Hope I helped

Richard
 
thanks richard,
well i've got a marshall monitor, so that's a check. not sure whether the nikons are
plastic or not, though i imagine they are. glad to hear that you've been successfully racking focus sans ff - i'll keep in mind tho that its not easy tho.
 
Practice, practice, practice.
I have the same setup (M2, HVX, Marshall). When it's right it's beautiful but over the course of a short movie it always bugs me when I see all the moments of "trying to get it in focus".

If you like to block lots of movement it can get VERY tricky.
 
You can put tape on the lens itself. Two pieces on the static part near the focus knob over lapping a little and one piece on the focus ring. Then you adjust the static tape for each mark. So the tape on the focus ring will be touching one of the other pieces for the first mark or position and then move the talent to the next mark and focus. Move the second tape on the static part to touch the focus tape that has now moved. Now you have 2 places you can pull to. If you have 3 or more than the static tape can't over lap and you have to watch more closely to where the tape lines up. Hope that was helpful.
 
now that we've tried it, i'll answer my own question,
no one seems bothered by not having the ff.
of course its not always easy to focus the still lenses,
but that's par for the course.
 
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