Film and Digital Times - March 2007 - (Page 6)

Preston cmotion ARRI Preston’s FI+Z is unique among the trinity of wireless follow focus devices. It has the largest focus wheel and the huge focus scales are a bright fluorescent green, easy to see in low light, like Wilson green/yellow tennis balls swated around indoor courts. There are two modules: the new Hand Unit 3 (the “FI” for Focus Iris) and the ever-popular Microforce (“+Z” for Zoom). Five pre-marked scales come with the HU3. Choose the ring whose close focus mark—from 9” (.35m) to 6’ (2m)—most closely matches your lens. The on-board lens library holds data for over 100 lenses, with serial numbers. This frees the assistant from having to mark up individual rings. “Lens Mapping” lets you store your lenses in advance. The FI+Z guides you in a simple, step-bystep process of pressing a single button to enter six distance marks as prompted by the display. It’s the only unit that can easily be mapped in the field. A rental house executive, who asked to remain anonymous lest anyone try it, said “You could probably hammer nails with the FI+Z—it’s more durable than most of the cameras it’s used on.” Focus settings are displayed digitally on the bright LED display, along with camera, lens, and set-up status. A new bargraph shows the relation between focus marks entered electronically and the position of the focus knob. For Cooke i-Lenses, or any lens that has been calibrated to the unit, the digital readout is a “reassurance” confirmation of actual lens settings when the camera is mounted on a remote head or Steadicam. 6 Mar 2007 cmotion sends our spell-check program into paroxysms of ccorrections. It’s a well thought-out system, easy to use, with a touch screen and ccool interface. The cmotion camera control configurations consists of a central control box (camin), a hand unit (coperate), a zoom control with a wooden handle (czoom), a display unit (cdisplay), digital motors, and all the necessary mounting brackets. The coperate is the main hand unit of the lens control system. It handles focus and iris on the camera, as well as camera run. It works wired or wireless. The torque of the hand-wheel can be adjusted. The new model has an internal antenna to avoid damage. Focus and iris scales are user-marked and interchangeable. While the Preston System uses a focus scale that replicates the traditional hand-eye coordination used by the focus puller, the cmotion and ARRI systems rely on an electronic flat-screen animated display with pre-assigned lens marks. The cdisplay is a multi-function monitor, touch-screen and control unit with a 3.8" TFT-screen. An animated picture of the actual lens barrel appears on the cdisplay screen, as well as lens data information for all lenses. The ctag system lets users “scan” lens information from a small memory chip attached to individual lenses. The ctag is usually set up at the rental house using a one-time setup with computer software. clensinfo shows lens and camera data on the cdisplay screen, with near and far focus, and hyperfocal distance. While cmotion has lots of “c’s,” ARRI’s Wireless Remote System (WRS) uses lots of “W’s:” Wireless Main Unit (WMU3), Wireless Focus Unit (WFU-3), and Wireless Zoom Unit (WZU-3). It’s a modular system with, brackets, batteries and optional Lens Data Display for Focus Puller (LDD-FP). This is the third iteration of the system; it is much smaller and lighter than the previous generations, which can be updated and made compatible. The Lens Data Display for Focus Puller (a mouthful, also know as LDD-FP) is a monitor that attaches to the WMU-3 with a bracket. The LDD-FP screen shows an animated image of the lens rings, a bar graph of depth of field, a numerical readout of focus and depth of field, T-stop, focal length, hyperfocal distance, close focus and other lens related information. As with FI+Z and cmotion, focus marks can be set, moved or renumbered on the fly. The screen also shows camera status, fps, shutter angle, footage, magazine footage and camera battery level. Using LDS lenses works seamlessly without progamming. If you have non-LDS lenses, your friendly local rental house can program the Lens Data Archive to work with the lenses intended for your job. On set or on location, you select the lens from a pre-programmed menu on the LDD-FP. Once the lens motors are calibrated, the system can display LDS information on the LDD-FP.

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Film and Digital Times - March 2007

New from Transvideo
Wizards of Wireless Focus and Remote Control
Cooke /i dataLink, Pixel Farm and Avid
Sony F23
Tiffen Steadicam Merlin and DFX Filters
Kodak Digital Ice and Arriscan
16x9 Inc 1.5x Tele Converter for HDV Camcorders
JVC PL Mount Adapter
Canon XHA1 and XHG1 Camcorders
Kata Camcorder Guards
Formatt Grads
ARRI at NAB
Lighting with Paint

Film and Digital Times - March 2007

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