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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

PLEASE I need your advice - Wireless Follow Focus

B

Billy Mead

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Hi.. can you please tell us what you think will be the best fit for a rental house? We have so many requests that we aren now looking to purchase this week.

Thanks in advance.
Billy
 
redboston said:
Hi.. can you please tell us what you think will be the best fit for a rental house? We have so many requests that we aren now looking to purchase this week.

Thanks in advance.
Billy
Click to expand...

Preston is great, but also cost much more than 2 -3 full BFD units. Personaly I prefer to have Focus, Iris on seperate devices, because often the DP will want to pull iris himself. If you need it this week, then go for Bartech (BFD). You being a rental house I would sugest you invest in 2 - 3 BFD's with M-one motors. So you have seperate units to rent out and imediat back-up if one goes down.
 
The FIZ is great. It's 20k. I have been on three jobs where the FIZ crapped out. Never had a bartech die in over 300 days of production.

Not saying the Preston is bad, it's just more complicated and there seem to be more things to go wrong. Again, just my personal experiance, no knock on Preston at all.

Get one m-1 motor and 2 hedens. The m-1 is crazy strong, sometimes a bit too much.

Nick
 
14 years as a camera assistant and I can tell you Preston is in a league of it's own. Very few bad units in all those years with well abused rental ones. I have one now in my kit as a steadicam operator and still a piece of magic.
I have also had a Bartech in my kit at the beginning of my steadicam career and had no problems also.
A serious rental house would have a Preston AND a Bartech for different jobs.
They both are great units and of simple operation. The preston is more "complicated" for a simple reason: it just has a lot more options than the Bartech.
Put the Bartech in front of assistants who have never seen one and they will have a hard time learning to calibrate at first.
The learning curve is easy on both units .
The inventor of the Bartech (Jim Bartell) came out with it because he knew assistants were tired of paying thousands of dollars to just "turn a lens". He built the Bartech around this and he succeeded, thanks to it's simplicity and reliability.

I hate doing comparison between those two because they have such a big price difference and offering in options.

Both units are very different in their offerings but they will both :
• be built like tanks and very reliable
• be easy to learn with just a few minutes
• turn the stiffest lenses in any situations (M1 one motor one the bartech and DM1 on the Preston)
• get you the best customer service from established companies

Baseline is : if you have a rental house, you should be able to offer the two options and price the rental accordingly to each system.
every assistant has preferences and every job will be different.

Cheers. Hope that helps.
 
For a focus puller the Preston FIZ feels much more accurate and responsive than the Bartech, Scorpion, or Fox. Sometimes those hundredths of seconds and fractions of degrees in turning the lens make a big difference.

For a rental house where you have a reasonable expectation of making the money back the Preston is an obvious choice. Many would also carry the Bartech for jobs that can't afford $375 per day for the Preston.
 
The Preston and the Bartech are both great units for their price ranges and feature sets. Don't forget about the C-Motion, which a European equivalent to the Preston. In certain ways it is superior and it is perhaps one of the single most elegant pieces of design and engineering I have ever seen & used.
 
I am holding out for the View Factor wireless system! Small, lightweight, and designed just for the RED. And, at under $2000, surely a bargain.

Stephen
 
Thank you all and sorry for the delay… Not being rude as I subscribed to this post and didn't receive as single notification. Odd.

I will go Bartech and a few motors as suggested only because we are new and are not yet renting to all of the big New England productions. I think by the time we are, it may be replaced with a new model meaning we’d lose money… bad for business and worse to explain to the wife!

Our model is similar to that of Indierentals in LA but we are getting noticed more and more for having very reasonable prices and (almost) all new and very well maintained equipment. Check out us if you’d like at www.filmfactoryboston.com (Read: pitch)

Also we will look at the ViewFactor when it comes out.

Thank you again,Billy
 
Abel sells bundled kits of the Bartech designed specifically for the RED One.
 
bartech!


nice unit, fast response from manufacturer if any problem occurs.

for rental company - the best choice. we have two of them and will need more soon. clients and C.A. are satisfied with them. the only "problem" we have is when you need to change focus RAPIDLY from subject in front to background (or opposite), there is a small delay in reaction due to really rapid movement.

filip
 
Don't think we have a link, although I'll suggest we create something for the website. It is the standard Bartech with M-One motor and the appropriate cables and rod mount to connect to the RED One.
 
For the short term we picked up a used Bartech with an SLD 100 Motor from the Stedicam forums. Built like a tank and a great first rental. And Jim has been amazing. The motor is old but still has a lot of life left. The Preston will be hard to justify for awhile but the ViewFactor in on my radar.
 
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