Best PL Zoom for hand held / Steadicam

[Blair S. Paulsen]

SuperGrip jones

SuperGrip jones

Blair, for a pistol grip with zoom control (a bit like the Arri pistol grip) try the C-Motion lens control with a C-Zoom mk1. It comes in beautiful hard wood and fits the hand great. My focus puller Charlie England has one and its great on RED or film cameras. Try and mount it to a "rose" rather than bars to stop it spinning.(snip)

Sounds nice, I'll see if one of the rental houses in LA has one so I can give it a test drive. I have been waiting for the "SuperGrip" which both the Red Team and Curt at ViewFactor have talked about and or worked on at various times over the last 2 years but AFAIK is still not a shipping product. Perhaps we'll get to see a proto next month at NAB?

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

Balance beam

Balance beam

(snip) I shot hand-held all day (long day) on a RED with the Optimo 17-80 (my favorite for H/H) which I could normally do easy enough on a 435 or Arricam BUT wow that really killed my wrists! Felt like the balance was all wrong. Very front heavy.(snip)

So far I have not tried a lens that size with my ET Mantis. Even with a short zoom I mounted the RedDrive on the back of the shoulder pad and slid the camera pretty far back on the slide plate to get balance.

I am stoked to see the new form factor in the Epic renders and hope that they are far less front heavy than they appear. The Madman and the RedTeam are smart guys who have learned a lot in the past year or two and I am confident that they will create a camera for us that will balance nicely.

I have suggested a "bridge" module that would have a shoulder cutout on the bottom, handle on the top and provide the multi-pin connector / bracket bits on either end to work with the other modules. My concept is that only the lens and the brain will be forward of the shoulder with all other modules, including power which is inevitably a bit weighty, behind the shoulder. Of course the RedTeam has the engineering resources to experiment with tons of different options and will likely create something far more elegant than my idea. The other big improvement will be the new, much smaller EVFs. I love the performance of the current RED EVF but its a beast and adds to the front heavy issue.

 

[Cüneyt Kaya]

I shot hand-held all day (long day) on a RED with the Optimo 17-80 (my favorite for H/H) which I could normally do easy enough on a 435 or Arricam

i gotta go to the gym...you are my hero

 

[Nils J. Nesse]

Perhaps the Tamron 28-105mm zoom would be a good candidate for Dr. Lens to do a PL mount conversion on.

The Tamron is an "Adaptall" lens, so should be easy to fit a PL mount to. Les Bosher: "We can convert most Tamron Adaptall Lenses into Mount Specific Lenses.These lenses are of very high Quality & are a Good alternative to Canon FD Lenses."

 

[Nils J. Nesse]

Mechanicals/barrel: Reasonably smooth action, willing to sacrifice a little precision to save weight and cost

Zoom ratio: has to be at least 8X for real world run and gun

Widest focal length: 15mm is the dream, 18mm would rock, 22mm at least

Weight: under 7 lbs would be so nice, over 10 lbs and its hard to call it a handheld lens.

Speed: Anything over T3.5 is going to be tough in available light situations.

Ramping: In my opinion up to a half stop of ramping, especially if most of it happens near the end of the bottle is acceptable if it results in dramatically lowering the weight. Others have cited ramping as a deal killer and anything more than a full stop would be problematic to say the least.

How about the upcoming Tokina 16.5-135mm f/3.5-5.6? Duclos are already on the task of cinemoding Tokinas, and all.

It's 8.18x zoom, downside is of course the f/5.6 on the long end.

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

How about the upcoming Tokina 16.5-135mm f/3.5-5.6? Duclos are already on the task of cinemoding Tokinas, and all.

It's 8.18x zoom, downside is of course the f/5.6 on the long end.

Getting warmer... Like the 16.5mm on the wide end.

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

downside is of course the f/5.6 on the long end.

"downside" is an euphemism - it's a dealbraker.

Hans

 

[Matthew Duclos]

As mentioned before, we do still have some lightweight zooms for sale.
Both are true cine lenses. No jumping focus or mismatched focus marks.
We have a Cooke 20-60mm T3 that weighs a mere 7 Lbs.
Also in stock is the Elite 25-80 T3.2 that weighs even less.

 

[Florian Stadler]

I've been putting the Red 18-85 on my shoulder. At 10lbs on the heavy side of things but definitely manageable with the ET Mantis. The 25-250 Cooke is also in the same weight class and hand-holdable. The one good thing about the odd arrangement of Follow focus first on the 18-85 is that you can put the eyepiece all the way forward and balance the camera nicely....