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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 :)

my EOS "smart" mount...

I agree with Akabaka. Especially with, "or until the knobs are ready".
On one hand we want to start using an awesome Canon mount and on the other hand we don't want it to be like a microsoft windows product, (lets send it out and fix the bugs after). LMAO
 
Tomorrow will be a week since Andy's post. Kind of expecting his assistant to post an update. Are they going to ship next week, in 2 weeks? Just wondering if anyone has heard anything?
 
Update Time.... yup it's been a week a long week.. of waiting.
ok, I have to say I've been trying to be optimistically realistic, reality is I sould be realistically realistic. working day, and nite you tend to get tunnel vision.
You expect when you send an order off that like in previous cases it will arrive on time... (well mostly).. that things will easily go acording to plan.
Truth is It's been a great learning experience from day 1... what started as, I want a mount, so I'll just build one myself has become sort of an trip into the
back alleys of manufacturing and learning what it takes to get something
from a prototype to a deliverable product. It was really easy I have to say
figuring out the canon lens protocall, designing the mount ect... ha those were the easy things. but making 4-5 then ramping up to 100's isn't as easy as I thought.
Good news is I now have a few other people sucked into my world
it's taken them this past week to get up to speed on everything, we are
working on getting emails out, promise, just taking a little longer than I had
hoped for...
Now speaking of delays and frustration... I send off an order last friday.. if It's there before 1pm or so pacific, I can make the next production run,
so things should ship to me on monday/tuesday...

The days come and go and still no tracking #'s, nobody answers the phone... oh fun. Finally get a call yesterday telling me that they had "problems"
with the production line, and got backed up a few days. and my parts have shipped now...
Gee thanks only took a week to get a response. FU#()*!!!!
Well in keeping optimisitic, parts will now for sure be here tuesday (got tracking #'s) then assembly and out things will start to go.
I'm going to stop myself from giving date's/times for the moment, since I'm getting burned on them myself for I all know the ups truck will drive off a cliff or something...

enough ranting by me... (guess these are those little secrets companies don't ever talk about... )

ok, back to the point. here's where I'm at to the best of what I know.
1) 1'st parts batch, tuesday. (to me)
2) waiting on pcb's which are due next week sometime (no track #'s yet)
3) mean time working on legal/business stuff to get everything in order when
parts are ready to ship.
4) going to send a few mounts down to red for scrutiny.
5) mount stress testing will happen probably next wed.. hoping to get some
video of me breaking some old canon glass.. (sacrifices must be made)
6)emails will be going out when they are ready, organizing tommorrow and
sunday
7) as always the rest of the time is spent adding new features and development of the "advanced" model controller.

and a few more surprises to come too.... think of it this way, the more we
get delayed the more you will get... ;) so it's a challenge for me to get things out sooner..

few answers for you:

Q: what's next? I mean come on.. it's just a lens mount what else could you possibly do with it..
A: ;) got some sick plans...



Q:
I don't think that that is a follow focus knob. I think it is just for iris. But I could be wrong.
Click to expand...
A: :whistling: think ipod.

Q:
Is it full stop increments or 1/2 or 1/3? I'm not sure but I think the Canon lenses can do 1/3 stop increments. I'm also pretty sure that it is discrete increments and so there will be no pulling the iris with the SLR glass.
Click to expand...

A: Right now it's 1/3 stop increments... I'm pretty sure we can do better than that.. not a technical problem, just needs to be implemented.


... so guess next update when I have more stuff to share. (pics when parts arrive for sure...)

Thanks again for the support. It's the driving force.

-Andy
 
This is very exciting!

Does anyone know if the dumb mount could be used to mount Canon FD lenses with an adapter? Any issues with doing this?

From what I've read, they suck with open aperture, have focus problems and the ones with glass lose a stop. Not a good start! :cold:

Cheers,

Jim
 
jimhare said:
Does anyone know if the dumb mount could be used to mount Canon FD lenses with an adapter? Any issues with doing this?

From what I've read, they suck with open aperture, have focus problems and the ones with glass lose a stop.
Click to expand...

Do not try to use the cheap glass adapters as they suck, vignette like crazy, are not that sharp and are just VERY, VERY cheap copies of the excellent Canon FD-EOS adapter ($1000.00+ on eBay) that was designed for use on 300mm and longer lenses. The non-glass ones will work with most any FD lens, however they do not focus at infinity. They can be used for lenses to focus closer than normal but not for daily use. They are VERY cheaply made and I have had them break on first use.

You can have a camera tech fix the FD lenses to stop down and also remove the click stops and they then work just like any good cine lens.

More info:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6280

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5224

If you really want to use FD lenses you really need a Muse FD mount. I have a new spare Muse FD mount available if you want to PM me to discuss.
 
Hi Steve,

Thanks for the info! I actually own the MUSE mount, which came with a set of FDs I bought from Hunter Richards.

Bought it before the warranty announcement, months before my RED arrived. I haven't put it on my RED and don't plan to because of it.

Very frustrating to have these beautiful lenses and not be able to use them.

This is why I'm pushing hard to find a warranty friendly solution.

Cheers,

Jim
 
I guess (and this is a guess) that this shouldn't be an issue as it preserves the backfocus assembly as shipped by RED. This EOS only requires, or so it appears from the video, the same amount of parts swapping as the REd/Underhall Nikon mount.
 
Tuesday Update time! Parts are arriving.... here are some pictures...
(yay the ups truck didn't drive off a cliff...)
btw. backfocus is preserved, you have a little to spare as well... this makes it
very easy to switch back to PL when needed, 5min swap.. all the collimation
is in the base mount from red. you just swap the "front plate" like the nikon mount. done.

Little update here, still waiting on PCB's for the controller, eta.. friday. but
the casings look good, everything works. We are currently working on power "longevity" for the electronics... still lenses are not used to be powered all the
time for focus ect... right now if you run on battery (internal on the controller) it's realistic use is fstop only...
as focus will drain the batt in about an hour. or less. (these things like juice I tell ya... )
I am working on some clever tricks in the firmware now to make it last as long as possible, but if you want responsive
quick action your best bet is going to be plugged into external power...
(by external I'm talking about the 12v accessory output on the back of red...) so working on a cable for that, another option will be just a regular wall wart type...
the choice will be yours...
so here are a few pictures of the first part shipment (one of the boxes, there are enough parts for about 20 this first batch, depending how many are sacrificed in testing.... then it's a very very large order..), assembly will take place in the next few days... most likely friday, since I am on location for a shoot tomorrow and thursday... (r&d has to get funding somehow...) we will be testing mount stresses ect on saturday, so expect some video afterwards...
did a test shoot today, great footage from a canon 100mm macro, going to get permission from talent tomorrow to post....
next update friday...

oh, I have everyone's PM's and a bunch of emails.. what would be good is If you have PM'd me if you could also send me your email address so when my emails go out I have some sort of contact information, that would be great...
thanks again everyone. progress continues...

-Andy

ps, sorry the pictures are not very "glamour shots" ish... hehe.
 
Andy,
Would it be possible to have a remote for the iris that would be small enough to mount on a hand-grip, so that we could control the iris with one thumb while shooting handheld?

Keep up the great work.

All the best,
Ben Rowland
 
Rowland said:
Andy,
Would it be possible to have a remote for the iris that would be small enough to mount on a hand-grip, so that we could control the iris with one thumb while shooting handheld?
Click to expand...


very nice idea...
 
Andy I look forward to finding out next week when the 1st 20 will go out? I expect it to be in about 3 weeks if everything goes well with RED.
 
Andy

Before you spend any more time and money on this, it would be a very good idea to run your mount via RED to head off any issues which might make it void RED warranties.

Just saying...

Best wishes
Eric
 
So the "smart" mount will support bluetooth connection to a follow focus? The iPhone app is great for iris/zoom control but the focus requires a major tactile feel to it. Now, if you can program the iphone app to display real time depth of field, and current focus measurement (what the barrel is at) then the Arri LDS systems are old news.
 
focus remapping?

focus remapping?

Will this mount be remapping the focus throw of canon lenses to give a full turn of the knob - as the Birger mount does?

Thanks

Geoff
 
Here's an update...

It's been long week since the last update, so I'll quickly recap.

1. last tuesday recieved controller parts, ect..

2. wed/thurs/friday were busy on a commercial shoot (yup this is the "venture capital" hehe, as my bank isn't exactly giving out cash these days for R&D.
and I refuse to charge anything until it's out the door.)

3. last friday a batch of circuit boards arrived.

4. Saturday/Sunday was a flury of assembly soldering ect... we built 3 "field" units, and went out testing the performance as well as trying out as much canon glass as we could get our
hands on.... the results were good, but I want better..

now to recap originally
the "basic" controller was going to be fstop only, but it's doing focus now. this
was our first field tests of focus drive. we did experience some bugs, so we are
busy fixing those now. ( 2 of the 12 or so lenses we tried, didn't behave properly on the focus drive... that needs to be 0 of 12 in by book.) so we are addressing those lenses now.
Power control circuitry has been re-designed, for much more efficient use of internal power
for the controller, (new PCB's arrive this friday) I am waiting for lemo connectors so you can draw power from the red accessory port....
9v battery just won't last very long under constant use. for fstop only control it's not a problem but constant focus drive gets a bit
hungry for juice.
The nice thing is the new design is a dual power design, so if your plugged into red, and you shutdown to change batteries ect... the lens
controls and settings are automatically transfered to internal power untill external power is restored.
Those are the little things that you don't know the impact of until your really using in the field. This brings me to another thing...

Focus mapping...
in keeping the controller simple, the controller toggles between fstop / focus / locked modes when you press the controller dial down,
there is now going to be a small side switch that acts like a "focus transmission", 3 settings that allow you to switch how much throw the knob will have on focus...
also by default the focus movement is based on how fast you turn the knob... go slow, it micro focuses , give it a spin and the focus will react full throw.. ect... again these things are being tweeked as I type this.. (um as soon as i finish typing that is...)

here is a link to the controller in action, this shows the fstop mode.. (battery was getting too low to drive focus in this video, hope my lemo connectors arrive next day or two.)

also in the video you can see what happens when the power is first turned on.
the controller tells you your min/max focal length, as well as the lens's
min/max fstop.

Controller f/stop mode video. (30meg) Right Click Save As

and here's a few stills from some canon glass. a canon 17-70, and cheap 75-300mm, and 8mm sigma fisheye. (sunset this evening in santa monica, sometimes you need to step away from the technology for a second...)

ship eta? as soon as I can. I have mounts sitting waiting, want to get everything in one go out there... if you want your mount early (acts as a dumb mount without the controller) send a PM and we can hopefully arrange something, I know everyone is eager. I actually wasn't expecting soo many requests... it's a fricking lot, so I have to be carefull making sure everything is top notch before going out. otherwise I will have a nightmare on my hands if something goes awry.. so hang in there. you want the best, and I want to deliver the best.

-Andy
 
critical information

critical information

Martin Weiss said:
This is beginning to look really, really nice!

Have you been in touch with RED as to certification?
Click to expand...


Fantastic work Andy, but could you please give us all an answer to the ALL CRITICAL QUESTION - has RED had a look at what you've developed? and if so what's the state of play?:help:

best
joe
 
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