View Factor DFF + Bonus

[PaulClements]

Thanks for the hard work Curt and Co. It's all looking really good.

One word of friendly advice - Hit your delivery dates please I only wanted to add this in there because there seems to be a growing trend with 3rd party red products that seem to be missing deadlines rather a lot. And given it looks like you have the majority of your product in place it'd be sad to see it drag on. Also please make sure the reservation system works well! Sorry if this sounds patronising in any way, it's genuinely not meant too!

All this boring stuff aside though... Great work!!! You guys look like you're having a bunch of fun.

Thanks a lot
Paul

 

[CVB]

Paul.. thanks for the advice. I agree 100%. Like I said before, I'm finally going to have some help on the engineering side so things should move much faster in the next couple months. Much like jim I tend to put out dates that are very optimistic and assume everything goes to plan. If I have vendors that drop the ball then the dates get jacked - not much I can do about that other than pad the dates.

 

[Larry McKee]

Curt, I would like to echo David Farland's suggestion for the fat gear. Not an issue with my primes, but my zoom will need one.

 

[Adrian T.]

Will the system remember its current calibration settings when power is interrupted (camera off/battery change) or is it necessary to recalibrate the motors and mark the disk again after a power cut?

 

[CVB]

Larry, The fat gear shouldn't be an issue... just another part.

Currently the motor will go out of calibration on loss of power. Recalibration takes about 15 seconds. I know its a pain to have to recalibrate on battery changes but its hard for our hardware to discern between being briefly powered down and being powered down for days... the latter case might result in broken lenses or gears because of old calibration data. On the upside... you can unplug the impero micro from the motor and move the knob to the current motor position... then plug it back in and your marks will still match up.

Here's another option... What if we add a "goto last known position" button on the Impero... that way if you have to change out a battery you can just recalibrate after the change out then hit the last position button on the knob to bring the motor to the same position as the knob. Assuming you dont move the knob around while you're changing the battery.

I'll look into some options for that issue though, thanks for bringing it up.

 

[Finner]

Curt will you put the same beeping system on the standard and pro remote units that is on the start stop?

What batteries are planned for the remote units?

 

[Mark Pedersen]

The pro is going to lag about a month or two behind the standard version... mainly due to the horrendous amounts of coding we're going to have to do. Pricing is expected to be $1200 but I reserve the right to tweak that. The pro will have a full color graphical interface and lens database. We're not only getting the lens limits for displaying the zoom,focus, and iris values on screen but were also mapping out the lens performance curves to get a relation between focal length and lens breathing. All of the data will be available online so you can download the info to an SD card to use in the pro. Lots of work ahead - Luckily were getting some contractors soon.

Curt,

Congrats on a great design! I hope the motors are effectively silent for obvious reasons... If so, you've got a winner here.

The pro version sounds awesome. I'm a little confused by the data side of things on the Pro version. It sounds like you're providing lens databases that can be downloaded off the Web for different lenses, then uploaded via SD card to the Pro so it "knows" the characteristics of that particular lens. But can the data you describe be recorded to SD on a per shot basis? So you'd have a recording of the lens data, focal changes, iris, etc. And could that metadata be sent to the Red? In other words, could this provide a "poor man's LDS"? Or is the Lens Data Archive model more of what you are targeting?

Or am I jus smokin' crack?

Can you clarify?

M

 

[Gunleik Groven]

I'm in for start/stop, and FF/iris/zoom

PM me when ready to take orders.

Gunleik

 

[CVB]

Curt will you put the same beeping system on the standard and pro remote units that is on the start stop?
What batteries are planned for the remote units?

Yup, I'm going to have the same beep-o-matic option on the wireless remotes - not on the Impero micro though. I'm looking at using a 9V battery for the remote, if you have a recommendation that makes more sense let me know.

The pro version sounds awesome. I'm a little confused by the data side of things on the Pro version. It sounds like you're providing lens databases that can be downloaded off the Web for different lenses, then uploaded via SD card to the Pro so it "knows" the characteristics of that particular lens. But can the data you describe be recorded to SD on a per shot basis? So you'd have a recording of the lens data, focal changes, iris, etc. And could that metadata be sent to the Red? In other words, could this provide a "poor man's LDS"? Or is the Lens Data Archive model more of what you are targeting?

Yes, you can do you own lens calibration... you'd have to type all the marked values on the lens barrel for zoom, focus, and Iris so that the system can calculate a curve - you can't just put the beginning and end values because the values are non linear. For basic readouts this would suffice 90% of the time. That data could easily be relayed to the camera... assuming red gets/has their serial protocols squared away. We've already got some code in place for that eventuality.

The other issue is that we are mapping much more than just the values on the lens barrel, we are looking at the way the focus and zoom optically interact with one another so we can compensate for any lens breathing. Some people love this idea (poor Indies) some people think its a waste of time (rich Studios). Basically as you pull focus the zoom motor can advance or back off the zoom relative to the focus to eliminate the breathing in the lens. Its a tricky setup to get the data and definitely something that won't happen in the field but the results are really impressive. We will be able to essentially remove all the breathing but at the cost of a little zoom range at the extreme focal lengths.

 

[Finner]

Yup, I'm going to have the same beep-o-matic option on the wireless remotes - not on the Impero micro though.

Good news. Luv the beep-o-matic

I'm looking at using a 9V battery for the remote, if you have a recommendation that makes more sense let me know.

How long do you think a 9v would last? This thing will be in the cold. Maybe two or three 9V's instead of just one.

 

[Yean Loon]

.. it feels just like a regular follow focus and you forget that its a motor.

does that mean this could be the only follow focus i would need??

no more stressing over whether it's the Arri or Donan or Redrock or Chrosziel.....beautiful.....i'm too simple a man to take all that stress!!:clown2:

 

[CVB]

I'm shooting for 12-14 hours on one set of batteries. Everything we are using is actually 3V so the 9V might not be the most effective. As I finalize the enclosure I'll run some options by you guys.

 

[Brook Willard]

Curt, throw it in the freezer and see how the battery holds up. That's fairly impressive life, but a replaceable rechargeable battery might take the cake.

 

[Jeff Kilgroe]

Curt,

With manual calibration, is it possible to set the end points for lens barrels that don't have hard stops (like the Nikon 17-35)? Or if we want to restrict or confine the range of a certain zoom, etc..?

 

[Mark Pedersen]

Yes, you can do you own lens calibration... you'd have to type all the marked values on the lens barrel for zoom, focus, and Iris so that the system can calculate a curve - you can't just put the beginning and end values because the values are non linear. For basic readouts this would suffice 90% of the time. That data could easily be relayed to the camera... assuming red gets/has their serial protocols squared away. We've already got some code in place for that eventuality.

The other issue is that we are mapping much more than just the values on the lens barrel, we are looking at the way the focus and zoom optically interact with one another so we can compensate for any lens breathing. Some people love this idea (poor Indies) some people think its a waste of time (rich Studios). Basically as you pull focus the zoom motor can advance or back off the zoom relative to the focus to eliminate the breathing in the lens. Its a tricky setup to get the data and definitely something that won't happen in the field but the results are really impressive. We will be able to essentially remove all the breathing but at the cost of a little zoom range at the extreme focal lengths.

I wasn't wanting to do my own calibration per se... but let's say I have a set of Ultra Primes... As part of your database offering, it sounds like you guys would get a set Ultra Primes from a rental shop or whatever, calibrate the lenses, post the data to a website where I could download the "lens profiles" for Arri Ultraprimes. It then load that data into an SD card reader on your control unit, and voila, as soon as I put up the 32 and load it's "profile" data, the FF "knows" that lens's characteristics. In other words, it's "pre-calibrated." But what does that buy me? Once I run the limits on the 32, does your system then know how to "go to" say... 12.255' on the focus? So if I taped it out, and compared it, it would be bang on? Or do I still have to tape my focus points, set my marks electronically (assuming the wireless control unit here) and then it can consistently hit that mark?

Seems there would be enough variability in lenses (even top lenses like the Ultra Primes), that would make field calibration necessary no matter what. Or can you just enter a correcting offset if needed and away you go?

Hell, maybe it just makes sense to give you a call to discuss

The correction for breathing sounds very interesting as well. Seems like it would be REALLY hard to do without it being visible, and again, lenses seem to vary on that count a lot depending on the inherent quality of the lenses in question.... But an interesting and worthwhile goal!


M

 

[CVB]

I wasn't wanting to do my own calibration per se... but let's say I have a set of Ultra Primes... As part of your database offering, it sounds like you guys would get a set Ultra Primes from a rental shop or whatever, calibrate the lenses, post the data to a website where I could download the "lens profiles" for Arri Ultraprimes. It then load that data into an SD card reader on your control unit, and voila, as soon as I put up the 32 and load it's "profile" data, the FF "knows" that lens's characteristics. In other words, it's "pre-calibrated." But what does that buy me? Once I run the limits on the 32, does your system then know how to "go to" say... 12.255' on the focus? So if I taped it out, and compared it, it would be bang on? Or do I still have to tape my focus points, set my marks electronically (assuming the wireless control unit here) and then it can consistently hit that mark?

Seems there would be enough variability in lenses (even top lenses like the Ultra Primes), that would make field calibration necessary no matter what. Or can you just enter a correcting offset if needed and away you go?

Hell, maybe it just makes sense to give you a call to discuss

The correction for breathing sounds very interesting as well. Seems like it would be REALLY hard to do without it being visible, and again, lenses seem to vary on that count a lot depending on the inherent quality of the lenses in question.... But an interesting and worthwhile goal!


M

Mark, C-motion's $20,000 system does the same thing when they calibrate to lenses... The mechanical limits are fairly consistent so the error is minimal from one lens to another. After the motors know the limits they send that data to the controller and it calculates the Focal length, distance or t-stop and gives you a readout on the screen.

 

[Brook Willard]

Mark,

Every lens is different - even lenses in the same series. Your profile idea would only work if it was integrated in the way that the C-Motion system uses it: where each bit of lens data is based upon that individual lens's serial number rather than the generic series. Even then, re-calibration of the lens can throw off that data.

The solution is for the AC to build profiles for each of the lenses they're going to use on a show during the prep. Those profiles could then be recalled whenever a lens change takes place. At the end of the show, those profiles would essentially go in the trash. Even if you saved those profiles until next time and got the exact same lenses, the AC would still have to go through each lens profile to make sure it's still accurate... which would presumably take as much time as simply recreating the lens profiles at the second show's prep.

Generally after profiles on a given show have been created, the FIZ/LCS/whatever will re-identify the lens based on the amount of barrel rotation from stop to stop. There are generally slight differences between focal lengths in a given series, so the system would automatically identify which focal length you put on the camera and simply recall the profile that was used the last time that lens was on the camera. These profiles are show-specific that are created during the prep. Depending on the system [FIZ vs. LCS, model to model], the focus marks are either recalled digitally or a manually marked focus ring specific to that lens is put onto the focus knob of the remote follow focus.

The C-Motion system uses RFID tags which are attached to the lens cap to "scan" the lens before it is mounted on the camera. This will access a significant database onboard the device to identify the exact lens you are using. It can also use lens metadata [/i or LDS] from the camera body or from a lens with a proper port on it to identify the lens and its focus, iris and zoom markings. It's a great system, but the full [3-axis with all accessories] system is roughly $40,000 the last time I checked. I love the system and its features, but it isn't widely accepted for a few reasons: it's new, complicated and expensive. Most ACs would approach the idea of switching to the C-Motion with a "Just get a FIZ. It's the standard." reaction.

Curt, will the professional model of your wireless system interface with the camera's lens metadata for focus, iris and zoom marks? Even if it required a USB connection, it'd be worth it.

 

[Dylan Reeve]

Sounds like you'd be wanting a little app to build and modify profiles for lenses that the AC could use to build their own profiles, or tweak existing profiles.

Given that people tend to work with the same lens sets over and over again it would only be a small amount of work for a pretty big payoff.

As someone who's done a bit of broadcast vision control in the past, I was wondering if this system could be used, in conjunction with a USB input into the camera to simulate a CCU controller... Not that I'm sure there'd be much call for it, and I don't think the colour matrix info can be animated in a file, so CCU type operation wouldn't really be possible anyway. Still, that's what I wondered

 

[CVB]

Curt, will the professional model of your wireless system interface with the camera's lens metadata for focus, iris and zoom marks? Even if it required a USB connection, it'd be worth it.

I think they patented that rfid thingy... all of the imperos have a usb port for upgrading firmware... It could be tweaked to send and receive lens data - let us get them out the door then we can tweak things and see what we can pull off. Shouldn't be too difficult though.

 

[Mark Pedersen]

Curt,

I'd love to get chance to ask few follow up questions. Too hard to have a dialog on the forum. I'll PM you with my contact info.

Are you guys exhibiting at NAB?

M