Designing a new remote focus and zoom controller ideas

[SirElliott]

Franco,

I couldn't sleep last night and so ended up thinking more about your proosed remote Follow focus and zoom.  I had some thoughts.

By designing your own system you could hopefully improve on the ergonomic design of these devices. I would try and set it up so that I wouldn’t have to look at the device to orient your hand.  Make the buttons different to the touch, have feel able landmarks on the case.

When I first went through my pilot training I thought that the controls of the planes where just made together from some scrap.  Nothing matched.  The throttle had a different kind of knob from the prop pitch, which hade a different type of knob than the mixture.  One knob was ball shaped, one was shaped like a star, the other a triangle. See mock up at: www.fscentral.com/gfthqu1.html or better yet www.beechhurst.com/Quads_Turbo.shtml

I quickly learned that it was designed that way so that you did not have to move your eyes to make sure you had the right control.  You could tell by its distinctive shape and you can keep your eyes on the instruments of out of the cockpit as opposed to looking down at the engine controls.

Many of the LANC controllers have been built in boxes without real consideration of  the box design of layout.  The buttons are all the same feel and there is a lack of orienting landmarks.  These designs cause you to look at the device to get your bearings and if you move your hand you have to relook.

Bheals joystick is a good start

 

As our friend Tim Le can point out good joysticks allow the pilot to know where his hand is in relation to the controls on the stick.  Really good joysticks also use different feeling buttons for different functions.  Bheals design would be even better if he could change the shape of some of his buttons.  Change the location of some of the buttons or at least create a landmark (like a post mounted in the center of the button square which you could rest your finger or thumb and know that the button, say in the upper right from the post, is forward focus.

The other factor to consider is designing it so that it mounts in a variety of different ways to different things like tripod pan arms, jib controls, shoulder controls and even to the steadycam.

I am trying to design an electronically controlled tilt and pan head for my jib.  That control will need to interface with the camera controls and probably the dolly controls.  I am hoping to use something like a force feed back joystick and throttle quadrant system possible like this: www.fscentral.com/thrushotcoug.html a could conceivably also use the rudder pedals to control the jib arm rotation.

Part of this is because of my handicaps, the other is that I think it might be more intuitive to control a camera support system of focus, zoom, Pan, tilt, jib arm up or down, jib arm pan, dolly move forward and back as if you were flying the camera like a plane from a remote control that simulated the flight controls.  Another advantage is that you can capture all of the motion and replay it again and again.

It appears much of the equipment to do this is off the shelf and fairly inexpensive.  In fact it maybe easier to interface simulator joysticks to pan and tilt devices easier than using PIC stamps and power drivers and interface cards. See: www.flightlink.com/epic/index.html

Also check out these movies: www.servos.com/multimedia.htm

This is a simple 2 axis motion control from the joystick, but it could also be a jib.

www.servos.com/2dofseatvideo.htm

Good luck, let me know your progress.

[francoinmontreal]

Wow you are a mountain of knowledge! Thank you! What I'm basically looking to do is have a wireless remote focus system so that an assistant can pull focus as I'm flying the rig. This item seems to be sorelly lacking in all the DV versions of stabilizers, yet it is an important part of the quality of the shot. Granted the depth-of-field of most DV cameras allows the possibility of filming in focus simply by determining the range of your DOF, but it's a workaround, not a solution. I have no desires to mount it to anything else than my assistant's hands. No tripods, no jibs, no dolly, just the sled. I don't even think that zoom controls are at all necessary, since zooming while the camera is in motion would create a "pullback-zoom in" effect (like in Jaws). So what I was thinking is that I would need a switch to start and stop recording, a rotary dial for focus, and that's it. I could add a lot of other things, like iris and whatever else, but really if you are shooting with a stabilizer and you haven't balanced your light sources... anyway it's not my way of doing things. But I am a big zero when it comes to electronics. I couldn't even put together a basic resistor, let alone something like this. Any ideas of who would be knowledgeable enough to do something like this and do it right? If they wwere in North America would help too...

Thanks again,



Franco

[CN]

That is a great idea SirElliott!  tactile button heads!



Hey Franco,

I could help you (depending on time). I have designed many custom RF/IR data communication devices and have a RF LANC control for my camera.



Let me know...



Chuck

[francoinmontreal]

Thanks Chuck,

will definitelly keep you in mind... it's not for tomorow so don't delete your social calendar hahaha.

Ciao



Franco

[David West]

i think your thought got lost here...

i to would like a device that would allow an assistant to control focus... (like the real deal)

we shouldnt have to pay a thousand dollars for it... just a simple wireless lan-c controller...

any techies here know if there are limitations to tx/rx lan-c??

any suggestiond for the cheapest rx an tx'er??

thanks

[constantine]

Ill be very quik cause I have a very big gig tomorrow and I must sleep.

Get a nice digi r/c transmiter.

get a 3 channel transmiter.

servos.

make gears for your lense.

you will have to work out the diameter of these gears so they dont over rotate your lense.

Make brackets that can either hold on rods or something and can suport the servos with the final gears tidely attached to the lense.

With 2 of them you will have  iris and ff.

to the 3rd servo rip of the pontetiometer, connect 2 X 5 km resistances instead, break the stoppers so it can rotate 360 degrees, and now you have a zoom motor.

be carefull to not be over power cause there are no stop limits for the lense.

also tide up the joystics so they can be more accurate in return.

Take care.

Constantine

[David West]

yep... that should do it....

i was also thinking that it would be nice for the cameras with Lan-c to make a lan-c controller and then hook it into a CHEAP hobby remote control and trigger the various commands via various relays/ or transistor circuits....(since my xl1s will do all the focus stuff through Lan-c)

[andreas kielb]

I use a r/c transmitter (with rotary control knob) as Constantine suggested and can say that it performs quite well. Almost like a real remote focus although it's much cheaper and very simple to build. It's an ACOMS transmitter together with a nice digital servo. I've made standard 15 mm rods and gathered different gears so that I can connect it to any kind of lens. The only thing I had to change inside the transmitter is that I removed the little spring that originally took the rotary control knob always back into neutral position. Many thanks for that great tip Constantine

[Jun Tang]

nice pic 

[andreas kielb]

Thought to share a picture of my complete setup:



as well as a  clip of the remote focus at work: http://www.andreaskielb.de/RemoteFocus.wmv

Basically it's still a normal RC racing setup with rotary controller but I changed the potentiometer and
the control knob of the transmitter and also modified the servo motor to make a 180 degree turn.

Andreas

[cody carson]

i took apart an old xbox controller the other day to replace the cable, and i realied... has anybody thought of that?  i mean, an xbox controller would be easy as in it has several button, pressure sensative triggers for focus control perhaps (left will focus change one way and right will focus the other way), easy to find buttons without looking.... do you guys think that this would be possible?  i dont know how you would wire it up, but with proper knowledge of electronics i assume it could work?  the only problem i see with this however, is the fact that from what i've seen on dial controls, if you turn the knob to its maximum, the gear on the camera stops, and you can have marked settings on the dial, whereas with the xbox controller, when u pull a trigger it would keep moving the gear and possibly strip out the gears... also everything would have to be done by viewing an external monitor... and if you pulled both triggers at the same time..... that might be bad.. well just a thought maybe you could someone attach a dial or somehting and use the rest sy the conroller for other functions?  just throwin out ideas.

[Wing Gee]

just as an extra note. I have a JR Xr3 transmitter and you can set limit points on the servo. soo many things to build not enough time and money.

[Wade Francom]

I think a drive with the proper code would have to be used to make the Xbox controller work.