Peter Hoare

The arm was on its strongest setting but it still floated just about. The shot was 120fps and was a pretty simple move (just circling round a couple dancing) and the end result looked pretty good. Would never fly it like this again, the setup earlier on in this thread with the power cable and the redbyte is the way to go if you have to fit a RED on a flyer.

ARGHHHHHH :blink:

It is entirely possible.... Just.

The camera is powered off the sled (RED brick on the bottom plate). Tiffen make a RED power cable, kindly let to me by Ed Moore. This cable is a 3pin 0B Lemo, and the Flyer had a 2pin, so I had to take the 2pin out and replace it for a three pin. After that, it powered right up no problems.

We also had a Redbyte downcoverter on the rig (also kindly supplied by Ed). We didn't have the power cable for it, so I built a simple 4aa battery box power supply for the downconverter which worked fine.

We were shooting a live event, and we could not record to flash cards, so I opted to mount a red drive ontop of the camera body using wire ties. Not pretty i know, but it was secure and it kept all the weight over the post, and got rid of the big heavy red cage.

The lens is a ligthweight Nikon, and a light weight remote focus.

Worked well in the end, the arm could just take it, and it did not max out or damage the system.

Its the second time I had flown RED, the first time was an absolute nightmare, had red cradles and monitors hanging off it, and it was a horrible rig to fly. This time, the Diet red behaved quite nicely on the small Flyer.

Pete.

Hi Matteo,

I am able to put a Lemo output on your plate if you need it, however you will need to work out where this will plug into. You can take the plate off the archer and add a connector in, but as I found out last time I did this, there is very little space under the plate for the connector to sit.

The plate I have here for you has a P tap on it, so I would suggest we work out a way of plugging power into your rig with a P tap on the other end to plug into the plate.

Maybe you can change the plate out on your Archer for a plate with a P tap, wire it in, and you can parallel the two batteries together with a cable.

The plate will be done asap, all we gotta do is anodise it.

Pete.

Hah, I was the one that gave you that job Jay!

The whole point of me doing the shoot was to use the HoFo on a 5D and get some photos of it. Unfortunately, I fell behind on HoFo assembly so had to pass it on.

Glad you could do the job, let me know if you want to test the system out.

Pete.

www.hocusproducts.com/shop

I made it Charles ;-)

Cool to see where the cameras are made and serviced. This video shows a 435 being put together,

Arri 435 being built

You can also see how glass christmas decorations are made!

Hello again everyone,

I have some time now, so I am ready to make up a few of these plates if anyone needs one. PM me or email me at pete.hoare@gmail.com. Lead time, about two weeks.

Pete.

Not all NFTS films are tight budget, I have a friend who worked on one recently (not steadicam, he was a DIT). It was shot with the Arri D21 with Hawk anamorphics and they built a set that they flooded with four feet of water. 10 grand budget apparently.

I will be there Saturday and Sunday with the Hocus Focus remote, at the IDX stand.

Hi Sebastian,

Defiantly don't give up, still got the drawings and the plan is to start producing them after I am finished with this current production run of Hocus Focus units which should be done in a few weeks.

Pete.

Hi Kevin,

Just had a look in my inboxes, you did email, and your right, I didn't reply. Looks like you sent it to peter@ and not pete@. Unfortunately, we printed up some business cards in error saying peter@, and its the only place where that email has ever been used. I do have that email setup (had to set it up after we got the cards back with the wrong address) and it is rarely checked unfortunately.

Oh well, I am sure you will be happy with your system.

Pete.

Hi,

Im glad someone noticed. I rejected the marking disk pointers today because the white fill in the arrow was a bit wobbly and drippy. I think we are going to laser the white onto the black anodise now, which should be cleaner.

Just finished crimping 30 Lemo cables, which was quite painful, much much better than solder though. Very glad I got the tool.

Will post some pics up when its complete.

Thanks.

Looks Great. Am very interested. on the insruction sheet it does not mention Nikon Lenses?

 

Or am I clearly showing my Newbie Stripes?

 

A

Nikon Canon, whatever really, if its an SLR or broadcast lens it will be fine. You will need to source 0.8mod gear rings for your lenses from Redrock Micro or Zacuto though as SLR lenses dont have these rings built in....

Thanks.

At weddings, I call myself Wedicam.

Hi,

Building them now. Heres some pics,

Pointers ready for anodising

A nearly finished focus knob disk,

I dont want to give any time scale estimates, in case something goes wrong and we miss it. I will keep you updated, will be done soon and will let you all know when its ready.

We are also working on the instruction manual at the moment, a sample of which is shown here:

Those drawings take a while, but we are getting there....

I have attached an up to date spec sheet for you to look at.

Thanks,

Pete.

Hah, very well done. Hardly an insult to iPhones though.

Kind of annoyed to find its a viral advert for nova scotia though. Was hoping some talented student made it in his evenings of the past two years...

Hey, that's were my old phone went...

 

I had the european version which was slightly smaller, you could save 20 numbers...

 

You actually had power to make 3 phone calls before you had to hook it up to a power source...

My old IT teacher used to have a phone that was connected via a coiled cable to a massive battery. was about 5kg and it had a long antenna on the top. It stored lots of numbers, providing you had small hand writing and you were organised in the attached address book...

Well Zacuto have jumped on the 3Gs bandwagon with this bizzare device:

Zacuto page

It is only a matter of time before they do a rod plate for the iPhone...

I streamlined the weights a little bit, had a bit of wobble in that system.

Family photos for scale.

There we are...

Hi,

The machine shop and I are a bit busy working on other parts (see Hocus Focus in follow focus section) so this has had to go on the back burner for a while.

Will get it sorted out when we are done with those bits and pieces.

Wont be long, will post here when its done.

Pete.

Hi Nelson,

We are building the first batch at the moment. They will be available fairly soon, but the price will be set by the distributors, and I am not sure what they have decided just yet.

Pete.

26 unanodised motor caps lined up in my kitchen, finished yesterday.

Hi,

Not much to report yet. will post info when I have it.

Just picked up a box of five axis aluminium motor cases. They also did 14 of the chassis plates for the motor, but the four holes that the gearbox bolt to were threaded a tiny bit loose (about 5 microns loose) and so they are starting again. five microns is rejectable by Hocus Products. ;)

Pete.

Hello,

The Hocus Focus, as mentioned, does use a modified RC servo. It is not ideal, but it is designed for DSLR lenses on an adapter (redrock/letus etc), DSLRs, and broadcast lenses. We have tested the unit on El cheapo DSLR lenses, Zeiss ZF SLRs, broadcast and zeiss superspeeds, no problems with strength, speed or accuracy. There are plans to release a HoFoPro motor, which will be a direct replacement for this one, just plugs in and you can carry on using as before. This motor is in early stages of development but it is silent and strong, designed for heavy cine lenses.

The accuracy is spot on, it can return to the dot on 1.5 every time. When using a 12v power source, it is fast and responsive.

The video Felix has posted is VERY old. The new unit is much nicer, video here:

Video

Please also keep in mind that the spec sheet on the website is also very outdated. We are updating this at the moment.

I am just about to go to the machine shop to pick up the parts for the first run of motor housings. We had a five axis cnc machine automatically loading and unloading blanks unattended all night, all from aerospace aluminium cut out by an F1 car parts machine shop to 10 microns tolerance. The motor chassis clamp is cut out with an electronic discharge machine that runs a 0.2mm dia brass wire through the material to slowly erode it away. Each chassis takes about three hours to cut. I know that this is aimed at indie film makers and DSLR shooters, but i'm not the kind of person to sell badly made stuff to anyone, so I have really made an effort with the quality of this product and it is rock solid.

The receiver unit looks like this:

The top has a Sony NP battery plate for Z1 and other similar camera batteries. The smallest NP battery will power the unit all day. You can of course power the RX unit using a 4pin XLR power input (12v). The case is made from thick diecast aluminium and can be driven over in a family car with no problems. It has a 1/4-20 thread in the bottom for mounting and uses a 0B Lemo to connect to the motor using the supplied cable (60cm long)

The price is undecided, but won't be far from the figure Ed mentioned (ex vat). The product is CE marked, ROHS compliant and uses legal frequencies world wide. It has 10 user selectable bands, and is extremely secure. Charles P reported no interference at NAB amongst hundreds of other RF devices. Range is about 200 meters (useful eh?!) maintaining accuracy and security all the way.

Anyway, please direct all questions at me, and I can fill you in.

Pete.

pete@hocusproducts.com