35mm adapteron a flyer
 

Does anybody have experience of using a 35mm adapter with a flyer? Like sgPRO, Redrock M2, etc. etc.

I'd imagine the camera might be too front heavy, and I was wondering if there's enough room on the stage to slide it back to counter it?

Any thoughts?

Vasi.

All depends on what lens you have on the front. The setup gets long very quickly, you're absolutely right. The M2 has rails, and a sliding camera plate. You can get it to slide pretty far back, and the dovetail itself has a long range and a lot of mounting holes, so you should have no problem. In a pinch, you could always gaff tape an extra battery to the rear of the camera.... you'd still probably be under the weight limit, depending on what accessories you have.

The M2 radically decreases your D.O.F... meaning that you'll almost certainly need something (and someone) to focus the lens. Depending on what system you choose, you could mount the receiver/amp on the back of the camera to help keep it from being nose heavy.

Ok, and I'll add that it also depends a lot on how heavy the camera body is. In that case, the JVC has a built-in battery mount at the rear, as well as a heavy-ish body when compared to something like a DVX. Im sure that whatever combination you choose (within reason, definitely NOT certain panavision lenses) you can make it all balance.

Thanks guys... now if only only I can figure out which 35mm adapter to get i'm good to go.

didn't think about the Follow-Focus; what's the cheapest DECENT follow-focus for cameras like the PD150, Z1, etc.? anybody using anything?

Well here is where the catch comes.

A simple wired Focus controller for a LANC or Pannasonic camera is simple and cheap enough.

However...

If you use a 35mm adapter, then you are using 35mm lenses. Meaning that you arn't looking for a FF for the camera, but for a 35mm lens. And that is expensive.

The cheapest good FF system for 35mm lenses is generally agreed to be the Bartech Focus Device (www.bartechengineering.com), known as the BFD. It costs just under $4,000 with a motor.

Plus don't forget that you will also need a skilled AC to pull focus.

- Mikko

Seems to be an extra ')' at the end of the link; here it is again:

http://www.bartechengineering.com/

Looks like a beautiful piece of equipment; wish I could afford it. ;-)

The Steadicam Flyer will handle any of the DV or HDV style cameras with any of the 35mm adaptors.
The set up you see on my website http://www.steadi-onfilms.com.au/steadicam_flyer.html is about the limit. In future I would have a cable made to power the camera from the rig batteries and eliminate the battery on the back of the camera (or power the camera with the smaller standard JVC batteries)
You will need a follow focus system, the one we used was a rented BFD (Bartech). On one day I used my own Preston but this was overkill and way out of the budget.
We tested Cooke, Zeiss Ultra Primes and the standard Zeiss lenses for optimum quality on the P & S adaptor and found no noticible gain in using the later lenses and settled for the standard Zeiss lenses.
One other thing I'm working on is a way to put the Hard Drive between the monitor and centre post, this would improve the dynamic balance of the rig.

Phil:

I've adapted my Mini35 to take Anton Bauer batt's, and also have a breakout box to further power the camera itself (via 7.2v stepdown) and other accessories. It will also accept 12v via XLR so for Steadi operation, you can fly with no additional batteries up top. After making these mods (pix viewable here, P+S came out with their versions of these. I was sad at first, but then realized that even with the machining and engineering costs I still cost me less than their versions (but I much prefer their Anton Bauer mount, more flexible positioning options).