Dont know about the former Canon model zoom rocker, but for me, this one is very smooth, and highly changeable. Starts and ends without a jerk with practice. And though I posted that the top rocker is not good, once I read the darn manual, I figured out how it should be done and it is very nice too.

And manual focus is wonderful. What with the big size of the lens barrel to grab onto and the stops at each end along with a distance scale, it's beautiful. And I have had no issues at all with backfocus. So far everything just works as advertised.

Larry,

Sounds like you are having fun? The top zoom seems too slow, but there is the speed control on the side of the handle. There is (according to Alan Roberts) an advantage to leaving noise reduction on auto. More info in the report I uploaded the other day. Gamma settings are also listed in the doc.

Noise - I found it worked nicely for me up to +18 /+20 Gain (viewing on a big, Panny LCD TV), but that was purely testing gain settings in the studio. In real world, I never needed to crank above +12dB.

Enjoy!

Nick.