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Wireless Follow Focus


Matt Turner

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Lol, Greg you play in a different sandbox than most of the people here!

 

The old analog Bartech is the most reliable single channel system under $5k. It's not sexy, but it just works. Can't say the same for the digital Bartech, Chrosziel Digifox, RT Motion, and other similar systems, they are all unusably slow at times and can be affected by radio interference from wireless video systems and other devices.

 

The Bartech is also cheap enough to be a great backup system. I can recount a number of times where production had rented a crap system, and the old Bartech came in to save the day. Even the most expensive reliable systems go down occasionally. I worked a 100% Steadicam job a few weeks ago where our Preston FIZ 3 went down on the martini shot. Changed to a fresh battery on the F55 and both Hirose ports stopped outputting power to the MDR (powering via Hirose > d-tap > Preston power cable). We tried resetting fuses, switching to batteries with less charge, rebooting systems, repatching cables, nothing. No Steadicam sled power cable. Ended up switching to the Steadicam op's Bartech system instead and got the shot.

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Bartechs are ok. I owned several at one time years ago. I couldn't get the range I needed out of them and there wasn't a zoom option at the time. Now I own several Prestons and am much more confident with them in my hands. As for breakdowns, that's an unfortunate byproduct of technology. Everything breaks at some point and will require some TLC.

 

Greg

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