Saturday, May 23, 2015

Motors on Boys Day

Camera-less rig -- motorized dolly and motorized pan and tilt head. Tony Travostino in the background.
My buddy Brian Dalthorp of PopStudios lent me his Revolve slider system (vastly more advanced than mine). The advanced e'en more portion is a used Bescor 101 remote pan/tilt head. Also, we can use a nice Manfrotto fluid head instead. Sometimes you want a motorized dolly and a manual head. Sometimes a motorized head and a motorized dolly, sometimes a motorized head and a manual dolly.
Could not get the slider system to work at all, we just got slipping on some of the gears, so we went back to skateboard wheels on a flat board.
Libby ran this system mostly. On a couple shots it took two operators. Man I wish we had like Bluetooth focus pulling as an option.
What else, what else? So many things. I write these blog posts as I'm practically passed out from a day of shooting so I have no idea what I'm saying 'till I read them (and don't edit them) in the morning.

13 comments:

Kangas said...

That's funny, I have two of those exact remote pan heads...They're pretty decent, though I wish you could get it to ease to a stop on the pan/tilt rather than just the abrupt stop.

Andrew Bellware said...

I know, right? How do we get it to do that?

Kangas said...

I think the only way to do it is to take the remote, clamp it to your workstation, get out the wire cutters and the strippers, then go rent a VariZoom VZ-MC100 pan head.

Andrew Bellware said...

Waaah. That's not what I wanted to hear!

Aric Blue said...

I'm wondering if you can't smooth out the jolting stop by adding a slight digital pan with the pan that doesn't stop when the mechanical pan does, and then ease that pan to a stop. Only other way I can think is to actually pan a little manually WHILE you're panning with the head, then when it stops you ease your pan to a stop. But that sorta defeats the purpose of even using the remote pan, doesn't it?

Andrew Bellware said...

I feel there's gotta be a way to ramp the voltage up and down rather than just on and off. Gotta be...

Unknown said...

Plug it into a variac. That way, you'll have more control than even the Gods dare dream of. No consultation fee necessary.

Andrew Bellware said...

Will a variac work with DC?

Unknown said...

Yep, you just have to buy one that outputs DC. I think I have one. I definitely have an AC one that I use to regulate my hot wire cutter temp.

Unknown said...

And blowing up stuff.

Unknown said...

And probably torture.

Andrew Bellware said...

I think the "ac" in "Variac" is for... er... AC.
That said, for such a low-voltage DC application a simple potentiometer is all that's needed, no? If we learn the pin-out on the head, we could wire two pots or, uh, yeah. Two pots and two switches. Like DPDT or... wait maybe it should be triple-throw so that the center position is "off". That's probably the best way. So two DPTT switches and two potentiometers and... How am I suddenly the electrics guy?
Can we just get the hazer fixed?

Andrew Bellware said...

Yeah but... the motor we're working with (and its power supply) are DC already. I think just regular old variable resistors are all that's needed.