Cinevate Debuts New Universal Focus Gears!

[Dennis Wood]

Cinevate's new focus gears will be debuting this week. The original design has been completely re-worked after 3 years of field feedback and use of our focus gears with ENG lenses, still lenses etc.

The cost per gear will be in the $30 US range, or approx £15 for comparison. Like our Durus Follow Focus, the gears carry a lifetime warranty. Being that our designs have been "borrowed" in the past, we're not letting this one out until our patent-pending status is in place.

Changes from our older design other than the drastic reduction in cost (we've made a very large quantity), are as follows.

1. They offer over twice the lens travel distance of the current design. Btw, the zip gear mentioned here would be useless (or require very frequent repositioning) with any SLR lens with typical focus ring physical "breathing".
2. The gears are fiber-reinforced composite and use brass thread inserts.
3. Our "spokes" (stainless steel) now feature custom integrated nylon tips.
4. Enlarged inner diameter for easier use with ENG lenses, larger cine lenses and video camera stock lenses. They now fit the Fujinon lenses used with the HPX500, LOMO cine lenses and anything else we could dig up to test them on. They're shown here on the 24-70 Canon f2.8D lens.
5. About 50% lighter with a 40% reduction in profile.
6. Because they are matched (we're talking gear thrust surfaces) precisely with our FF drive gears, they have what I'd call perfect engagement that is silent, with lash near zero measurable. What this means is super smooth, self-lubricating and silent performance that we would be completely comfortable holding up against $4000 Arri systems.
7. Installation is now much, much quicker. About 2 minutes per lens.
8. We don't and never will use zip gears. Flexible gears cannot guarantee consistent tooth profiles (tooth distance at tip varies as you flex them), nor can they ever handle full 360 degree rotation. They're cheap and can be made in one mold (very cheap to make) however we pretty much rejected the concept from day one.

Finally, they're just a lot sexier We're expecting to be shipping them this week. It sounds strange to be excited about something little like this but this addition raises the performance of our Durus Follow Focus to a new level of excellence in terms of its function and design. Those who know what we do here will agree that we're always pushing incredibly hard to improve our gear...and I don't get excited too often.

Later this week...an SI-2K camera with our full 2/3" relay setup as well as a straight 2/3" B4 lens. Both will feature the Durus Follow Focus on the rig.

Cheers,
Dennis.

[steve witt]

These look Incredible!

[Dennis Wood]

Thanks Steve. They've been in the works for quite some time.

[danialharis]

I m currently having problem with the pervious batch of focus gears. Just doesn't seem to be working well with my still lenses. It keeps coming off doesn't hold well. Haven't been using the follow focus every since i had a bad experience with the focus gears. The sad thing was that there were scratched marks on my lens focus rings (the zeiss) as the spokes were metal tips then. Seems there are certain improvements to the gears here. Just wondering if I should buy these new sets or figure a way to fix my current gears problem.

[Tom Waugh]

Thanks for the heads up............ Got my FF a month ago with a total of 6 gears....they are working well but would have been nice to have been told some wider gears were coming....

Also, when is the Fuji pitch cog coming out?

[jade gillies]

I'm waiting on my durus, but i would also like to know when the FIJI pitch gear is comming out ??

[klmarlow]

Any chance of a discount for recent purchasers?

[Dennis Wood]

We've got .5 pitch gears, but the .6 pitch will come later (about 7 weeks from now). On our HPX500, we simply geared the Fujinon lens with our .8 pitch gears as this works better anyway in terms of clearance with the DURUS ff. We've had too many folks waiting for too long on the DURUS units. This situation is about to change though due to changes in both manufacturing and supply of the internals of the units. Once this is done, our resellers will finally have the opportunity to order DURUS and therefore have them in stock for hands-on testing at various locations like Toronto, LA and New York.

On the discount side of things, we'd deal with these on a case by case basis so just email Hubert using the sales@cinevate.com address and we'll figure something out for you