If you're doing any kind of ENG or documentary shooting with DSLRs and large sensor video cameras, you may be longing for the servo zooms and rocker switches of smaller-sensor cameras. Zacuto is introducing a new control grip and motor to give this functionality back to almost any lens and camera setup, so that you can go back to operating in a comfortable way zooming with one hand and focusing with the other. The company is also bringing out a bunch of other new products, including an update to their EVF, which will now feature an OLED display.
Here is the deal with the control grip and z-motor:
Balance is everything! Without it you get fatigued—quickly. As cameras get lighter, they need to be placed further back on your shoulder in a ‘Recoil’ position, with the camera essentially behind you in order to balance it. Now, how do you control it? The Control Grip gives you start, stop and five programmable buttons for your cameras as well as a full menu control joystick. Custom cables will be available to control the Canon®, Nikon®, and Panasonic® DSLRs, Sony® F5/F55, ARRI® Amira/Alexa, RED® Epic/Scarlet, and Canon C-Series cameras. The Control Grip is fully self-powered with swappable LP-E6 batteries.
Combine the Control Grip with our new Z-Motor attached to your lens to create a rocker style servo zoom lens similar to an ENG style lens. So now you can get control of your lens, placed where you need it for a fraction of the price of expensive large sensor ENG style lenses. You can make all your zoom lenses, from a stills zoom to a high-end cinema zoom, become precision servo zoom lenses with extensive camera control. It’s a whole new concept..
This looks like it will fit in nicely into an ENG or documentary setup, especially if you need the quality of a large sensor camera. Zacuto is also introducing some other new products, including new Z-finders, a lens support that allows you to easily change lenses without unscrewing anything, some tripods, and brand new OLED EVFs with HDMI and HD-SDI inputs:
A year in the making, Steve and Jens brought five different engineering companies together to bring their latest EVF design concept to life. The Gratical LT 1024×768 (16×9 1024×576 3.3M dots) and Gratical HD 1280×1024 (16×9 1280×720 HD 5.5M dots) are the new generation super high resolution Zacuto electronic viewfinders. The Gratical uses an extremely powerful FPGA dual core processor and the latest micro-OLED displays, giving a hugely expanded contrast range with true blacks. Razor sharp optics with -1 to +4 diopter range and the latest Zacuto formula anti-fog protection. Key features include HDMI and HD-SDI in/out (HDMI cross convert to SDI), waveform, vectorscope, histogram, LUTS and much more. Custom cables allowing Gratical to get the same on-screen info as the camera’s proprietary EVF.
We will likely get more information about all of these products, including pricing, so stay tuned.
