Cracked Lenses (electronics that is)

[Morgan_Moore]

My personal desire is to have external focus and iris control for stills lenses when shooting motion

There are various controllers for canon lenses in the pipline RedMount, Birger and now MTF

I thoght I would read up on this

Does our fine readership know any links that explain the protocols etc

The best I could come up with for (EF lenses) was the info on this wiki page.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canon_EF_lens_mount#Communication_protocol

As for nikon G lenses, I dont know if it has ever been done at all ?? .. any links

Thanks

SMM

[Rhossydd]

You might like to wade through these threads on Cinema5D

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=19746

http://www.cinema5d.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=26976

Once you cut though the bull you'll discover that the Canon still lens protocol isn't really suitable for use in a normal video servo lens control system.
If you want a reliable servo system you're stuck with external servos and mounting gearing to the outside of the lens.

A colleague of mine imported one of the first Okii units into the UK, it went onto Ebay within three weeks, it just wasn't any real use.

[Morgan_Moore]

I have an Okkii and use it as a focus check start stop button when the camera is remotely mounted - Its crap for pulling focus however

But that is controlling a canon lens through a canon camera

Mr Okki says his controller is poor becaus of the maximum comand intervals accepted/put out by the camera

Here Im not talking about use with a canon camera but the protocaols for purely controlling a lens - like berger

This wont work on mirror cameras (no space) but will on no mirror cams (F3 FS100, AF100, Red)

Im just interested if Red/Berger have has to hack the lens protocol or if it is out there somewhere

Im also intereted in if any one has got the hang of controlling G lenses

S

[Robert Moore]

I assumed the forthcoming RED Nikon controller will allow AF and aperture control...not the one on the R1 but
a new one on the EPIC. I may be mistaken but thought that is in the pipeline.

Bob

[Morgan_Moore]

I wonder if the pipe involves a bunch of revers engineering.. maybe hacking or some protocol that is published and I could read up on?

S

[Robert Moore]

Some reverse engineering but keep in mind that all motion AF may need to be contrast not phase detection....

Two things needed....lever control for aperture and motor for racking focus.

RED will need to develop their own library for the phase detection on their sensors and I assume moving the elements and
the aperture lever are probably fairly well worked out as Sigma Tokina and Tamron all have AF lenses for the F mount cameras.

Bob

[Morgan_Moore]

Im not actually bothered about AF - just controlling the lens remotely it and not hampering fast lens changes with a follow focus

S