DSLR RIG REVIEW

by Sebastian WöberJanuary 23^rd, 2010

We really like the quality of the Vocas gear. Everything is really rugged and made of extremely solid materials, nothing moves and the interconnected gear always feels like one whole item.

The rods are made of high grade airplane quality aluminum, they are very lightweight and after a week of frequent use they don’t have a scratch on them, unlike all other rods we’ve used in this test. The only problem might be that they are 0,02mm thinner than usual rods, which will also make the clips we mentioned harder to fasten on normal sized rods.

A big downer is the base plate screw. The ¼-inch screw that mounts the camera can only be fastened with a screwdriver and when the tripod platform is underneath, it is real hard or impossible to unscrew, (when you already have a tripod plate attached to the platform) so you’ll have to take off everything to dismount the camera. This is unfortunate since everything else seemed very well thought out. Mounting the camera took about 27 seconds and we had a screwdriver on hand.

The follow focus by Vocas is another nice piece of equipment.

The design is very simple and minimalistic, it’s small and very lightweight. The gear sits underneath the lens, and the whole thing gets slid on. (unfortunately no quick release feature like the Redrock, or Arri follow focus)

The Vocas follow focus runs extremely smoothly and fluidly. The fluidness is comparable to the Arri unit.

It feels rugged and solid. A small screw opens the vertical movement of the handle and gear system. This is how you snap this one onto the lens gear. You hold it up against the lens gear and twist the small red screw lightly to lock it. At first this felt strange, as it’s a small knob that is sometimes hard to reach, depending on your setup. Soon we got the hang of it though and the fact that when you open the knob the follow focus gear “falls” down from the lens by gravity, and leaves the lens free made this system quite practical.
We still prefer the simplicity and versatility of the Arri follow focus but this approach was also quite nice.

A downside of this system can be noticed when you use lenses with gears of different diameter, because the vertical range of the follow focus gear is very limited. If a lens gear diameter is too small you either open the red knob entirely and swap the whole upper part around, or use the second thread to lock it higher or lower. It’s not a difficult operation, but you’ll most likely have to take the unit off the rails to perform it, and this might cost a lot of time and nerves. If you use lens gears with equal diameter, you will never have to perform this trick.
Unfortunately, Vocas sells lens gears that attach by adjusting their diameter unlike the Redrock lens gears. We would have liked it more, if the Vocas lens gears were more compatible with the follow focus system on this matter.

The knob is smaller than on other units we have tested and it can make focusing a little too hard when you’re working with a lens that isn’t very smooth. Additionally the surface of the knob is quite slippery which furthers this issue. You can use the Vocas Star Knob to have better grip and control in such situations, but we would rather like to see a rougher surface.