It's that time of year when (unless you know you're going to make a loss) the thoughts stray to getting useful pieces of kit because otherwise you'll be giving money to The Taxman.
On that theme, I'm very pleased with my Bobob Zoe (a remote controller for LANC cameras). Tom Hardwick spotted these at the Video Forum and recommended them. Mine arrived just before last weekend (in time for the same wedding that I used to field-test the FS-4, see other thread).
After a couple of years of using the Varizoom VZ-Pro-L, with it's awkward rotary control for setting speed of zoom, it is a joy to have proper proportional zoom control on the pan bar. Not only that, but the thumb rocker follows conventional practice on professional studio cameras, rather than the cheap flat switch on the Varizoom.
It leaves me thinking "If Bebob can fit that amount of good design into such a tiny unit, why couldn't Varizoom have got it right in the first place? The LANC cameras are the same, 'best practice' on thumb rockers is accepted, why couldn't they have done proportional control properly?
Oh, and the Zoe is cheaper than the Varizoom.
Ray Liffen
...and Zoe allows (for me) the absolute decider between the two units:
- the "push auto focus" function on the pan bar.
That's the clincher for me too. The 'push auto' on the VX/PD is a silly little button that's hard to find and - when you're in full telephoto - capable of nudging the camera very slightly even on a good tripod. I often found it safer pulling up the little switch into the auto-focus position and then pushing it one click down again to lock that decision in.
Now, with the Zoe, 'push auto' is a dedicated button on the Lanc controller and you never need touch the camera again until you need to change tapes. And many of you will know what I think of various VariZoom controllers after my test of the Rock and Stealth in CV.
tom.