Designfax weekly eMagazine

Subscribe Today!

Archives

View Archives

Partners

Manufacturing Center
Product Spotlight

Modern Applications News
Metalworking Ideas For
Today's Job Shops

Tooling and Production
Strategies for large
metalworking plants

MICROMO motors and encoders power wireless camera controller

Robust, high-efficiency brushed motors in a quiet, high-torque package redefine lens control in the motion picture industry.

Cinematography is a key element of film -- not just lighting and choice of lens, but the many shadings of focus, zoom, and iris that can turn a simple scene into something extraordinary. Many aspects of lens adjustment are art, but some have become science courtesy of motorized lens-adjustment systems from Preston Cinema Systems (Santa Monica, Calif.). Leveraging compact, high-torque, acoustically quiet motors provided by MICROMO, Preston systems have become the de facto standard in the industry.

Preston Cinema's FI+Z is a family of wireless lens-adjustment systems that allow camera assistants to remotely fine-tune focus, iris, and zoom. Using a hand control, camera assistants can precisely adjust the lens of a camera that's 5 ft away -- or sitting 50 ft in the air on a crane. First introduced in 1995, the systems rapidly appeared on nearly every set, with "the Preston" becoming industry slang for a wireless lens control unit.

The accurate, repeatable performance of digital motors is part of what makes the FI+Z so successful. To ensure effective feedback, the Preston group specified 512-line magnetic encoders that offered other advantages. "One of the things MICROMO provides is a very good integrated magnetic encoder solution," says Howard Preston, the company's president and founder. "They're very small and lightweight and really help us package the motor in as small a volume as possible."

In 2007, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Howard Preston and Mirko Kovacevic of Preston Cinema a Scientific and Engineering Oscar for their development of the FI+Z and its contributions to the motion picture industry. Preston continues to advance the technology, with MICROMO as its motion provider. Preston says, "MICROMO has been a notably good partner to work with."

To learn more about Preston Cinema visit: www.prestoncinema.com.

Source: MICROMO

Published October 2013

Rate this article