"This is the best friggin' thing since sliced bread! Why the hell didn't I invent this bad boy years ago?!"
-- Me, on the set of Pacific Air
"Focus that doesn't suck!"
-- Paul Maples, motion control operator
A neat little gizmo for the live action environment, the Fi+Z/Kuper adaptor allows you to use the industry-standard Preston Fi+Z as your motion-control lens motor. Camera sssistants are happy because they don't have to use unfamiliar equipment, and operators are happy because they don't have to use follow focus rigs with finicky, tricky, anemic step motors.
The adapter box sits in the data stream, between the Preston handunit and the motors, treating the handunit as an encoder going into the Kuper, and the Preston motors as motion-control motors coming out. And it has full data bypass, so you can move control between yourself and the AC at the flick of a switch without having to re-zero.
And, as a bonus, the adapter box also provides opto-isolated breakout for the remaining encoder channels, along with large, dedicated, power supply to keep the heaviest encoder load happy.