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eMotimo gave us exactly what we wanted with this new integrated control for DJI Ronin S and sliders.
As a reviewer, I said, ‘This tool has A, B, and C, so what I really want is to have the designer do XY and possibly Z. I often conclude my review with. If you stay long enough and look things over, you even get the chance to see some of those things come true. It’s a great feeling and that’s exactly what I felt when I was playing with eMotimo’s new ‘Interview Monster’.
It’s a little box that lets you set up a repeating interview tracking shot (or really any repeating shot) with just a single controller. This is amazing, completely changing the workflow of many interview photographers and expanding the possibilities for low-budget production.
understand the importance
To understand why this tool is so great, we need to understand a little bit of what it used to be like. If you want to do tracking shots, you need both a motorized slider and a motorized head. Big budget jobs call for a Mark Roberts machine that does it all, controlled by a single piece of software.
But for us indies, there will be one company that makes heads, one company that makes follow focus, and one company that makes sliders.
Then one controller (often an iPad dedicated to that purpose and only that purpose) sets the motorized slider back and forth, and another controller is required to pan, till, focus and roll/cut will be to your camera. Each take required at least two different systems to boot at the same time. Very frustrating.
Interview Monster puts everything under one controller. His DJI Ronin S3 Pro, a unit many people already have, can be set up and attached to the slider to control the linear motion, pan, tilt and roll of the slider and focus on the DJI RS3 Pro. Everything is possible with his single PS4-style controller. Doing something like that could also add another axis to the overall system to control the turntable for product work.
The advantage here is that it’s a single controller, a dedicated unit with all the inputs you need to make the setup intuitive. After a frequent, frustrating, and time-consuming process, I was able to set the sliders and have a shot ready in less than a minute. The unit has a controller and two small thumb knobs, and if you’re really in a hurry he can set it up in 20 seconds or so, but once you’ve paired the PS4 controller, the whole system is ready to go.
This dedicated controller is especially useful when using units that require Bluetooth control. Using a smartphone can be very frustrating, but the PS4 controller solves that problem.
The Phone app tends to lose pairings every time you switch to another app, and you may have to exit the app and lose programming to re-pair.
A solution many people have found is to have a dedicated iPad for each unit that needs Bluetooth control. However, even a used iPad Mini isn’t as cheap as a PS4 controller, and having to charge, update, and maintain a bunch of older iPads to control is a hassle. The controls on the unit and his PS4 controller are welcome improvements.
test, 1, 2, 3
eMotimo let me test the unit before leasing it. So while the attached photo shows a 3D printed case, the final unit is expected to ship this summer and will of course be manufactured to be a robust working unit designed to survive. is. set life. eMotimo has been in the field for a while and the company’s ST4 is the flagship industry standard, so there’s good reason to believe this matches its quality.
Even for a pre-release unit, the system was thoroughly enjoyable. I can’t wait for release units to start showing up on the field.
Once the slider is set up (the unit comes with integrations such as iFootage and Dana Dolly), attach DJI and attach it to the Ronin’s accessory port using custom-built attachments. This will give you full control over the slider. unit. From there, you can immediately program the unit using the controls on the unit or the PS4 controls.
Setting up “interview mode”, bouncing back and forth and repeating in a loop to capture an interview with the dynamic “C camera” was a no-brainer.
What I enjoyed more was working on products.
Using the eMotimo turntables controlled by the same interface to create simple shots, in minutes I had truly compelling product shots that would have been much more costly to execute in the past. He took the same shot twice and superimposed it here. You can see that the accuracy of the shot is high. This is surprising as the DJI RS3 is not normally considered a “precise repeatable” unit. being held in someone’s hand But even with beta hardware and software, these shots have an amazing level of accuracy.
You can see some noise between the two takes. It’s not as perfect as a $200,000 motion control unit could be, but it’s pretty close, which is amazing for the price you put it all together. If you want to do production work like mixing and matching takes, doing focus stacking, or changing lighting for repeats, much of it is fairly affordable.
My biggest concern going into testing was the RS3 Pro’s limitations in both accuracy and power. The very popular Blackmagic 6K Pro is also a no-brainer, so this camera is often used as a C-Cam these days, and I used a few Blackmagic 12Ks for the A and B cameras in a 3-camera interview setup. I was very happy with it.
But the focus motor isn’t the most powerful in the world. Focusing on a smooth modern lens like his XEEN CF unit used in testing here is fine, but vintage with a stiffer focus he was worried about what would happen if he tried the lens.
eMotimo has already taken that dilemma into account, with ports for powering other follow focus systems, and support for Tilta units has already been introduced. Perhaps if you want to use a more powerful motor, we can discuss a custom implementation.
food for thought
The strangest thing about all this is that DJI hasn’t done that yet.
It seems like a simple matter to attach something to the bottom of the RS3 Pro and have it work with a single slider control. But DJI is a big company focused on mass-produced products, and this may have been too niche for them. However, that loss benefits both his eMotimo and the end user.
eMotimo has long experience creating intuitive interfaces with PS4 controllers, integrations with dragon frames, and integrations with various sliders, so the mix of brands works well this time. It’s great to have a specialty unit of very specialized Feeling Tools to support a unit that is rapidly becoming an industry standard (the RS line).
That’s not necessarily a drawback, but the slider’s motor system draws enough power that it should always be powered by a V or Gold mount (or newer 24V B-mount system) battery. This isn’t the kind of system that powers the camera and the motors that Ronin needs to push around, and in no time he consumes two LPs. Most shooters have a few batteries to power them, so it’s not too much of a problem to overcome, but building a setup, where to attach the batteries, where to attach the units, and how to route the cables To do.
This made me curious about the demo machine. How easy it is to attach to the system or how the cables are routed is not yet in the box, but it seems like an easy factor to address when revising the system.
All in all, this seems like a great moment for an established smaller vendor (eMotimo) to find a hole in the market to fill. The end result is a tool that many end users will love. For many interviewers, this solves a problem we’ve all been waiting for. I can’t wait for the release version to go live so I can try it out and start using it in real work.
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