NAB 2019: Chrosziel Lens Motor for Fujinon 18-55 and 50-135mm

Giving broadcast smooth zooms on a Super 35mm lens.

April 18, 2019

I absolutely suck at a manual zoom moves on any lens/camera combination. When I shoot with cinema style lenses I need an option for a slow push in or out for my news or doc work. At NAB 2019 we ran into Chrosziel showing off a lens motor for the popular Fujinon MK 18-55mm T2.9 and Fujinon 50-135mm T2.9 lenses. In the example shown to us, Chrosziel had a Sony FS7 and a Fujinon MK 18-55mm zoom. For those who want the Super 35mm look but also need to be able to control your lens smoothly with a type of lens rocker design then take a look at this motor design by Chrosziel.

The Sony FS5 / FS7 handgrip zoom rocker controls directly the servo drive unit. Other zoom rockers with LANC protocol are compatible too, e.g. mounted to handgrip. Control signals (e.g. menu / user buttons / focus magnification / camera run & stop) are immediately looped through to the camera. Two captive screws keeping the single servo drive unit permanently fixed onto lens.

4 ZOOM MODES

EB / Documentary, Live / Hardcut, Silent, Direct ModeYou can choose the different modes by pressing the zoom rocker for round about 5 seconds, then the green LED flashes very fast while changing the zoom mode and after that it blinks 1, 2, 3 or 4 times* – depends on the zoom mode you chose (* 1 = EB / Documentary / 2 = Silent / 3 = Live / Hard Cut / 4 = Direct). To cycle through these, all you need to do is hold the zoom rocker down one way for a couple of seconds to switch to the next mode, and the other way, hold to reverse.

Chrosziel CDM-MK-Z Zoom Motor

The mounting of the Lens Motorization MK-Zoom is very comfortable. Just screw the two screws into the threads at the Fujinon lens. After that, connect the D-Tap power cable with the appropriate camera port and the two Jack cables with the handgrip and the camera. Done.

The slightly rounded CDM-MK-Z housing fits perfectly with the Fujinon lens. The gear meshes exactly with the zoom gear ring of the lens. The integrated PCB with CPU of the zoom motor sets instantaneously control commands that come from a SONY or any other LANC-compatible handle.