Wobbly footage using tripod rig with follow focus.

[jedy456]

Can anyone help? Whenever I use the follow focus with my rig, it is not steady and the footage is wobbling from side to side. I've tried using a lens support to try and steady the lens but to no avail. It's driving me crazy and I cannot use the rig until a solution is found. My research online has pretty much drawn a blank.

I found some footage on YouTube that is very similar to the issue I'm experiencing:

I have a camera rig for my Canon 5DIII and 6D plus two L zooms. It consists of:
Manfrotto tripod
Tripod with fluid video head, Aluminium Telescopic Twin Leg
Tarion Viewfinder and baseplate
TARION TR-V1 Universal LCD Display View Finder: Amazon.co.uk: Camera & Photo
Shoot35 follow focus
CINEfocus Lite Follow Focus with A/B Hard Stops

It wasn't exactly a cheap rig for me to set up (although cheap in film industry terms) and I hate to see it effectively useless at the moment. Any ideas or help would be greatly received.

 

[zombiesniper]

In the video it shows the lens support working quite well.
I would check each piece of the set up and see where the slop/play is and if it can be minimized. Without being able to inspect each part I probably can't help any more since I'm not familiar with the components.

 

[KmH]

In the video we can see by the grid in the background that the lens is moving in the lens to camera mount as the follow focus is adjusted.

Get a video camera instead of using a camera primarily designed to make still photos.

The tripod you link to doesn't look were stable.

 

[Derrel]

It looked to me that the front (lens end) of the camera has some play in it, from where it rests on the camera mounting block. It looks as if perhaps the tripod screw that tightens the camera to the mounting block is not doing its job, or that there needs to be a support of some type wedged in to the lens edge of the camera's baseplate. Without being able to really examine the setup-that's what I came up with from looking at the video four times: I think that the camera mounting/resting platform is not doing its job 100% correctly, either because the screw is not tight enough, or the platform or tripod head itself has some flexion, or the bottom of the camera is not 100% making tight, absolutely tight! contact with the platform it is riding on.

Looking at the video yet again, and taking KmH's comments into account, it looks like the follow focus mechanism might be acting as a lever, since it is so far in front of where the tripod screw appears to be holding the camera to the platform; this is an issue when the camera is secured directly with one, 1/4 x 20 N.C. bolt: the area where the camera is actually"stuck to" the platoform is a small area; force or leverage applied at the lens end comes back through the lens, and there is only that one, tiny little bolt holding the camera to the platform: one of the reasons the largem ehavy Arca-Swiss type mounting block system is used on tripod heads where a really rock-solid attachment is needed.

I can see the lens "lifting up" at a couple of spots in the video; that looks like a mounting issue. Flexion in tripod heads has loing been a problem...the majority of the time the system is stable, but there's that 5% of the time where the system shows creep, or flex, or vibration. It seems also possible that the follow focus gearing retaining ring,or the gear drive, OR the lens rubber, are not 100% perfectly-perfectly round.