_Today I found a new FF on eBay. It’s a new follow focus from VARAVON. Initially I got very excited about this one. It certainly looks nice a glossy; nice looking parts and loads of logos.  Lens rings also look really nice. This unit features adjustable hard stops and quick release system. Like other VARAVON gear it is expensive, but is it actually any good. After looking at it for bid I realized some parts look very familiar. The focus knob and more importantly the gearbox are exactly the same as ones found in a very cheap RJ follow focus. Now RJ is not terrible FF, the one I’ve tried actually had very little play, but RJ is a budget unit and priced accordingly. This makes me wonder it this VARAVON FF is actually more or less an RJ unit, but dressed up to look high-end. After all, the most important part of the FF is the gearbox, all glossy stickers and nice adjustment knobs are pointless if the gearbox is crap. The RJ gearbox is not the worst, but would you pay 5 times more for glossy stickers and fancy knobs? I certainly wouldn’t. It is possible that the VARAVON FF has a different gearbox, but I highly doubt it, it looks the same and the focus knob once again confirms that this FF is based on RJ. Check out the images below to make our own mind up.

_My conclusion is that VARAVON is a complete rip off. I'm sure they will sell loads of these because they look good, but they are definitely not worth the money. You will be be better off with RJ, or some other FF.
Check out my Follow Focus Buyer's Guide for some of the best deals on eBay (by the way all cheaper than VARAVON).

_ In last few weeks I’ve been looking at what follow focuses are currently available on Ebay. I discovered a few new ones, see some of my latest posts andchecked out the latest prices on the ones that have been available for a long time like Trusmt, Forga, RJ as well as other Chinese and Indian stuff. This gave me an idea to do a FOLLOW FOCUS BUYER’S GUIDE. I’ve tried a lot of them myself, other ones I don’t know so much about, so can only give my opinion from what I see.

How this guide works: You will find links for every FF in below ( you can click on word in red and pictures).  Some are general search links (Trusmt, Gini, Filmcity), others specific deal links (RJ, Fotga) because they are sold by many different stores and I will include the links of the best deals I found. Chances are that some of the listings will end by the time you read this, so just do a search on the particular shop to see if it got relisted the item or search for similar elsewhere on Ebay.

I decided to go from cheapest to most expensive, rounding up with my personal recommendations and conclusions. I haven’t included every single Follow Focus on Ebay, but only the ones that I personally think deserve a place in this guide. Value for money varies, but even the most expensive ones are still great deals if you think about choice and prices even 2 years ago.

_ 1:  Starting with something that broadly known as RJ Follow Focus. I don’t have one myself, but I’ve used it a couple of times and I was very impressed. There was a very little play and overall it performed nicely. Currently the cheapest Follow Focus deal on Ebay, so for this price, I certainly recommend it.  One thing to know though, its accessory port is not standard side, so you usual Whip and Speed Crank won’t fit properly. You would need to look for one made specifically for this FF

_ 2: Fotga DP500. This is very nice looking unit, all metal, much better built than RJ, but from seeing some reviews on the net, it looks like the gearbox is a bit of a letdown, which might be the reason why it’s not as popular as RJ.  The price is pretty much exactly the same as RJ, crazy cheap, so definitely worth looking at.

_ 3: Next up is a newly discovered, but a bit dull/cheap looking FF-110, which uses the Huco gearbox (in my opinion not such a bad option), but the biggest advantage of this unit is that it comes with whole set of accessories including 6 lens rings, 1 flexible lens ring, whip and a speed crank.  The unit is only slightly more expensive than the 2 above and I thing it offers really good value for money, definitely worth a closer look.

_ 4: Coming from the same seller as FF-110 is the Filmcity X1, which I only just realized looks too much like Shoot35 FF.  I must say, this looks like a rip off, definitely not as good as the original, but unfortunately I don’t have money to buy the high end stuff, so I can only hope that I get a good value for money when I buy something cheap. The X1 looks like a nice unit, however I don’t know anything about the gearbox, which is a bit alarming. The price though is still well below £100/$150 mark, so still looks like a great deal, I'm really interested in this one.

_ 5: Next up virtually at the same price we can get something quite unique.  This is an RJ unit with a special mount that allows it to be mounted directly to the camera, without the need of rails This is probably was invented and can be found in Dfocus units. I know for sure that some people prefer to keep their setups to the minimum, taking advantage of the DSLR form factor, so a unit like this really cuts down on the size and weight of the rig. If you don’t currently have a set of rods and a compatible base plate, then this unit is definitely something to think about. I found a virtually new one on Ebay for a slightly lower price and bought it.  Will review it soon.

_ 6: Now going slight over the £100 (under $200) we get to the first of adjustable hard stop FFs. Again, this is basically an RJ unit, with some hard stop, originally introduced to budget world by Trusmt. The RJ unit is a bit on the cheap, plasticky side, but for this price, I can’t fault it. If you really want the hard stops (which can be very useful) then this is the cheapest option out there.

_ 7: Going up a bit higher (due to a high postage cost) is the Gini’s iFocus. Amazing unit really well built like the rest of Gini stuff. I used to have one, but sold it because it had the same amount of play as my Camtree FF. The reason for sale, I knew I’ll get more money for iFocus, than Camtree, so I decided to kept my good old Camtree. From other reviews and comments on my review, it appears that that majority of iFocus FFs don't have any play at all. Until I hold one in my hands that has 0 play, I can’t be sure for 100% if that is the case. I do still highly recommend it, even it it has tiny amount of play.

_ 8: With a very little else worth mentioned in £100-£200 ($150-$300) price bracket we jump right over to over £200/$300 mark starting with the cheapest, the Lanparte FF. I’ve heard these are really good, even better than iFocus, however at this price I can’t personally force myself to get one just to prove this right or wrong. It appears  to be very well built and as all the other Lanparte  products sold all over Ebay (rigs and accessories with green knobs). This company is a real competitor to Trusmt with a wide choice of product built to high standards. Shame there is no dedicated Lanpatre store on Ebay, it would have been nice to see everything they have in one place.

_ 9: Trusmt NF2. Good, old Trusmt. I used to have a T2 version and at the time, when most of the FFs above were not available I was amazed by the value for money. Really well built unit with an upgraded gearbox, which is suppose to have less than 0.5mm backlash. I guess it is true if they so bravely put emphasis on the play. I also haven’t seen any feedback claiming otherwise, so it could be a really good choice if you are looking to buy a quality FF without experimenting with cheaper options, like I do :-) Of course this unit also has the famous hard stops, which I personally didn’t use much, but is a nice feature if you are not working against time, as constant adjustment can be very time consuming.

_ 10: And the final FF in this user guide, just still under £300/$500 bracket, but quite expensive Lanparte with Hard Stops, just like Trusmt above.  This is certainly a quality looking unit with all the bells and whistles, but I’m still not sure it it’s worth the price when so much other stuff is available at half the price or less. If you are a Lanparte fan though, this could be an ultimate FF for you.

_ Conclusion: With such a great choice of completely different FFs it is really hard to recommend just one. I think it is more about your budget than anything else. The few than stand out to me are: RJ (for being the cheapest), Filmcity X1 (looks good for the price), RJ with direct fitting to the camera (unique mounting option) and  Gini iFocus (built like a tank, great value for money).  I won’t recommend just one, but I would suggest that you guys make up your own minds about what you need and how much you want to spend.  Maybe watches some reviews, I’ve done a few myself including iFocus and Trusmt (click the names to see the reviews). I’m also hoping to review a few more in near future, so stay tuned.

P.S. These posts always end by being really long (hopefully not too boring though). I hope some of you stuck with me till the end, let me know if you did and if it was helpful at all.

_ Today. I’ve noticed 2 new Follow Focuses on Ebay at ridiculously low price, about the same as the very popular Fotga and RJ units. 

The new ones I found come from India, rather than China, where I usually except to find the cheapest gear.

Both are sold by the filmcity23 shop, which sells a lot of gear usually found in other India based Ebay shops, but also some exclusive stuff like these 2 follow focus units.

So let me go through these units individually:

_ 1: FF-110 – This one doesn’t carry the Filmcity name and looks quite generic, but there are some nice points & accessories that potentially makes this FF one a best deals on Ebay.

The FF-110 comes with loads of extras, including as speed crank, whip, set of 6 lens gears (my favorite) and even 1 flexible lens gear (very popular). You won’t get so many extras with one of cheap Chinese alternative, so this really improves the value for money you get with this unit. A set of 6 lens gears would set you back £50-£60 to buy separately. A whip & a speed crank would cost another £30-£40, so you could say, you get this FF for free.

This follow focus has Huco gearbox. This one used to be quite a popular gearbox, and could be found in Redrock, Camtree and Gini FFs. A lot of people claim that this is not such a good gearbox, but I’m still using my Camtree FF to this day, because I find that its gearbox has the least play out of all budget FFs I’ve tried,  so I don’t thing Huco gearbox is the worst choice to go for.  One of the nice advantages of Huco over some fancier looking, integrated gearboxes is that it can be reversed to work properly with Canon and Nikon lenses (which focus into different direction).

Overall I think it is probably quite a decent follow focus and for the price it is probably the best value for money FF currently available on eBay. It would make a perfect first FF even is not quite perfect, although I think it should be quite decent. Also, all the accessories that you get with it can be used with any FF, so if you decide to upgrade you won’t have to invest into a new set of accessories.

_ 2: Filmcity X1 - this actually carries Filmcity name on the side and inside the focus knob; nice touch and this FF certainly looks more exciting than FF-110. The X1 has nice, bright red aluminum parts, including what looks like a 360 degree adjustable pointer (looks the same like my Camtree), knob at the bottom (again the same as Camtree) and the accessory port.  Unlike camtree though, this FF has a different gearbox, one of them fancy integrated ones, that I’m not really familiar and I don’t actually think it can be reversed, which is a bit alarming (the reason I sold my Trusmt FF, which would focus properly with Canon lenses). However if this is anything like Chinese FFs it will work fine with Canon lenses. The nice touch of this gearbox is that it has 2 gears of different sizes on each side of the gearbox. This means you will not have any problems using this FF with smaller lenses like 50mm or most of the vintage manual photography lenses which are usually really small.  Another nice touch is the removable magnetic marking disc. Although not something that I usually need, but can be a useful feature.

This Follow Focus comes with a Whip and 1 Flexible Lens gear, which is not as great deal as the FF-110, but will be enough to get you started right away. A whip is worth around £20 if bought separately, so it is still a great deal if you need one as you won’t get one with cheap Chinese units.

Again, I think this follow focus offer a great value for money, you certainly won’t find anything much cheaper, especially with a whip. I’m personally really interested in this FF. It has a lot of point I like in my Camtree FF and a gearbox, which might or might not be better than Huco. Very interesting, you might see me reviewing this one pretty soon, for this price I wouldn’t be risking much.

_A few days ago I’ve had the opportunity to work with a JAG35 wireless follow focus.  I was working a music video shoot, shot on RED ONE with Zeiss CP.2 Primes.  Nice kit to say the least. I knew about the JAG35 wireless FF for quite some time now and I was really happy to finally get my hands on one for a whole day.

I wouldn’t call this post a Review, but rather I want to share my thoughts and reflect on my experience using this FF.

To start with, I want to make it clear that I’ve never used a wireless FF before, but I use a manual (without motor) Follow Focus almost on every shoot, so it didn’t feel to unusual. Actually it felt quite exciting and fun using the remote, which loosely resembles the controller for the high-powered remote controlled cars.
_

_ On the front, this remote has a nice large focusing wheel and2 adjustment wheels below which determine the motor hard stops, useful for both cine lenses and photo lenses without hard stops like Canon EF. These wheels also adjust the speed of motor, so let’s say if you lens has a very short focusing through you can adjust the remote to give the focusing wheel a long through by making the motor attached to the lens spin much slower than the focusing wheel on the remote (hope you understand what I mean). I didn’t really have to use this feature at all with the Zeiss primes because they have such a long through, but a lot of photo lenses, like my Canon 100mm Micro, have a very short focusing through and focusing with these lenses is an absolute nightmare, even with a follow focus. Using something like this remote focus unit can give new life to such lenses, letting you adjust the focus in much smoother way. For me this is a big advantage over a common, manual FF.  I never knew such feature existed before I got my hands on this FF and for me this is one of the top features. Obviously if you film and focus yourself at the same time , this unit is not a good option, but if you are pulling focus for someone, this is just great.

I don’t usually pull focus for other people, but using this cool unit actually made the whole experience quite exciting. I was using it for all the jib shots where focusing otherwise was not possible anyway.  Rather than standing next to the camera and guessing the distance, I chose a more fun way of standing next to massive 17” screenand focusing by looking at the image feed running directly from the camera via SDI cable. It was almost like playing a computer game, except it was much more pressure to perform well.

Coming back to remote; it also has a sliding adjustment knob on the side which would let you adjust the aperture if we had 2 motors, but we didn’t have 2 and since we were in controlled lighting environment, the aperture didn’t need constant adjustment.

The remote is powered by a Canon battery, same that is used in 5D/7D cameras, so it is a convenient choice for people using these DSLRs. Same battery goes on the actual motor. Unfortunately the motor bracket didn’t hold the battery that well, so it had to be secured by additional gaffer tape to make sure it doesn’t fall out. I’ve heard of this problem before, I think from another review, so this is something that JAG35 should definitely address.

_ The motor itself is pretty nice. It’s fast and responsive, although it seems to have a slight delay, which I guess is something that should be expected for such price, after all this unit costs many times less than any other wireless FF.  Another thing that can be a downside in some situations is that the motor is quite noisy. If you are recording sound on onboard mic, you can forget about using such sound, but in reality you wouldn’t really use such device with onboard mic as the only souse of sound. It is certainly the best for jib, dolly and steadicam shots. In our case, shooting a music video, the motor noise didn’t make any difference whatsoever.  I will be using another wireless FF in a few days time, so I will be  able to compare the noise levels and see if it is something standard or a downside of Jag35 FF.

One more thing I wanted to mention is that the JAG35 wireless FF can only be mounted only on 15mm rods. RED has 19mm rods,so there was no way to mount it directly on the rods. The FF had to be attached to a short 15mm rod (which might have been the part of the kit) which was then attached to a flexible arm and positioned upside down on the top of the rig. This meant that the motor was now spinning the opposite direction, making things a bit confusing for me. The ability to reverse the spinning direction would have been great in such situation, but there wasn’t one. Fortunately for people like myself, it looks like the upcoming V2 version of this follow focus will have reversible motor function on both focus wheel and aperture slider.

I actually can’t wait to see what other improvements the new version will have, as the first one was already pretty good for the price.

As mentioned above, in a few days time I’m working on a new music video, this time using a Preston wireless FF which I think costs many times more, so I will see if it is also many times better and really worth the extra money, not to say I could afford one.  No matter how got it would be, as far as I can tell the JAG35 unit is the only one that fits into a “budget filmmaker” bracket, which is what this site is all about.

So my conclusion to this post is that if you want to buy your own wireless FF for what ever needs you have and you are on a tight budget, the JAG35 FF is certainly worth looking at and the upcoming improved V2 version will probably be even better value for money.  If had I had more money and I was doing more focus pulling I would certainly buy one of these cool toys.

_ There are  new FFs constantly appearing on the market. Different brands fight for business. It is certainly makes life difficult for brands, but us, customers certainly benefit from this competition.  These are great times for people on the budget.  I’ve been looking at what’s new on eBay and noticed a few new follow focuses with adjustable hard stops,  just like the ones originally found in Trusmt units. Looks like Trusmt FFs have some competition.

Then new ones I found are:

1: What looks like an RJ Follow Focus with adjustable stop, although in some other listings it is marked as Fotga, which usually is completely different design. The particular deal found is certainly makes it the cheapest “hard stop” follow focus out of the lot, but it also looks the most plasticky, so don’t expect an amazing build quality, however I used one without hard stops and it performed surprisingly well, very little play, like on most budget FFs most of which are more expensive. This FF comes with one lens ring, so I think it is a pretty cool deal if you are on the tightest budget.

_
2: Lanparte “hard stop” model. Looks very similar to Trusmt units, but certainly not a complete rip-off , but their own design. Looks like a very good quality unit, however it is the most expensive out of the lot, even more than Trusmt. I heard the Lanparte are great FFs, but the price is a bit too high comparing to what else is available in budget category.

_
3: COOLLCD Follow Focus, again with adjustable “hard stops”. Now this is something completely new to me.  Looks very similar to the Lanparte FF, but again it is a bit different, although the gearbox looks very similar, don’t know if it is the same though.  Comes with 2 lens rings. With shipping costs about the same as Trusmt NF2, so not an amazing bargain, but a decent price.

_ Conclusion: Any of these 3 FFs and the Trusmt one are great FFs that were not available a few years back. Anything of this quality would cost much more before the DSLR revolution gave the manufacturers a boots to start producing these affordable FFs that a lot of us now use. We take such units and prices for granted, but if you think about it, all of them are actually really good value deals, so I recommend all of them,  although the Lanpatre is a more than twice the price of the RJ, so I think it is not as great value for money, but if you like this particular brand, then it might be the best choice for you.  If you are on the tightest budget RJ is the one to go for. The CoolLcd and Trusmt sit somewhere in the middle. I used to have a Trusmt T2 (old gearbox) and it was a great unit, you can check out my review here.  I think the CoolLcd is probably also a very nice unit worth looking at, but the choice is yours. If you don’t actually care about the “hard stops”, then there are plenty of other deals out there. There has never been a better time to buy a Follow Focus.

_
The Gini’s iFocus has now been out for quite a few months.  When it first came out I saw a review on another website and I bought it 10 minutes later, the review has totally sold it to me. Now, 2 months or so later I managed to get around to my own review of this unit. If watched the video above, you’ll know my initial thoughts. I filmed that video about a month ago and by now I’ve used the iFocus quite a few times. So let me go through all the point in the video with my updated view on them.

First of all, the unit is so nicely built. It’s very solid, quite heavy and feels really nice. This is my 4th FF by now and it is certainly the most professional, high-end looking out of 4, although Trusmt FF also looks and feels really cool.

Looks and feel are important, but to me and probably most of you the performance is the most important thing in a Follow Focus. Considering the price of this FF is certainly doesn’t disappoint. It is slightly cheaper (only slightly due to Gini’s high postage costs) than my Trusmt and Camtree, but the performance- wise is it the same if not better than the other 2. The focusing knob is large and feels very good in the hand. The gearbox is one of the best at this price range, but it still has some play, which is a shame. The other reviewer claimed his didn’t have any play at all and this is the reason why I got mine. I wonder if it just my copy that has play or is it just how this gearbox performs.

One of very unusually things about this follow focus is that it is mounted to just one rod.  Initially I was concerned that due to its weight the unit would move out of position, but after using it for a few times I didn’t experience any problems at all, so no problems there; this cool design actually works.

As mentioned in the video, the gear box can be reversed and I did have to reverse it for my needs. It took a few minutes and was not very difficult, so this is a very nice feature on this unit.  Again great design that makes sense and works.

It is a shame though that the actual gear can’t be swapped from one side of the gearbox to another as I was unable to use the ifocus on the left side of the rig with smaller lenses like 28mm/50mm.  The unit digs into the camera while the focus gear is stays to far away. The only thing to do is to fit the FF to the right side of the rig, which some of you probably do anyway, but I usually have mine on the left and for me it is a bit of a problem.

Few other points: The pointer is not movable, but for me it is not a big deal. I couldn’t take off the marking disc, which is again is not a big deal. The marking disc itself is very large; great for setting a lot of precise marks.

Overall the unit is great, definitely worth the money.  If you are about to buy your first FF, you should take a very good look at this unit. However, if you already have one of the decent budget FFs it might not be worth the upgrade.  

Nevertheless,  apart for a few slight downsides it is still one of the best budget FFs and one of my favorite too. 

Very cool Follow Focus, with plenty of features. A lot of people are interested in exact amount of play on FFs and while my unit has some play (1-2mm), it's dampened rather than loose play you'll find in some other FFs, so it actually fills quite nice to operate. I'm sure Trusmt were not happy with this amount of play and T2 is no longer available for sale and has been upgraded to NF2, which is essentially the same FF, but with a new gearbox, which Trusmt claims has less than 0.5mm play, which would be a great improvement. I personally haven't tried the new one, but I have some of other Trusmt products (also reviewed on the website) and overall quality of products makes be believe that the new NF2 could be one of the best FFs around £250 mark. Definitely worth checking out.