Anyone familiar with motorized pan/tilt?

trock wrote on 7/18/2005, 7:26 AM

Hi,

One of my clients does 3 day seminars where he moves around a lot and likes the camera in close so I'm constantly having to pan with him to keep him in the shot. I've been looking at motorized remote pan/tilt heads on the web and they seem to jump from around $100 to thousands of dollars.

Is anyone familiar with the Bescor MP-101 that B & H sells?

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?A=details&Q=&is=REG&O=productlist&sku=64399

At that low price ($ 119.95) will I be sacrificing anything like smoothness of pan?

Thanks,

Tony

Comments

JackW wrote on 7/18/2005, 3:20 PM

I've used one for the past several years. It works very well, is quiet, and doesn't wear out batteries very rapidly.

I purchased 100 feet of cable for it, along with a 100 foot run of cable for the Lanc control on the camera and 100 feet of cable to carry a video signal from the camera back to 6 inch LCD monitor.

20 foot sections of Bescor cable are around $10 each. I bought the Bescor cables and the pan head directly from Bescor (1-800-645-7182.)

The other cables I bought from Markertek (1-800522-2025.) I used RG59S stranded center coax flexible cable for the RCA video signal and 2456 Mogami Superflex cable for the Lanc control. All the cables are wound onto a cable drum for easy storage.

An hour of soldering puts on all the necessary plugs (from Radio Shack) and you've got a very workable system for a couple of hundred dollars.

Run the Lanc cable back to a remote camera control and you'll have control of focus and zoom, on/off and standby.

Bescor makes an AC/DC power pack for around $15. I "ve always found running the head on batteries to be entirely adequate, however.

Jack

trock wrote on 7/19/2005, 8:59 AM

Great, thanks Jack!