You may be able to guess exactly what the following product is, based solely on its name: The Fifty-Dollar Follow Focus. That's right, it's a way of cheaply adding a follow-focus lever to your video-shooting DSLR. Just one thing: it costs a minimum of $60, not $50, thanks to shipping fees.
The Fifty-Dollar Follow Focus (FDFF, as I shall now call it in order to save your screen's precious photons) is an aluminum CNC-machined rig that uses a belt drive to move the lens, meaning that it will fit lenses of almost any size. And as the lever spins a spindle smaller than the lens, you get a step-down effect which will smooth out your jerky hand motions.
The FDFF, which fits any standard movie-camera rail-mount system, comes with two sizes of both pulley and belt, so you can combine them for the lens and speed you want. The lever can also be unlocked and moved to a new position without changing the focus.
This is a Kickstarter project, but you shouldn't have to wait long as it has already almost doubled the $10,000 goal. All the makers, Wiley Davis and Keifer Albin, need to do is buy a newer, faster CNC machine and bulk order the parts. Easy.
Fifty-Dollar Follow Focus [Kickstarter. Thanks, Keifer]
