Wooden Camera Zip Focus Single-Rod Follow Focus (19/15mm Studio)

This is a simple but high quality wheel that pairs well with my Zeiss CP.3 Kit. I use this on my B Cam which is a Komodo and it fits the bill perfectly.

I do not have a lot of experience with many follow focus brands, but I was not impressed with the quality of the Wooden Camera Zip, especially considering the price. First, it comes in a cheap stickered cardboard box with the unit stuffed inside in a plastic bag. No padding or protection whatsoever. Second, there's a lot of plastic on it and the build quality is not inspiring. The focus wheel is entirely plastic. The marking wheels snap off/on with confidence but it overall just feels cheap. Third, there's a lot more slop in the gears than I had hoped for. It does not have a precise feel to it at all. In comparing to the SmallRig Mini Follow Focus 3010, at almost 1/4 the price... the SmallRig has a higher build quality. I'm not kidding. It has more metal on it, and a high-quality rubber focus wheel. I wanted to step up to a higher-quality unit than the SmallRig, but this Wooden Camera Zip isn't it. It feels worse and cheaper, despite costing 4x as much.

I had a couple of follow focus over the last 12 years and was looking for a single-rod system since I want to scale down my rig. I ordered the new LanParte Mini follow focus cause it seems good for the price, but the tightening screw broke on the first use! The wheel is also quite small if you have big hands. This one is, of course more expensive, but you get what you paid for. Very, very smooth focus gearing, nice big wheel and easy to install. I found the one!

As I moved into shooting more professional video projects I found I needed the ability to do manual focus pulling. Like many people who first start looking into their first follow focus systems I had quite a bit of sticker shock. These systems are not cheap! At the time I didn't have a huge budget so I went for what I thought was a very good system the Tilta mini follow focus system for .100. While the Tilta works fairly well it has a big flaw that so many budget follow focus systems suffer from which is slop. This is when you start or stop turning the focus wheel and there is a slight delay before the gear kicks in to move the focus dial on the lens. This causes the start or ending of my focus pull to be essentially useless and if you are timing your focus pull with a camera move then things just get all out of wack. Enter the Wooden Camera Zip Focus. Lets start off comparing the Wooden system to the issue I listed above. I am happy to report that the Wood Zip has no slop. None! The instant I start turning the focus wheel the gears move instantly with no play in the movement at all. Every single focus pull I have performed with this system have been ultra accurate. No more blown takes. I don't want to understate how big of a deal this is. Every single sub .200 follow focus I have used including unit from Tilta, Fotga, Edelkrone and Ikan have all had some level of slop in the system. There is even one system I tried that was more expensive than the Wooden Zip that had a small amount of slop. I believe the way Wooden was able to achieve this lack of slop is that they use a belt drive system inside the housing instead of additional gears. The more gears you add to a system like this the more areas you introduce additional give/slop. Included in the system are 3 disk. 2 marking disks and one hard stop disks. A feature here that I loved was that I could actually change the location of the witness mark (the little tab where your adjustable hard stops end at). Just makes different configurations easier for me. The disks are connected via magnet so just simply pull the the disk off and easily attach the next one which will attach securely with the magnet. No screws or anything you need to take apart. I love this because when I want to switch from a traditional lens where I want to use the hard stop disk over to a traditional cine lens with just a marking disk there is nothing I need to take apart. Speaking of traditional lenses Wooden also includes a friction gear as well. So as long as the focus on your lens isn't too hard to move this friction wheel actually works really well. I appreciate the lightweight nature of this system with it's single 15mm rode attachment. I typically use a GH5S for my video shoots when I want to have a nice lightweight rig. This follow focus fits this setup perfectly. There are two rotation points on this system; one where the system attaches to the rod and another on the unit itself. This makes lining up the follow focus to your camera body on your rig incredibly easy. Also if you need to change a lens you can just rotate it away from the pivot point on the follow focus unit itself instead of at the rail point. This makes lens changes much easier and quicker. Like most follow focus systems you have the standard attachment point on the side for things like a focus whip. At this price point I believe the Wooden Zip follow focus is at the top of the heap. They are actually in a pretty unique space. Most follow focus system occupy two areas; the sub .200 and then the .1k and over with just a few exceptions. This sits quite nicely in between these two. In fact before you spend .1,000 on something like the Shape follow focus, if you have a mirrorless setup or medium size cine camera I would highly recommend you check out the Wooden zip system first.

Very smooth. No backlash. Lightweight, My only complaint is that the allen screws to adjust the tension are on the inside of the arm, which faces the lens. So I knocked off a star.

Bought this to lighten up my Red/Sony PL setup and immediately had to remove the focus stops. Hopefully they have higher gearing available for cine glass. When mounted, the angle of the knob faces down (lenses are 114mm diameter) which was actually an ergonomic bonus for single op shooting.

The first one I bought had a warped gear but sent it back for a replacement and it's fine now. You really need to tighten the rod clamp and the two bolts which hold the joint between the rod clamp and the gear as it will move if you grip the whole follow focus too hard when moving your camera rig around.