Tilta Nucleus Nano II FIZ Wireless Lens Control System

I am a guitarist interested in making music videos in my small home studio, and I bought the Tilta Nucleus Nano II to help me focus while sitting in front of the camera. It does an excellent job at this. I found it versatile, and easy to understand and use. If you are new to using follow focuses, note that it's important to get all of the elements of the device and support stuff properly aligned: the rod-holder needs to be set up so that the rod runs parallel to the lens so that the Tilta motor's gear stays stays aligned with the lens' gear throughout its throw. I found the motor to be strong, and had the best luck calibrating the lens manually rather than automatically. If I needed to, I'd buy it again.

I was so excited to receive this unit but it didn't work at all after pairing. I have updated the firmware, which is another nightmare as it was stuck for so many times. The hand wheel comes charged but the battery indicator doesn't show any status. It doesn't seem to charge or even give any indication that it is charging. I am far from US, so I am reaching out to Tilta for support first but will need help with (overseas) returns.

Context - I own preston, cmotion, tilta, And I get that even on the most expensive systems there are bugs. As an owner of 5 nano 1 systems, I set my expectations realistically with the new nano II system. The most important features (to me) with the new system were the promises of 1) Zoom rocker 2)Functional Battery 3)Stronger Motor. Those expectations have mostly been met - on paper. The zoom rocker exists which is about as generous as you can be. It is not smooth or progressive. It's curently works like a light switch - zoom or no zoom. You can set the maximum speed in the menu somewhere but you cannot set a damping or feathering in the menu nor can you feather the rocker - it JUMPS. The rocker seems to be a pot and with better programming maybe it could function as a zoom rocker. Right now it checks a box on a spec sheet but is absolutely not usable (if you can even assign a motor to it). The battery is excellent. Finally. I gave up on the 14500 batteries in the Nano 1 as the handwheel had no low-battery cutoff and would run them below recoverable voltage and kill them. That was a wasteful hardware flaw of the Nano 1. With the in-built battery on the Nano II hopefully to avoid fires it is better protected and doesn't allow itself to run below chargeable voltage. TBD. Tilta has not yet released a dtap-motor power cable so you have to make one in order to get full power from the motor. I think the 5x more torque is a bit generous seeing it push alongside a Nano 1 motor w/ DTAP but have no way of testing so let's assume they exaggerated and in the real world it's a bit stronger. Tilta management - please slap the person at who came up with the idea to remove the screen from the motor and replace it with coded blinks (and no legend). Slap that person again and again until they fix this. The motor menu system is a disaster. The Nano 1 motor was genius and told you what it was doing. They've reverted here to blinks and colors that require a manual to decode or youtube video. Not even a helpful sticker on the side. Don't bother trying to look on the handwheel to see if it has a legend or decoder ring - it does not. This is the clearest indication that Tilta does not intend this unit for any kind of professional use - because they assume that for something as common as switching channels you have the time to watch a video or find and read a manual. Seriously. Keep slapping that person. Ok that was the good. Now for the bad. The menu system on the handwheel takes the cake. It is so bad it seems like a disgruntled employee quiet quit by releasing it to the public. If there were awards for poorest UI design of 2023, this would run away with the category by such an extreme it wouldn't be fair. Honestly - play with it for 5 minutes and tell me you don't agree. Want to do something with a MOTOR? Well those options are sometimes pictograms, sometimes text, non-descriptive, and spread across 4 different menus. I am not exaggerating. Try to reassign the function of your motor. Go on, I'll wait 30 minutes while you eventually get the manual and strike out and then find the youtube tutorial. But it's an OLED touch screen, you know, like an apple watch! Infants can figure those out in minutes. Yes they can. The sadist who wrote this UI must have thought - I have a simple logical interface here, and dead-stupid functionality. What can I do to make this as inefficient and confusing as possible? I know, I'll use ZERO consistency in terminology, pictograms, and structure! Yes! There's clearly enough memory on the unit to hold subroutines that are supposedly being updated to control cameras - so they have the ability to make the menus logical. So they just chose to shoot-the-moon with the idiocy of the menu layout? In the first hour of use, my 1 motor unpaired 3 times. Ok, RF happens, it's expected. I must be really pushing this thing beyond its limits with 1 handwheel and 1 motor. Let me quickly (ha) jump in the menu and re-pair it. Wait....Get out the manual and decode the blinks. Those blinks aren't in the manual? It seems strange the genius who made this system would have overlooked something like that. Ok let me find the youtube support video. Ah ok - got it. Wait no, it reset itself and unpaired again. The hardware is maybe almost there? Minus the bonehead move of reverting the motor to blinks and colors vs. a descriptive display. If I haven't made it clear - the handwheel functionality is an absolute and total failure. It is so catastrophically bad it cannot be used other than in a hobby environment. The handwheel unpairing may be a minor bug but with such poor menu layout, a simple hiccup like that means it takes too much time to fix and therefore the system is worthless. So - they fixed the battery and broke basically everything else. Hopefully Tilta pays attention because I assume this system will be returned wholesale by angry customers. In the meantime, they can fire the UI team and rewrite the handwheel firmware to organize it by function - I dunno, maybe put all the motor functions under the MOTOR menu? Something profound and genius like that? They can also mail personal apologies to every purchaser for releasing such a dumb motor menu system and include a little sticker with the blinky color codes to affix to the motor. In 2023. It's archaic but so are the brains behind this catastrophe

Very easy to use. Very powerful and compact with lots of innovative features. The screen is very nice but can be annoying if you forget to lock it and you accidentally tough it and mess up your shot. I love the in and out points and haptic feedback.

The ease of use and wealth of features on this little guy is unparalleled. I was about to go with the smallrig wireless follow focus because it looked on par with the first tilta nano but when this came out it was a no brainer. Works very well, setting points to use the haptic feedback or simply setting A and B points is intuitive. The touchscreen is nice but can occasionally be unintentionally changed or swiped but overall is a positive. My only negative is that my unit squeaks a bit at a certain spot. Not a big deal for me and probably just a defect on my unit but still something to look out for.

I owned the first Nano and I used a lot the M version. I found the first N model to be not powerful with heavy lenses and with annoying flaws that would make it the second backup wireless follow focus in my arsenal. Then came the Nano II and I waited a bit. One day I had a indie project looking for an AC and I wanted a reliable, but compact wireless follow focus that was also small enough to be moved and mounted quickly and in small spaces. We are using an Alexa Mini with Atlas Orion Anamorphic lenses and... holy wow, this N-II is incredible! Torque and force are not a problem, even with those big lenses. Cons: I cannot figure out how to change the camera settings with one of the pages. I connected the Nano 2 to the Alexa WiFi, but nothing changes. The manual does not even have pages regarding that settings. It does not explain how to load lenses either. Also, I cannot invert the range infinity-minimum focus, according to the motor's direction of rotation. Additionally, the NATO clamp does not work well with standard NATO rails. Overall, it's a great toy and most of the flaws of the first model have been fixed, but it has its own flaws.

The Tilta Nucleus Nano II FIZ Wireless Lens Control System has revolutionized my filmmaking process! Its precision control over focus, iris, and zoom is unmatched, making it a must-have for any cinematographer. The build quality is top-notch, ensuring durability and reliability. The wireless functionality is flawless, providing smooth, responsive control even at a distance. Battery life is impressive, making it ideal for long shoots. This system has given me a new level of creative freedom and efficiency. It's an invaluable addition to my gear, enhancing both the quality and experience of my work.