MAY 2018
Vol 246
(09) 527 6126
NAB 2018
did not disappoint in terms of new and innovative products for our industry.
As in previous years, all our regular advertisers had their chance to pick the “best of the best” for them to tell me of their offers. We begin with Flowtech on behalf of Panavision and continue in no particular order. Read on ...
Flowtech We’re at the Vitec section of the show and, under the Sachtler brand, the product du jour and has been for some time, is Flowtech™. It’s so popular it has its own stand and to tell us all about it we have Barbara Jaumann from the Vitec Group. Barbara: Flowtech has a new tripod and if you look at it, it’s quite revolutionary. First of all, it doesn’t look like a traditional tripod because we are using profiles. The reason for this is that it’s really much more comfortable to carry it on your shoulder. The second thing you will see is that the brake levers are now at the top, so with 2 hands, you can release it in one go, so it’s really fast to set up. Also, when you work on your own and you do a height adjustment on the set, it’s really nice to have the control over the way you are changing from the top. The other thing you will see is that you can use it with the mid-level spreader or the shoulder mid-level spreader. If you go without the mid-level spreader, there’s a hinge lock at the top and there are 3 positions you can engage. The real icing on the cake is that the lowest setting gets pictures about 8 centimetres off the ground, so you can go really low as well. Ed: I’ve seen people try this before, but with limited success. This looks as though you’ve nailed it as to how to have a very lightweight tripod but still being very rigid, very secure and it looks as though it’s robust as well? Barbara: Yes, it’s been very popular since we launched. We’ve done a lot of internal tests just to make sure people get what they expect from a Sachtler tripod – the robustness, stability, and use in all sorts of temperatures. We have a lot of customers who have