Broadcast lenses, for most Television and Live setup’s the camera your using is going to have either a Canon or Fujinon lens. Below I have tried to layout how best to determine whether your particular lens has built-in servos (Zoom & Focus). Just about every lens you encounter will have a zoom servo built-in, however not all lenses will have a focus servo built-in, sometimes these lenses are referred to using the name “Tri_Servo” meaning they have a zoom, focus and Iris servo built-into them. Don’t assume that the lens you get (or plan on using) with your camera will have the focus servo built-in.
I have put together some information that should help in figuring out what you are going to need, below we will start with Canon Lenses.
Let’s take a look at the images below that will help you figure out if the lens you have does in fact have a focus servo built-in Canon lenses first:
As you can see the lens model number has all the configuration information you need to determine what your lens has. In the image above you will see the top of the lens where you will usually find the model number of the lens, after the focal length numbers there are a grouping of 4 letters (in the grey outline) these letters are the optical configuration of the lens. Starting with the first letter in this case is a “K” this tells us whether there is an extender on this lens, with it being a “K” there is no extender, now the second letter (noted in red in the above image) is the one we are interested in (it is always the second letter) as this one tells us whether the lens has the built in servo and as you can see according to the chart above the second letter is “A” and if we look at the chart and we have an “A” or “T” the lens has the built in servo.
Now that we can read the model number and determine if the lens is equipped with the zoom and focus servos, lets look at the bottom of the lens this will help us further identify that the lens does in fact have the servos. Look at the images below they point out what to look for and what the connections look like:
FOR FUJINON LENSES:
THIS IS THE TOP VIEW WHERE WE WILL FIND
THE MODEL NUMBER
NOW THAT WE HAVE THE MODEL LET’S LOOK AT THE CHART BELOW
AND FIND OUT IF THE LENS HAS THE ZOOM AND FOCUS SERVOS::
LOOKING AT THE LAST 2 CHARACTERS’ OF THE MODEL NUMBER IN THE CHART ABOVE WE CAN DETERMINE IF THE LENS HAS WHAT WE NEED: THE INTERNAL SERVOS FOR ZOOM AND FOCUS, NOW YOU CAN ORDER THE PROPER ADAPTERS NEEDED FOR THE LENS YOU HAVE!!
YOU CAN GO TO THIS PAGE TO ORDER WHAT YOU NEED::