During NAB 2023 Tilta showed their preproduction version of the Tilta Nucleus Nanon II, a big disappointment of the design was that it was missing its marker ring, which is a big features most professional focus pullers needs.
As their innovative idea of placing digital markers on the big screen they now have added to the side of the Focus Knob. Though design wise it looks like a nice feature, however your hand will cover the screen most of the time and not be able to read of the screen. As I do understand why it needs such a screen as they have pretty much tried to fit all the Nucleus M features inside of the Nano.
Though the big touch screens offers a lot of additional features and making it easier to change settings of the camera and show you a lot of the camera information. But also change a lot of the settings of the follow focus, motors and they said it will also have gimbal controls.
I feel like they let their designer go all loose on how to innovate with the latest tech, without really asking any actual users on features that are really needed to be used as a professional focus pulling device. However because it got such a large screen it also does use a lot of power and the remote only last 7 hours and it only got an internal battery. So likely would need to recharge the Nano II mid day, when you are working on long production days.
Though it has a lot of great features, but the biggest issue is not having a proper marking disc, also the screen is often gonna be useless as I would be holding the focus knob in a way that the screen is never be going to face me. Plus in addition the screen itself is a touchscreen and means you more often have to make sure you are locking the screen correctly, so you don’t accidentally be altering settings by accident.
Though the marking disc issue, might be easily fixed by 3d printing a marking disc that would fit over the Tilta Nucleus Nano II. But I am just not sure if the locking and unlocking of the screen might become quite a nuisance while actually using it on filmsets. I might purchase it once they start selling it, just to compare it with follow focus from other brands. However I do hope there be a Tilta Nucleus M II which be a much more professional Follow Focus and hopes that it will keep its removable marking disc design.
