I am wondering if there are any Lanc controls, or through Firewire computer controls, is it possible to independently control zoom, focus, shutter, gain, aperture?

Remote zoom and focus control is possible via LANC through commonly available controllers made by VariZoom, Bogen, Zoe, Libec and a variety of other manufacturers. Remote shutter, gain, and aperture control is not possible through LANC, unfortunately.

The potential for remote control of zoom, focus, shutter, gain, aperture and more is definitely a possibility through FireWire although there is no such thing as a remote FireWire controller at the present time. This could be accomplished via a laptop computer but again no such option is available at the moment that I'm aware of.

Actually I have seen a firewire one but with basic controls, it might be in my links list (but I have many thousands of links). But I am open to suggestions on how to make a custom one. I am sure that there is a some ultra-small firewire enabled micro-controller board out there somewhere, but where to get instructions/spec?

I'd love to believe you regarding an existing FW controller, but experience has taught me to remain skeptical. If you can produce the link, I'd love to see it; otherwise I'll have to maintain that so such thing yet exists as far as I'm aware.

Well I looked/googled for many hours for the firewire zoom controller, but haven't found it. I might not have even linked it, as it was peculiar to have firewire, but too rudimentary in functions.

So sorry, no luck, but I did find some interesting things, including using a universal remote, and a cheap firewire based pan/tilt/zoom head:

If anybody else has seen this thing (probably the only one on the market, please let us know.

Firewire
http://www.321cam.com/videosolutions/CamcorderRemoteControlBase.htm
http://secure.eagletron.com/TCamWeb/powerpod.htm

Remote
http://home.kooee.com.au/rms/index.htm


Thanks

Wayne.