Tangent Element Control Surface: Getting Started

I love that you guys are taking it to the next level in personal touch sense. It is always nice to relate guys who talk and act as persons eliminating stiffness that we have seen in ’90 corporate stiffness. Good job! Switching small panels is nice tip!

hello, would you still recommend Tangent element now in 2022?

I own both the Tangent Element and BMD Mini Panel. The TL is now in storage.

I bought the Mini Panel because the support of Tangent Element by Blackmagic has been stopped around Davinci Resolve 15. There is no HDR palette support, among other new Davinci Resolve features.

The control of further support for the Tangent Element is in the hands of Blackmagic Design, not Tangent.

The only feature I’m missing in the Mini Panel that the Tangent Element has is Resolve Image Wipe, which the Tangent Element has assigned to the Transport Wheel. To cover this missing feature, I bought BMD SpeedEditor. After years of using the Tangent Element transport wheel for this operation, I couldn’t use the mouse.

As a companion to the Tangent Element, I used  Stream Deck 32. I do the same with the Mini Panel. As Patrick has said, I will only recommend the Tangent Element for Davinci Resolve users who also use FinalCut, Premiere, etc., for editing.

I recently purchased a used Tangent Elements Bundle since the mini panel was nowhere to be found in Western Europe.
I was able to get a good price and had it completely refurbished by Mazze from Angry-face (dot) com. The quality of the panel has improved immensely because of it. (The new rings make a huge difference, and the finish of the panels it self makes for a nicer experience.)

I agree that in a head to head the mini panel is far more useful in the current version of Resolve. However I’m still very happy that I’ve bought it. Its still a lot better than mouse and keyboard. One big side-effect is that, since I’m mainly using the tools that I have quick access to, I’m now grading a lot more like I did years ago. None of that fancy Resolve 16+ magic 😉
It’s really not as bad as it sounds.

If I had the choice then, I would have definitely bought the mini panel. But now that I have this, I’m not looking to upgrade anytime soon.

P.s.
I’ve worked with the Tangent Elements years ago. And the muscle memory came back within one session! Did not expect that.

I personally find BM’s attitude understandable … but very, very frustrating.

Their profit model is totally built around providing cheap/free software to get us buying hardware, and the software is a loss-leader. The hardware pays the bills and salaries. So it is understandable that they want to tilt towards their own hardware.

At the same time, for those of us who work in several apps, the BM hardware is intentionally designed not to work with any other app. So to use a BM panel, I’d have to move my full Elements setup off the desk and move the Mini panel in. Then back out to go work in Premiere.

I’d be a TON more likely to look at buying a mini panel if it could be mapped in Premiere.

And yea, in Premiere, my Elements controls the Track mixer knobs & sliders. I do placement, sizing, rotation of graphics elements while working on graphics. Resize/position clips on the sequence.

Oh, and yea, I’ve got that panel mapped the way I want it for color.

If I could do that with a BM panel, well … might buy one.