Something I find frustrating is when a solution to a particular problem, through popularity, becomes the de facto standard among the mouth-breathing masses.
Case in point here: Nikon lenses on Canon DSLRs for video. Now before anyone decides to flame (if anyone is reading this), hear me out.
When the 5D mark II first came out, it had this awesome 1080P mode that everyone wanted to use, but no manual exposure control. And all the Canon EF lenses have electronic aperture controls, so it's really quite a bad combination for people who want to set their exposure exactly how they want it.
Some clever people realised that older (and some current) Nikon lenses still have manual aperture rings, and used adapters to mount them on the 5D. Problem solved. Good lenses, manual aperture control. Bingo. A good hack.
But this is now not necessary as Canon have released firmware that lets you set the exposure manually. It was never necessary on the 7D. Or the 550D. Hack not required any more.
But, still so many people shoot with Nikon lenses on these cameras. And aside from the popularity argument, which is never a good reason to do ANYTHING, I can't think of a single reason why...
Now, before the Nikon fanboys flame me about the superior quality of their lenses, let me finish. Canon and Nikon both have fantastic lenses. The high end of both marques are very good indeed. Nikon do currently have some amazing NEW lenses out that are super sharp. They are putting Canon's lenses to shame. Examples would be the new Nikon 24mm 1.4, and the Nikon 14-24mm zoom. They are drool-worthy lenses. Specifically the 24mm 1.4... it makes me wish Nikon would make a good video DSLR that does 1080P. I cannot stress enough how good this new Nikon lens is. It's almost indescribably good. It makes me Canon 24mm 1.4L (version 1) lens look really poor at the very wide apertures.
Problem is, it's one of Nikon's new lens designs with no manual aperture ring. Same for all the really diamond-cuttingly sharp new Nikon lenses. The ones with manual aperture rings are all really old optical designs. Good, but nothing compared to the new ones. So yes, Nikon has a bunch of truly spectacular lenses right now, but you can't use them on a 5D with an adapter.
So, it boils down to this. You can use old optical designs on a 5D with an adapter and bathe in the associated cool-factor lent to them by the mega-mastery of the new lenses that you can't use. Or you could just use Canon lenses.
In short, I'm saying it makes no sense from an optical point of view. It can make a difference if you consider price, because a lot of those old Nikon lenses are cheap on ebay. And still good enough to be usable. But you cannot even compare them to some of Nikon's new lenses, which cost sometimes 10x as much.
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Ooh, not entirely true on the "you can't use em" part. Have grabbed three of the newer nikon 1.4's (not the 24mm though :( ) and took them to a lens engineer here and had him 'lock' them at 1.4 (1.8 on the 50mm because it gives purple rims on the highlights at 1.4). They are super sharp and pleasure to compared to the vari-primes.
ReplyDeleteThe other reason to use the older Nikon's is the pulling. Older, manual lenses are designed to be pulled manually, whereas the new ones are all designed to be pulled and pushed with super fine servos. The moment you even let go of some of those lenses after a pull the picture goes soft. We had that problem in a lens test the other day and couldn't figure out why nice new canon lens kept looking soft at the long end. Put it on a collimator(is that how one spells it?) and saw exactly that, it was sharp till you let go. Or hit the record button and it bumped that micro fraction.
Nice old manual lenses also hold their focus better when you shake em around. Now, I know, you're not really going to shake a 5d around cause of the rolling shutter. But, put one of them on front a RED, and you might.
Richard Muller
Yeah. I wouldn't want to buy a $2000 24mm 1.4 Nikon only to pay more to have it stuck wide open and only ever have shallow depth of field.
ReplyDeleteReally... I know what you mean about manual aperture rings. They are absolutely the way to go. If the mega-fantastic newer Nikon lenses had them, I'd absolutely buy them rather.
ReplyDeleteAs for the manual focus issue... maybe because I've not been playing with a collimator I haven't noticed the difference, but I've not noticed a problem. Again... long travel manual focus rings would rock. But the new Cosina (ahem, Zeiss) cine lenses just don't have what I want. Namely, super fast wide apertures.
Pretty much the only lenses right now that do everything I want are proper Zeiss Master Primes (which don't do EOS mount), and the new Leica cine lenses which seem to not be getting much press but do cost a lot more than my kidneys.