Thu Aug 01, 2013 9:22 am
Nikon mount lenses focus the wrong way. If you only use your lenses or can use follow focus with reverse gear then this may not be a problem. But if you use other lenses like Canon still lenses, any cinema lens or broadcast cameras/lenses you will get confused when your gut feeling tells you to turn it other way than you are supposed to. So if you learn to focus the wrong way and you get chance to shoot with proper lenses, you might have lots of problems trying to stay in focus.
If you want manual aperture ring you can go with old Zeiss C/Y lenses or Leica R lenses. These lenses also focus the same way with the real cinema lenses (and Canon still lenses). (Leica zooms zoom the wrong way but that's only problem if you run'n'gun and rely more on your feeling to zoom and compose shots quickly on the fly. I haven't check if old Zeiss zoom's zoom the right way or not. New Sony lenses both A and E mount zoom the wrong way, not sure about the focus there).
I've owned set of old Zeiss C/Ys, then new Zeiss ZEs and now old Leica Rs. While I haven't yet had chance to shoot a real project with Leicas they seem to have more film like feeling on my test shots, creamy image that looks bit warmer. New Zeiss lenses are super sharp and they are bit cold in color. They are almost too sharp which gives easily the video-style look. Old Zeiss C/Ys are also cold in colour but not as sharp as the new Zeiss ZEs or ZFs, especially in the corners that you might find distracting compared to modern look, I'm not sure how Leicas compare to C/Ys in corner sharpness. But if you look movies made in 70s and 80s you will find the C/Y lenses have almost the same look (especially in those corner of wider angles) since the glass is the same with the old Zeiss movie lenses same way as new ZEs and ZFs have the same glass with CP2s. Leica's are said to produce look near Panavision primes which also used Leica glass.
If you get Zeiss C/Y lenses you can probably get off bit cheaper than buying new ZEs or ZFs and I would guess that if you later sell them they hold their value lot better. If Zeiss ends up replacing the whole line up with lenses similar than their new 55mm prototype then the current line up prices will crash if you ever want to sell them. Buying old Zeiss C/Y or Leica R lenses is tricky, good units cost more and you have to be careful to check there's no problems with lenses that are 20-30 years old. You can find Leica R lenses that are made in this millennium but they will cost many times more than the older ones. If you want more cinematic style lenses there's a rehousing shop glcinemod.com in China that puts these old C/Y lenses in to new housing, like Duclos cinemod but on steroids. If you go with C/Y lenses make sure you do more research on them, especially on ninja-star aperture to avoid disappointments. I wish I had had chance to really break in my Leica Rs to give better opinion them but so far I haven't. If you go with Leica R road, then you have to pay lot more than new ZEs or ZFs would be. Both Zeiss C/Y lenses and Leica R lenses have had huge price inflation in recent years due to this DSLR filmmaking boom. For compatibility with DSLRs if you have to use one as a B-cam, you can check pebbleplace.com. If you just going to use Blackmagic or other video/digital film cameras then you don't have to worry about compatibility... they all will work with proper adapters. But putting these on Nikon cameras probably needs replaced mount, not just an adapter.
