Canon EF Vs. Nikon AIS

ROCKMORE

ROCKMORE

Veteran
How well do the Nikon Ais manual lenses compare to new design Canon EF lenses
in terms of sharpness, contrast.
Some of the Nikon glass on Ebay looks cheap, like a 180mm f 2.8 ED buy it now for $280.

http://cgi.ebay.com/NIKON-180mm-f2-...ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item255b2c6590

And here is a 135mm f2.8 up to $26 bucks so far.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Nikon-Nikkor-13...ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item439fbd774c

If the biggest difference is USM auto focus and IS then for me it's not necessary, everything I shoot is on a dolly, jib or some kind of support, and I focus manually.
Has anyone out there done any side by side comparisons between Nikon manual lenses and modern designed Canons?

Thanks
 
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I shoot both. I own a lot of nikon manuals and I regularly rent the 17-55/2.8, 28-70 and 24-105 AF EOS zooms for corporate gigs.

A zoom is great because it allows you to reframe easily and quickly and the modern glass puts clients at ease on corporate shoots.

For my own personal shoots I use selected AIs primes. Some of them are the sharpest still glass around however do your research some of the manual primes are duds.

For example
the nikon nikkor 35/1.4 and 85/1.4 are two of the best primes you can get
the nikon 24/2 sucks the 24/2.8 rocks
 
What's wrong with the 24mm f/2 ais lens? I'm a bit curious on why these are duds, the extra speed makes it very tempting over the 2.8.
 
Nikon AIS for the most part are awesome. The only problem is that the barrel focuses in reverse of canon and cine glass. If you use only nikons it's not a big deal if you use both it can be annoying, I've seen it throw a few ACs off. If you using a follow focus you can get reversing gears for that reason. The Nikon 28/2 35/1.4 50/1.4 85/1.2 135/2.8(one of my old personal favs) are all great.
 
semajha said:
What's wrong with the 24mm f/2 ais lens? I'm a bit curious on why these are duds, the extra speed makes it very tempting over the 2.8.
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I bought one and sold it, because I noticed bad CA, flares more easily than it should and really bad ghosts.
Some online reviews of this lens agree with what I found.

edit: sorry for talking jargon
CA = chromatic abberation
Ghosts = when you have a light source within frame a ghost hot spot appears in frame diagonally opposite
 
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ecking said:
Nikon AIS for the most part are awesome. The only problem is that the barrel focuses in reverse of canon and cine glass. If you use only nikons it's not a big deal if you use both it can be annoying, I've seen it throw a few ACs off. If you using a follow focus you can get reversing gears for that reason. The Nikon 28/2 35/1.4 50/1.4 85/1.2 135/2.8(one of my old personal favs) are all great.
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Some Canon lenses also look good for the money along with auto focus and modern coatings and speed like the 85mm 1.8
How about the 180 F2.8. That looks great for the money.

Thanks for the info.
Be great if you could make a short list of the good Nikon AIS vs. the not so good.
 
ROCKMORE said:
Some Canon lenses also look good for the money along with auto focus and modern coatings and speed like the 85mm 1.8
How about the 180 F2.8. That looks great for the money.

Thanks for the info.
Be great if you could make a short list of the good Nikon AIS vs. the not so good.
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The list I gave you in first post are the ones I've used, I can't really speak on the any other ones. That said I've also used Canon and there are some great ones. If you're looking at doing both photo and video with your camera they'd be the way to go. But once again there are some trade offs. No hard stops on most of them and not as much barrel rotation before they reach infinity focus, which means doing really precise focus pulls is harder. Remember those older Nikons where made back when manual focus for photos was common so the barrel turns a lot for fine movement. These Canons were designed with autofocus in mind so they aren't made to turn as much. It's hard to find a cheap wide prime in the Canon EF mount so you'd probably want to use a zoom for your wide end needs (like the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8) but a good cheap prime canon kit would be the 28/1.8, 35/2.0, 50/1.4, 85/1.8. Obviously the Canon L lenses are even better but are obviously even more expensive. After 85mm I can't think of a good non L prime to get that's longer (there's no point in getting the 100/2.0 because it's close in length to the 85) so I'd go with the 135/2.0.
I think I've covered all your questions.
 
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