nikon primes on 7d?

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xander1

Member
hey. i am looking at buying a 7d and a set of used nikon primes to go with it. probably a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm and 85mm. i would be using it alot for video but really want to be able to shoot great stills with it to. with a decent adapter am i still going to be able to get great images with these manual lenses? thanks
Xander
 
thanks. im aware of all of the adapters but i was more so referring to a practical point of view in stills photography. IE it might not be a major issue with the lack of AF when shooting video as the 7d doesnt have live AF when shooting video but is this too much of a compromise shooting stills all by manual focus. and also i heard that alot of lenses struggle with inifinite focus with adapters so would this be a big problem shooting stills with nikon lenses?
thanks and sorry for not being more descriptive in my first post
 
I may be missing something but why dont you just buy Canon lenses for your 7d? I just sold a 50mm 1.4 for $70. You can find good stuff out there
 
wow thats real cheap for a 50mm 1.4. was it an FD mount. i would buy 2nd hand canons but the old nikons are so much cheaper at all the other focal lengths.
 
Old lenses allow you to get better glass with outdated everything else at a low price. And they have their own look that some, including myself, enjoy.

How much the lack of autofocus is a problem for you depends entirely on how much you use autofocus. But you do need an adapter that does infinity focus for a lot of things. Not all things.
 
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think i might just bite the bullet and buy the nikons. then if im not happy i can throw them up on ebay or wherever to get rid of them and hopefully shouldnt lose too much money, only the cost of the adapters. thanks for the help
 
you won't be able to shoot stills with manual focus and no focus points. You will miss 75% of the time if not more. Unless you shoot stills with liveview and on a tripod I would not recommend shooting with non EOS compatible lenses.

People spend so much money to get the the sharpest lenses possible but then don't take advantage of them by either not focusing properly or shooting at far less than ideal apetures.
 
Wait, what? i just shot a bunch of stills on a 7D with Nikon primes and didn't have any trouble focusing?! How is it different from video or than manual focusing ever was? If anything, it's easier in stills because I don't have a z-finder for live view and the viewfinder works very well for stills...
 
egproductions said:
you won't be able to shoot stills with manual focus and no focus points. You will miss 75% of the time if not more. Unless you shoot stills with liveview and on a tripod I would not recommend shooting with non EOS compatible lenses.
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Poppycock. Believe it or not, AF once did not exist.

How did you think photographers shot photos with their manual focus lenses then?

AF is certainly nice for stills, but it is by no means a requirement.
 
mcgeedigital said:
Poppycock. Believe it or not, AF once did not exist.

How did you think photographers shot photos with their manual focus lenses then?

AF is certainly nice for stills, but it is by no means a requirement.
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Your right, AF didn't always exist. But when it didn't exist, SLRs had ground glass/ focus screens that aided in focusing. I've shot on SLRs with focus screens and i've shot on DSLRs with manual lenses. The difference in accuracy is huge.

That being said, you are able to purchase focus screens for your Canon DSLR (not sure if Canon manufactures them themselves though). However, once you do this you will no longer have your focus points and (someone correct me if I'm wrong) you will loose AF functionality on your camera.
 
Kellar42 said:
Wait, what? i just shot a bunch of stills on a 7D with Nikon primes and didn't have any trouble focusing?! How is it different from video or than manual focusing ever was? If anything, it's easier in stills because I don't have a z-finder for live view and the viewfinder works very well for stills...
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With video you just have to focus for an HD image. For stills you have to make sure you are precisly focused or you are going to be loosing out. Remember the good old days of SD video? Focusing was a lot easier back then because you didn't have to be as accurate.

You might think you are getting accurate focus and it might even look decent in your LCD when playing back but if you hook it up to computer and view your image at 100% there is no way you can achieve consistent accurate focus using the viewfinder without a focusing screen or AF.

With a camera like the 5D II, if you aren't accuratly focused and using your lenses to their potential, there is no way you are truly ressolving 21MP.
 
I don't know...I was talking about stills at the start of my post...I took quite a few stills recently on the 5D and 7D and Nikon primes. Sure, I was shooting fairly wide most of the time (18mm), but even some opened up shots at night handheld on a Nikon 85mm F1.4 seem fairly easy to nail. And I've certainly viewed them on my computer! On a 30" 2k screen!
 
I don't know what kind of shots you were taking but I should say that taking test photos of still subjects is much different than moving around and taking photos especially of moving subjects.

I used to shoot with pentax lenses using an adapter on my old rebel xt. I even shot some professional gigs with them. When i see the reuslts of those compared to what I get with auto focus lenses, I can't believe I thought it was acceptable.

I can't comment on individuals abilities but I'm pretty young and have good reflexes and I just find it way to hard to use fully manual focus properly.

It's definitly fun to use non canon lenses on the camera and you can achieve some unique results. I would definitely recommend trying it but I wouldn't recommend having it as your only option unless you truly know what you are getting yourself into. Happy shooting.
 
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