Canon shooters with Nikon primes. Why?

[Abel]

I've noticed a ton of Canon video shooters with Nikon primes. Why is that?

Glass quality? Price?

Lemme know... I'm curious

[Snarfy]

Best I understand is that since Nikon hasn't changed the mount in forever, there are still a bunch of compatible manual AI-s lenses that allow for single-handed focus and apeture adjustment. These F mount lenses are quite easy to adapt, don't have AF motors or gears to content with, still have great quality, and are very affordable.

But I don't shoot video, so iuno.

[darktiger]

I could be wrong but I know some of them in Austin use nikon primes because they could manually control the aperture...

[Tom]

If they are using the old manual Nikon glass, it is probably because it is the cheapest way to get fast, high quality glass on there. You have to shoot manual focus anyway.

[Jake]

Originally Posted by darktiger

I could be wrong but I know some of them in Austin use nikon primes because they could manually control the aperture...

Yep, when the 5d2 came out you couldn't manually control the aperture in video mode. They updated the firmware later to allow full manual. But when mounting the Nikon primes you could have aperture back in the day.
Plus like Tom said, cheap fast glass that work better than the older Canon FD lenses.

[Kirk]

I just recently shot a music video on a Canon with (mostly) a Nikon 50mm f/1.4.
I have three reasons for this:

1. The lens was a bargain (used), $100.

2. Full manual control.

3. I love the way it looks. The video quality, I mean, not the lens on the camera.

There are some more scenes to shoot next week, but when the cut is finished, I'll post it up here in the video showcase. Also, it's fairly negligible, but the cost of adapting an Ai mount lens to Canon is cheaper than the adapter for an FD mount by $20.