I kidnapped the 70-200mm cine conversion lens from the office along with a 5DII and went about shooting random stuff throughout the evening. There isn’t really a story or subject, just arbitrary shots. The lens worked like a dream! Focus pulling was very precise and easy with the new focus barrel. The bokeh from this lens is just phenomenal. It’s a tad heavy with a baseplate, follow focus, mattebox, stainless steel rods, and a camera hanging off the back. But when I removed everything and just used the camera and lens, it was no different than a day of shooting stills with a Nikkor 70-200mm. Having the manual aperture ring wasn’t really a necessity for this type of shooting since light wasn’t changing drastically while rolling, but it made stopping down much, much easier than fiddling with more dials on the camera. I’m very happy with it so far. The only problem I’ve found is that with a tele-zoom you really have to have a stable tripod to avoid camera shake. Let me know what you think.
(p.s. I’m not a DP, I don’t claim to be… I’m a technical guy.)
This is an interesting lens. What version of the nikkor was it to start with? (I have the first VR version, which I like very much — even on a D3, where reviewers complain about it not being good to the corners.)
Is this a compete rejoicing like the Tokina? And are you making it in a Nikon mount?
We are using the Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II. The newest version. This will be even more in depth than out Tokina conversion as we are doing more work to make it more cine-like. The mount will be swappable between Nikon, Canon, PL, Panavision, Micro 4/3… pretty much any mount you would need.