Comparison of the Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 DX with ???

[rwreich]

Greetings!

I'm wondering about buying the Nikkor 17-55 f/2.8 DX lens for use with the Metabones F to Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera adapter.

My main concern is how this lens stands up to some of the newer offerings by Tokina, Tamron, and Sigma.

I don't necessarily need commentary about the BMPCC or Metabones adapter, but I would really be grateful for anyone's experience using the Nikkor lens vs other lenses.

My primary camera is a D800e, and I already have a 14mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, yada yada... I'm only curious about whether this DX lens performs well enough to use it as a dedicated lens for the BMPCC.

Thanks in advance!

- rwreich

[Manfred M]

Welcome to CiC. We are a still photo website, not a video website, and of course the Black Magic line are video cameras (2K or 4K). You are dealing with an 4MP or 8MP image size. Depending on a lot of factors, the appropriate lens selection will vary. I've shot everything from a f/2.8 11-14mm Tokina to the f/2.8 70-200mm Nikkor on my 2K Panasonic video camera. If push came to shove, I'd be tempted to shoot proper video lenses on a video camera...

I'd suggest you head over to http://www.dvxuser.com for questions as to the best lenses for your camera. You'll find a lot better advice from people that know the camera than you will here..

[rwreich]

Okay, thanks for the reply... Wasn't really where to post this because it was a question about still-photography lenses. I'll try posting in other places, too.

[Manfred M]

Lots of still lenses are used in video work, but they are not ideal.

Still lenses tend to be varifocal, which means that focus changes as you change focal length; so you can't zoom in or out and keep the same point in focus. True video lenses are parfocal, where the focus does not change when you zoom in or out. A lot of still lenses have hard f-stop clicks, whereas video lenses do not, etc. etc.

[rwreich]

True... I hadn't considered that because my current kit consists of prime lenses, only.

Thanks again for the insight!