Opinions on shooting with Nikon AIS Prime lenses

[Joel Devereux]

After 4 1/2 long years, I finally after all this time get to shoot my first feature film on a RED MX. For the amount we have budgeted, we could only afford to shoot on the Nikon AIS Cine-modded Primes. I would really love some opinions from the RED community and even some Youtube/Vimeo footage of them in action if anyone has used them Would definitely love some thoughts

JD

 

[Vance Colvig]

Beautiful glass . Great build. Only drawback is that they were originally made for photojournalists, and therefore most of the non-tele AIS lenses have only 90 degrees of focus barrel rotation so following focus wide open is a bit of a challenge. Some AI lenses and most early F mount lenses have 180-210 degree focus barrel rotation and are better suited for pulling focus. Early F mount lenses (non AI) will not fit the Red Nikon Epic/Scarlet smart mount without modification, however the Optitek Nikon mount will accept those early lenses without modification.

 

[Dave Blackham]

Id agree with Vance. I am not so sure about build quality though, they are great as stills lenses but not so great for motion picture but there are ways to make them work, the optics are very good and worth the effort. Check out the Ai lenses. Most are opticaly same or very similar to AIS but focus rotation is expanded.

We use them with A Mount and Optitek mounts.

Here's some links I find useful.

http://www.photosynthesis.co.nz/nikon/serialno.html#35

http://www.naturfotograf.com/lens_surv.html#rating

http://www.flickriver.com/lenses/nikon/

 

[Joel Devereux]

yeah the guys who we are renting the camera this from, are RED only, rent this Nikon AIS Cine-Modded Primes as part of their Indie Package, and the guy who owns the company loves them, even though I had my mind set on shooting on the Zeiss CP2's.

This is the image they have on there website:

 

[Joel Devereux]

PS that naturfotograf.com site is very useful thanks.. lets hope the image quality is as good as they say on the RED

 

[Sergei Franklin]

I put a posting up a while ago about using Nikon lenses http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...Epic-and-other-cameras&highlight=nikon+lenses
As for looks on my website:
All the commercials except "Komen for the Cure" are shot with Nikon lenses
All the music videos except 50 cent and Camp Lo used Nikon lenses
Sergei
http://www.sergeifranklin.com

 

[Joel Devereux]

That's awesome Sergei, I love that Alexz Johnson track are all the music videos shot on RED just out of interest?

JD

 

[Sergei Franklin]

That's awesome Sergei, I love that Alexz Johnson track are all the music videos shot on RED just out of interest?

JD

All the music videos except 50 cent and Camp Lo are shot on Red. Some are Red One, MX and some on Epic.
All the commercials are shot on Red.
Most of the fiction reel is also Red, some with Nikon glass some with Master Primes.

 

[Stephen Pruitt]

Virtually all of our first feature, "Works in Progress" (named "Best Feature Film" at the 2012 Canada International Film Festival in Vancouver) was shot using unmodified Nikon AIS prime lenses. The film is now out on DVD (Vanguard Cinema) and available on Amazon, Ebay, our website (www.worksinprogressmovie.com), etc.

Here is the trailer:

http://vimeo.com/28038486

PM if you have any questions about our experiences.

For what it is worth, we used the f1.4 50mm and f1.4 85mm AIS lenses for probably three-quarters of all the shots.

We changed over to Canon L-Series lenses for our second feature since we are using the Birger mount on our RED One M-X.

Stephen