One of the problems I immediately noticed out of the box is that the lens was loose on mount. The pro-sumer grade EF mount is normally a bit loose, even with an L series lens. That side was actually equivalent to my Canon lens being mounted - no big deal. The Nikon lens mount, however, was unreasonably loose. So loose that the lens would shift around if I tried to use it with a follow focus. That's no good! At first I was thinking that this adapter was an overpriced hunk of junk and I emailed the Novoflex support to see if there was anything they could do. The helpful support person sent me a photo showing a picture like the one below. It turns out that lens adapter tolerance is a well known issue. Just read the reviews on Amazon and whatever site that talk about all the problems with cheap adapters - 1000 of comments! Using a small screwdriver I very slightly pried open the spring slots and viola!...The ZF.2 was rock solid. I wish I could say the same for Canon's EF mount on the 5D (it's really not **THAT** bad, but still). The only other solution that comes close to being this solid is the Leitax mount and that's semi-permanent and not transferable between lenses while working on a film set.
By now you probably noticed the large blue lever on the side of the adapter. This is for manual control of the lens aperture. In theory it seems like a convenient feature, but in practice it's not really useful. For camera operators like me, I need to know the actual value of the aperture so when I meter the light in the scene I know the lights are set correctly. Using the lever is kinda of hap hazard and not the way I prefer to work. The ZF.2's include a manual aperture ring, which is my preferred way of working.
In order to mount up the Novoflex adapter I recommend to first set the lens aperture to it's smallest value; f/22 in this case. In the second picture below you'll see that the adapter's small silver tab near the top of the picture is just to the right of the black lens aperture control lever at the left. This is the way you'll need to line up the adapter for mounting. In the third picture you'll see the silver tab has been rotated counter-clockwise to butt up to the lens aperture lever. Then it's just a matter of lining up the red dot (first picture) to the red dot on the EF mount and mounting the lens as you would any other Canon lens.
When I upgrade to a real video camera I plan on purchasing the Nikon lens to E-mount adapter. Hopefully that works just as well. Oh...and Zeiss CP.2 Super-Speeds are coming into Video Gear's rental arsenal soon...you know, just in case you want to use the real deal without any adapters. According to Micheal, the lenses will be available in EF, PL, and E-mount.
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