Zoom/Focus rotation direction - Does it matter to you?

So, I have been thinking long and hard lately.

I own a 7D (upgraded from an Olympus E510 4/3 camera and then to Canon, and all the lenses zoomed and focused the same direction - so I never really noticed)

I now own a 15-85mm, a 70-200 f/4, a 50 1.4, a 24-70 2.8. So I guess Im pretty entrenched in the Canon system - I also have an Olyumpus PEN and the lenses also zoom the same way (but I noticed they focus the opposite direction)

I also own a Leica M and all the manual M lenses focus the same direction as Canon.

BUT recently someone loaned me their Sigma 18-35 to play with and for the first time in my life I noticed the zoom ring and focus ring is completely opposite - then I realised that no other company makes lenses with the same direction as Canon (save for older Sigma DC lenses) and this got me thinking - I am so hard wired to thinking the Canon/Leica way of using lenses that I physically winced when I used the 18-35 Pentax Art lens and got the zoom wrong - I get used to it after 20 mins of shooting but wow, this is a huge realisation and also a huge personal OCD annoyance.

First world problems aside and my personal OCD suppressed for a moment - the new third party lenses are blowing Nikon and Canon lenses out of the water for quality and price. But I find myself asking the shop keeper to see the lens's zoom direction because I have spent the last 15 years shooting this way and boy its a hard habit to break.

So does Zoom/Focus rotation matter to us Canon users when it comes to purchasing Third party lenses? Do any of us pick lenses based on whether or not the lens maintains the same zoom direction that we are used to? I know NOW that I WANT some of the new Sigma Art lenses but find myself saving up a bit more for the Canon version (One of the reasons why I bought the Canon 24-70 2.8 instead of the Tamron version.) The more I think about it the more annoyed I get that I am so stuck in my ways even though these things are just tools to take photos. I am a professional damn it! I should know better, but I also don't.

Thoughts?

I have the Sigma 17-70 Contemporary and the 150-600 Contemporary and they zoom the "proper" direction.

I have had Tamrons that were opposite and it really annoyed me. Fortunately the third party lenses that seem most interesting to me are now coming from Sigma.

Does it matter? yes, it does.....

When I had a Tamron 11-16mm it always bugged me that it zoomed the wrong way. After I got rid of it I decided to never get a wrong way zoom again.

In lenses I would use for video, the zoom and focus direction is very important to me because every screw up I make a wrong turn its documented.  For me the 17-50/2.8 OS and 24-105 are my main video lenses.  I would probably use the 18-35/1.8 a lot for video and the 1.8 would be awesome, but the lack of stabilization and wrong turning rings are what has kept me from upgrading my 17-50.  For a 150-600 type of lens where I would mostly shoot stills, I probably wouldn't mind as much.

Yes, I do have a focusing ring preference, and it is the way Nikon lenses manually focus. My zoom preference is less-established, perhaps because I did not seriously use zooms for fast shooting of active subjects until somewhat recently. If I am able to "warm-up" a bit, with a lens, however, zooming and focusing direction has not been problematic, though it is, probably, ideal for me to use Nikon if I think manual focus has to be done with any urgency.

My main use of manual focus with Canon cameras has been with macro and near-macro subjects, which is not normally done in a hurry, so the difference in in focus-ring direction has been a very minor annoyance.

My first several DSLR cameras were Canon, but I first started learning DSLR operation with a then-new Nikon D300s, issued to my wife by her employer, so Nikon pro/semi-pro bodies have felt "natural" to me since then. I bought a Novoflex EOS/NIK adapter relatively early during my learning process, and Nikon manual-focus lenses, so that we could share the lenses on our differing brands of cameras, so I became accustomed to Nikons' focusing ring direction. I really do like some of the AI-S Nikkors.

As for zoom ring direction, I am more accustomed to Canon, at this point, because I used Canon zooms as early as 2010, and did not use a Nikkor with a zoom ring very much until May 2015, when I bought a 14-24/2.8G, soon followed by a 24-70/2.8G. (I did use push-pull-zooming Nikkors as early as 2011.) I may well develop a conditioned preference, however, for Nikon zoom rings, as I often use my 24-70/2.8G for active subjects, whereas I tend to use my Canon zooms for static subjects.

On a technical note, I seem to recall that some past Nikon-branded lenses have zoom rings that operate in the "wrong" direction. I am not certain of this, but seem to recall reading about it.

I do not think it is excessively "OCD" to have a strong preference for a particular lens focusing and zooming system. It probably matters more for action and event shooting, of course. and much less for static subjects.

Notably, Zeiss ZF and ZE lenses, if I remember correctly, focus in the "correct" direction for each mount.

Rexgig0 wrote:

Notably, Zeiss ZF and ZE lenses, if I remember correctly, focus in the "correct" direction for each mount.

Yes, I noticed that too - When I bought a Zeiss lens for my Leica, it focused the same way (clockwise for closer subjects, anti-clockwise for infinity.) which in my view is intuitive when manual focusing with one finger (finger close = close, finger away from you = far away.)

But when I saw the same Zeiss lens on a Nikon mount, I was floored to see all the numbers the opposite direction. It was an eye opening experience and why I recently write this post as I am experiencing something new for the first time - I feel like I am learning photography again.