Nikon AF DC NIKKOR 135mm f/2D

I acquired this lens a while ago, but recently got the chance to experiment with it – and I think it’s a beautiful piece of equipment. I just want to point out a few important caveats to potential buyers. It’s quite heavy – an almost all metal construction – and there’s no VR. It has an older screw-driven autofocus. If you pixel peep, it can have noticeable optical ‘flaws’ – especially chroma aberration along high contrast boundaries, some vignette, and it’s not utterly sharp wide open if you are forensic in examination. I’m not a full time pro – I’m a fine art painter and art teacher who varies between serious enthusiast and occasionally providing high quality photography for a range of requirements.

Busy professional photographers have told me that if they are working in high pressure environments like several large weddings and corporate events close together, last minute fashion shoots etc. and where they need a very fast turnaround post-production workflow, they prefer shooting at this focal length with something with more modern optics, with VR and in-body autofocus and a lighter construction. This lens isn’t something they’d use. That’s the opinion of the particular ones I’ve spoken to anyway – others here might have a different perspective..

However, my experience is that if you are working in a more relaxed setting like environmental portraiture, fine art portraiture, street/landscape etc. where you have greater control and can take your time composing things and aren’t under an immediate high pressure, this lens is definitely worth checking out. IMO it has a beautiful ‘character’, and can do a remarkable contrast between razor-sharp subject matter and gorgeous soft bokeh. My copy renders lovely colors and effects. A pro told me his copy hunted way too much in low light. My personal experience to report is that my copy focuses surprisingly quickly and accurately – I usually shoot it on a D800. I haven’t tried to track fast moving subjects in variable light though. As for the optical ‘imperfections’ – a bit of post-production with NX Studio irons them out for me, and in the last few photos I took with it, that’s all I had to do. Otherwise the quality was already excellent. Portraits are definitely it’s thing, and you can tell why so much engineering went into it for that purpose.

135mm isn’t a focal length you’d normally take into different environments, it’s usually used for head portraits, but lately I take the lens with me and use it for all sorts of things, sometimes just using it for pleasure. Check out some sample shots if you find any online – although standard warning everyone knows: good equipment will not automatically make you a good photographer.

Great comments here. I’m a DX shooter. For me, wouldn’t the 105 make more sense? It’ll be not much longer than the 135 on FX, of course not as fast and with larger depth of field, but otherwise I imagine it would be very similar.

It would be great to see them rent the lens and do a review.

The defocus is very simple to use. Not scary at all. The only scary thing is that Nikon HAVE put a patent in for a 135mm f1.8 which may or may not be a vaporware ruse to worry Canon, and if you couple that with how old this design is you can easily get into worrying whether you should buy it now or wait. Their next 135 will be sharper and more contrasty, likely using their nano coating, but whether we will see another DC design ever again is debatable.

BTW how to use the DC: select your aperture. Select the DC to the same aperture and shoot. BUT if you start setting crazy settings on the DC that do not correspond with the actual aperture you can get foggy “effects”. I don’t own it but I certainly have played with one.

Question for anybody with experience with this lens: How good is the focus speed? Especially wondering because I shoot a lot of sports, sometimes in low light locations, and f/2 would be ideal for those. I don’t want to spend 6K on the 200mm f/2.

Thanks,
WEJ