Introduction
For 36 years this Nikon Nikkor 105mm 1.8 Ai-S has been the fastest 105mm photography lens. Despite its fast maximum aperture it is made of only five elements, can that actually be enough for appealing image quality? Let’s try to find out in this review.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Contents
Specifications / Version History
Nikon only made one 105mm 1.8 lens so far and all of them are of the Ai-S standard, so we don’t have to deal with different versions here. The full specifications of this Nikon Nikkor Ai-S 105mm 1.8 are:
- Diameter: 80 mm
- Length: 93 mm
- Weight: 564g (measured, without caps)
- Field of view: 23.2° (diagonally)
- Filter Diameter: 62 mm
- Number of Aperture Blades: 9 (straight)
- Elements/Groups: 5/5
- Close Focusing Distance: 1.0 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:7.4 (measured)
- Mount: Nikon F
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History
If you want to know more about the development and the history of this lens you should first have a look at Nikkor – The Thousand and One Nights – No. 59: Nikon Ai Nikkor 105mm 1.8S.
While many manufacturers offered 85mm 1.8, 85mm 1.4 and 135mm 2.0 lenses during the SLR era, fast 105mm lenses were significantly less popular.
When this Nikon Nikkor 105mm 1.8 Ai-s was released in 1981, it was the fastest 105mm lens available. It actually took until 2016 before we saw a faster 105mm lens aimed at photographers and it was again Nikon with the Nikon AF-S 105mm 1.4E.
What is special about this lens is, that it is made of only five elements. If you have a look at Nikon’s history page you will learn, that it was actually the aim to build a lens like this with the lowest element count possible. This is a very different approach compared to most of today’s lenses.
Around 45000 of these have been made from 1981 to 2005, which doesn’t make it a hot seller like the Nikon 105mm 2.5, of which more than 300000 have been made from 1977 to 2005.
Handling / Build Quality
Just like the 105mm 2.5, also this 105mm 1.8 has the typical build quality of Nikon’s Ai(-S) lenses: all metal body with engraved writings, colorful aperture stops and DoF scale.
The focus ring has a very nice and even resistance. It takes around 160° from the minimum focus distance of 1.0 m to infinity.
The aperture ring is also typical for Nikon’s lenses: equidistantly spaced full-stop click stops and the aperture ring close to the camera body. The aperture ring can be moved very slightly past the f/1.8 mark, which I am not a huge fan of.
Unlike the Nikon 105mm 2.5, this 105mm 1.8 features a built-in telescopic hood.
Also unlike most of the Nikon lenses from this era, this one doesn’t feature the typical 52 mm filter thread, but a bigger 62 mm filter thread instead.
Vignetting
Light falloff
| f/1.8 | 1.6 EV |
| f/2.8 | 0.5 EV |
| f/4.0 - f/22 | 0.2 EV |
Tele lenses usually don’t have issues with vignetting, but the vignetting figures of this Nikon 105mm 1.8 Ai-s are even a bit lower than I would have expected.
They are slightly lower than those of the Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC and about the same at shared apertures as those of the Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
Optical vignetting
Fast lenses usually show a noticeable amount of optical vignetting, especially so the compact ones. Without going too much into technical details optical vignetting leads to the truncation of light circles towards the borders of the frame.
In the center of the frame almost every lens will render a perfect circle, but only lenses with very low optical vignetting will keep this shape in the corners.
So in the following comparison we move from the center (left) to the extreme corner (right) and see how the shape of the light circle changes.
Compared to Nikon’s other 105mm lenses this one shows a very typical performance. At shared apertures the amount of optical vignetting is very similar to the Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC. The Nikon AF-S 105mm 1.4E still shows a higher amount of optical vignetting at f/2.0, despite already being stopped down by one stop.
Sharpness
Focus shift
I definitely see more focus shift here than I would like to see from an SLR lens. When you stop down to f/2.8 or f/4.0 your subject may even slightly drop out of the focal plane, at least at closer distances.
We also see a rather high amount of bokeh fringing here, typical for Nikon’s fast lenses of that era.
Infinity (42mp Sony A7rII)
At f/1.8 we see some purple fringing everywhere in the frame and traces of it are still visible at f/2.8. The lens is also rather soft at f/1.8. By f/5.6 the image quality is very good everywhere in the frame and I wouldn’t mind using this lens for demanding applications here, this was already the case for the Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC-Nikkor – generally these two perform similar at shared apertures. The older Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai better be stopped down to f/11 for very good across frame performance.
At f/11 this 105mm 1.8 looks noticeably worse here compared to f/8.0, this might be due to diffraction or heat haze or a mix of both.
Portrait 2.6 m (42mp Sony A7rII)
For portraiture it isn’t so important how flat the field is, it is more interesting to see what the sharpness is like when focused at different parts of the frame to take field curvature out of the equation.
We will be looking at 100% crops from the 42mp Sony A7rII.
f/1.8 <—> f/2.8
At f/1.8 this Nikon 105mm 1.8 is clearly a bit soft, actually similar to the Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC at f/2.8. Both these lenses look much better when stopped down to f/2.8. The old Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai looks about as good at f/2.5 as the others do stopped down to f/2.8. The Nikon AF-S 105mm 1.4E – unsurprisingly – looks least as good at f/1.4 as these older lenses do at any aperture setting.
Close 1.0 m, 1:7.4 (42mp Sony A7rII)
The maximum magnification of 1:7.4 is very typical for a short portrait tele and similar to the Nikon AF-S 105mm 1.4E, Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC and Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai.
Being a sample unit focus lens, this one performs just as bad as the 105mm 2.5 Ai at closer distances, so stopping down to f/4.0 is needed for really crisp images here.
Flare resistance
Fast short tele lenses rarely do well in this category. The Nikon AF-D 85mm 1.4 for example was pretty bad and the Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai didn’t do well either, so let’s have a closer look.
At the maximum aperture with a strong light source in the frame we encounter a strong loss of contrast and also some ring flare artefacts.
The built-in telescopic hood at least somewhat helps with mitigating some of the artefacts.
Stopped down there is still a significant loss of contrast due to veiling flare. Some pretty big ghosts can also appear.
A typical performance for a fast tele lens from the early 1980s.
Coma
100% crops from extreme corner, focused on center, Sony A7rII
Only five elements are not enough to correct Coma properly in a fast lens like this. Considering this, it doesn’t look all that bad though. At f/1.8 we clearly see some artefacts, stopped down to f/2.8 they are mostly gone.
The Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC looks a bit better at f/2.0. The Nikon 105mm 2.5 looks similar at f/2.8 and the latest Nikon AF-S 105mm 1.4E looks better at f/1.4 than the others do at their (slower) maximum apertures.
Distortion
The Nikon 105mm 1.8 does not have any field relevant distortion.
Bokeh
I don’t know if Nikon’s engineers put any emphasis on a pleasing bokeh when designing this lens in the late 1970s. Having read its history page, it seems to me other aspects had definitely been considered more important. Either way, let’s have at the bokeh this 105mm 1.8 creates.
At close distances it generally draws a smooth bokeh, but as we have seen in the sharpness close section it leaves some to be desired when it comes to contrast and resolution, so the actual focal plane doesn’t stand out as much as it could given its f/1.8 maxium aperture and 105mm focal length. I also didn’t find focusing particularly easy at closer distances because of that.
At mid distances the image is still a bit soft at f/1.8 – which can be a benefit when taking portraits – but the general bokeh rendering doesn’t knock it ouf of the park for me. It isn’t bad, but also not something special in my opinion.
At longer distances, I think the problems become even more obvious. The bokeh is rather harsh with double edged structures appearing and the high amount of outlining doesn’t help either.
Personally, I find the successor, the Nikon AF 105mm 2.0D DC-Nikkor, rendering a more pleasing bokeh, but the question is of course what you are looking for here and you may come to a different conclusion.
Sunstars
This 105mm 1.8 features an aperture diaphragm made of 9 mostly straight aperture blades that creates distinct sunstars stopped down. I don’t think the alignment of the blades is perfect though, as the rays do not seem to all have the same length and spacing. This is still much better than what I have seen from the Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai and the Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC.
If you want to know more about sunstar rendering of different lenses have a look at this article.
Chromatic aberration
Lateral
Considering the simple optical design it doesn’t come as a surprise that we can also see a medium amount of lateral CA. The correction in Lightroom is still doing a good job here.
Longitudinal
If you already read one of my other reviews of a fast older Nikon lens you probably already know how this will play out: this lens produces strong longitudinal CA at the maximum aperture. Stopping down to f/2.8 is also not enough to get rid of them and even by f/4.0 we still see slight traces of outlining.
When it comes to purple fringing the situation is the same: rather strong magenta outlining at f/1.8, still some at f/2.8 and mostly (but not completely) gone by f/4.0.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
Among the vintage SLR portrait lenses, this 105mm 1.8 is definitely one of the more exotic options, which is also the reason I was interested in reviewing it. After having done that I have to say, this 105mm 1.8 doesn’t fully convince me.
The first reason for that is the Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai. At shared apertures they generally perform similar, so it is really the f/1.8 to f/2.5 range that makes the difference. Unfortunately at f/1.8 this 105mm 1.8 doesn’t perform all that great, so quite often I thought it would be better to stop down to f/2.8, for better contrast and resolution, which means I could have used the smaller, lighter and cheaper 105mm 2.5 in the first place.
The second reason is the Nikon AF 105mm 2.0D DC-Nikkor. It can often be found for ~100 bucks more than this 105mm 1.8 and I definitely recommend to invest those 100 bucks. It offers way better image quality at its maximum aperture, nicer bokeh (which even is adjustable thanks to the DC feature) and even offers autofocus on cameras/adapters with a built-in AF motor.
At the end of the day, I don’t think the prices being asked for this 105mm 1.8 are justified by its performance, but rather due to its “unique” parameters.
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Alternatives
Nikon 105mm 2.5 Ai
Nikon made a lot of these as it was a very popular lens. At shared apertures these two lenses perform very similar, so have a look at this review and see first if you are really happy with the image quality and bokeh of this 105mm 1.8 lens at f/1.8, because if not, the 105mm 2.5 Ai is probably the smarter choice for you.
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Nikon AF-D 105mm 2.0 DC-Nikkor
Much better image quality at its maximum aperture, interesting “defocus control” feature and autofocus on cameras/adapters with built-in motor. Despite being an AF lens also the MF experience is great. The better alternative to this 105mm 1.8 for a little more money.
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There are of course plenty of other portrait lenses in the 85-135mm range available. You can find a few examples of those in our Guide to 85-200mm portrait lenses.
To my knowledge no one else made a 105mm 1.8 lens during the film era. We did review a few slower vintage lenses in the past though, the Minolta MC 100mm 2.5, the Minolta MD 100mm 2.5 and the Olympus OM 100mm 2.0.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- All Lens Reviews
- Review: Zeiss 28mm 1.4 Otus
- Review: Nikon AF-S 58mm 1.4G
- Review: Nikon AF 85mm 1.4D
- Review: Nikon Ai 200mm 2.0 IF-ED
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