Minolta MD Tele Rokkor 135mm f/2

Put a face fifty feet away at the back of a dim theater, fill the frame with it, and let the stage behind go soft. That is the job a fast 135 does and a 135mm f/3.5 cannot. The extra stop buys you both the reach and a shutter speed quick enough to catch a gesture, and it does it without a tripod or a flash. Minolta only built this one for about four years, right as the company was pivoting to the Maxxum autofocus system in 1985, which is roughly when new MD designs stopped coming. That short run is part of why it does not turn up often.

It renders the way fast teles of this vintage tend to. Expect it to be a little soft and lower in contrast wide open, with some glow around bright speculars, then to tighten up a stop or two down. By the middle apertures it is sharp enough for anything you would shoot it for. The bokeh is the reason people hunt it down. Out-of-focus highlights come back as smooth round discs without hard rims, and the transition from a sharp eye to a soft ear is gradual rather than abrupt. Color is neutral, the usual Rokkor character, and flare stays manageable for a lens this fast as long as you keep the sun out of the frame.

The honest flaw is longitudinal chromatic aberration, the kind no fast 135 of this era avoids without exotic glass. Shoot a backlit subject at f/2 and you will find color fringing on either side of the focus plane, on hair, on chrome, on bright leaves. Stop down toward f/2.8 or f/4 and most of it cleans up. But if you bought the lens to shoot at f/2, you bought the fringing along with the speed. It is also a heavy chunk of glass with a 72mm front, not a lens you carry casually.

This was an available-light tool first. Stage work, recitals, indoor events, tight portraits across a room where you could not step closer or add light. A lot of them live on mirrorless bodies now purely for the rendering, since the f/2 speed and the smooth backgrounds cost a fraction of a modern 135. The usual cross-shop is the Canon FD 135mm f/2, the other fast 135 from that era. The Minolta is the rarer bird, and it sits near the top of the MD prime hierarchy because of it.

One practical note. Wide open in a dim room, meter for the shadow you actually care about and let Zone Light Meter place it, then check that the f/2 reading still buys a shutter speed fast enough to hold the frame steady. That extra stop over an f/2.8 is the whole bargain of the lens. It is what keeps you off the tripod.