Nikon AF DC-Nikkor 135mm f/2D

A bride backlit at golden hour, hair haloed, the background a wash of soft greens behind her. That is what people reach for this lens to do. The DC in DC-Nikkor stands for Defocus Control, a real optical mechanism, not a marketing label. A second ring lets you dial spherical aberration into the front or rear of focus, which is to say you can tune the bokeh itself. Set it toward R and the out-of-focus background melts; set it toward F and the foreground softens instead. Only Nikon ever put this in a production lens, in this 135mm and its 105mm f/2 DC sibling.

At f/2 it is fast for 135mm, and that speed plus the long focal length compresses a face beautifully. Wide open with the DC ring neutral it is already sharp on the eye, with a gentle glow in the surrounding tones that flatters skin. Stop to f/4 and the glow tightens; by f/5.6 the eyelashes go crisp and the look turns clinical. The trick is that the DC ring is not autofocus and not a soft-focus gimmick. Misuse it (dial in defocus heavier than your shooting aperture) and you get a dreamy haze across the whole frame, which is either the look you wanted or a ruined headshot. Most shooters leave it at zero until they understand it.

The rendering is classic Nikon of the era: warm-neutral color, moderate contrast, controlled flare thanks to the deep recessed front element and the 72mm filter ring giving room for a proper hood. Field curvature is mild and not something a portrait shooter ever notices, since you are throwing the corners out of focus anyway. Subject separation at f/2 on a 135mm is the whole reason to own it, and the way the plane snaps off into that tuned blur is something the cheaper 135mm f/2.8 AI lenses never managed.

Who buys it: wedding and editorial portrait shooters who stayed on the F mount, plus a stubborn cohort who adapt it to mirrorless precisely for that defocus dial. It cross-shops against the Canon 135mm f/2L, which is slightly sharper, runs lower CA from its UD glass, and has no DC ring at all. Against the modern 135mm f/1.8 art-glass crowd it is lighter and far less surgical. People keep paying for the DC-Nikkor because of how it draws, not where it lands on an MTF chart.

The honest weakness is focus shift. As you stop down, the plane of sharpest focus moves, and on a manual or screen-driven AF body that means your tack-sharp f/2 eye can land slightly soft at f/4 if you do not refocus. Combine that with the DC ring and you have a lens that punishes careless work. Slow down or it bites you.

One metering note. Wide open at f/2 this lens gathers a lot of light, so in dim reception halls and dusk sessions you can shoot at apertures the slower portrait teles cannot reach. Set Zone Light Meter to f/2 when you take the reading so the recommended shutter matches the aperture you are actually working at, and you will hold that backlit separation without dragging the shutter down into camera shake.