Nikon Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 AIS

For years the question was simple: the old 55mm f/3.5 Micro or this f/2.8 that replaced it in 1979. The f/3.5 has a cult following and people will tell you it is sharper at infinity, which in the very best samples is arguable. What the f/2.8 actually gives you is half a stop more in the finder, a CRC floating element that holds the corners at close range, and the updated multicoating of the AIS generation. Both lenses focus to 1:2 on their own and both need an extension ring to reach 1:1, the M-ring on the f/3.5 and the PK-13 here, so that part is a wash. For most shooters the f/2.8 is the right answer, and the used market agrees.

Optically this is a flat-field design built to photograph flat things. Documents, stamps, slides on a copy stand. It is corrected so the plane of focus stays a plane instead of bowing toward you at the edges, which is exactly what you do not want from a portrait lens and exactly what you want when you are reproducing a print. Stop it down to f/5.6 or f/8 and it goes razor sharp from edge to edge, with high micro-contrast and almost no distortion you can measure. Wide open at f/2.8 the center is already excellent and the edges trail just slightly until you close a stop.

The rendering is neutral to the point of being clinical, and I mean that as a description rather than a complaint. Color sits dead-on, flare control is excellent thanks to Nikon's multicoating, and the out-of-focus background is fine but never melts. Nobody buys this lens for bokeh. The seven-blade aperture and the flat-field correction leave backgrounds a touch nervous at portrait distances, so if you want a 55mm for faces, look elsewhere. As a 1:2 macro and a sharp normal that happens to focus absurdly close, it has almost nothing to match it for the money.

That money is the other reason it endures. These trade for well under a hundred dollars in good shape, the AIS build is all metal with a long, beautifully damped focus throw, and the 52mm filter thread is the standard Nikon size, so your existing filters and a cheap reversing ring just drop on. Adapt it to a mirrorless body and you have a do-everything macro for very little. The honest weakness, past the ordinary background blur, is that same focus throw: it is so long that chasing a moving subject is hopeless, though you were never going to track anything live at 1:2 by hand.

One metering note. Rack this out toward 1:2 and you are losing real light to extension, roughly a stop and a quarter at maximum magnification, and your handheld meter or even the camera's TTL on an older body will not always account for it cleanly. Zone Light Meter computes the bellows (extension) factor from the focal length and your focus distance, so you can dial the close-up compensation instead of guessing and blowing a frame you cannot reshoot.