Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 AIS

Ask any Nikon shooter who has lived on manual glass which lens they would keep if they could keep only one short tele, and a lot of them say this one. The 105mm f/2.5 is what working photographers reached for when the 85 felt too short and the 135 too clinical. The focal length flatters a face, the working distance keeps you off the subject's nose, and the rendering has a dimensionality that plenty of newer 105s never quite found.

There is a real optical story behind that drawing. The earliest F-mount 105mm f/2.5 carried over a Sonnar-derived formula from the 1950s rangefinder design. Nikon redrew it in 1971 to a Xenotar-derived 5-element, 4-group layout (often loosely called the Gauss version), and that is the optical block inside this AIS. The redesign cleaned up the corners and improved close focus while keeping the gentle, three-dimensional falloff the lens is known for. Backgrounds go soft without nervous edges. Foreground separation is immediate, and the transition zone is smooth rather than abrupt. This is the lens Steve McCurry used for the Afghan Girl portrait, shot in 1984 on Kodachrome 64, which ran on the June 1985 National Geographic cover.

Wide open at f/2.5 it is already sharp across the center with a faint glow that stays kind to skin. Stop to f/4 and it hardens into real resolution that holds well into the corners. Contrast is moderate rather than punchy, which is exactly what you want for color negative and slide portraiture. Flare resistance is good for an old design, though a hard light source in the frame will lift the shadows, so keep the hood on. The coating story belongs to the lineage, not the AIS itself: pre-1973 F-mount copies are single-coated and render a touch warmer, while every AIS unit from 1981 on is multicoated and a little cleaner.

The honest weakness is the f/2.5 maximum aperture. Next to the f/1.4 and f/1.8 fast fifties people pair it with, this is slow for available darkness. Night work indoors means pushing film or reaching for a tripod. If your whole reason for a short tele is shooting concerts in the dark, this will frustrate you, and an 85mm f/1.4 is the better tool. For daylight and studio portraits the speed is a non-issue.

When you do open it up in dim light, meter off the face, not the scene. Zone Light Meter lets you place that skin reading on a zone you choose, which keeps a backlit portrait from fooling the average and blowing out the cheek nearest the window. The 52mm front thread matches most of Nikon's manual primes, so one set of filters covers the kit.

Today it is one of the great bargains in manual glass. The AIS ran for a quarter century, from 1981 into the mid-2000s, and clean copies still trade for a fraction of a modern 105 while out-drawing plenty of them. People cross-shop it against the 85mm f/2 and the later 105mm f/1.8, and it usually wins on rendering rather than spec sheet. Focus it carefully and it will hold its own long after the body you mount it on retires.