Nikon Nikkor 135mm f/2 AIS

For decades this was the lens Nikon shooters reached for when 85mm felt too tight and they wanted compression without dragging out a 180. At f/2 it pushes backgrounds clean off the frame, and reach plus speed in a manual focus tele was rare enough in 1981 that it stuck around until 2005 with no redesign. That is a long run for any Nikkor.

Wide open the rendering is gentle rather than crisp. Not unsharp, but softened, with a faint glow on highlights that smooths skin and lifts a head and shoulders off whatever sits behind. Stop down to f/4 and the center snaps to genuinely sharp; the corners catch up by f/5.6. Out of focus highlights stay round and clean across most of the frame, without the nervous edges or onion rings cheaper teles give you. Contrast sits a touch low compared to modern glass, which suits a portrait lens because it holds shadow detail in a face.

Field curvature is mild and the falloff into defocus is gradual, so the move from sharp to soft reads naturally instead of looking like a cutout. Flare is the honest weakness. Point it near a window or a backlit subject and veiling haze can creep in with a bright source near the frame edge, washing the blacks gray. It has a built-in telescopic hood, so pull it out and keep stray light off the front element. That alone fixes most of the problem.

People cross-shop this against the 135mm f/2 DC, the defocus control version that came later and let you dial in spherical aberration for an even creamier look. The DC is the cult favorite now and prices reflect it. The plain f/2 AIS is the quieter buy, mechanically simpler, same fast aperture, and arguably more predictable in its out of focus rendering because nothing is being deliberately smeared. Among manual focus Nikkors it lands mid-tier, more than the slow primes but a fraction of what a 200mm f/2 runs.

The 72mm thread is big enough that screw-in NDs and polarizers are easy to source, which matters if you want f/2 in daylight. Bright sun at f/2 will run your shutter out of speed fast, so meter for the aperture you actually want and let Zone Light Meter flag when you have hit the body's top speed and need an ND in front. Focus is the real discipline here. That thin depth of field at f/2 punishes anything but a careful lock on the near eye, and on a digital body without a split prism you will lean on focus peaking or a magnified live view. Nail it and a portrait off this lens has a quality the autofocus zooms never quite reach.