Nikon Nikkor 135mm f/2.8 AIS

Pull this one out of a thrift-store camera bag still bolted to an FM2 and you have the cheapest serious portrait lens Nikon ever made. The 135mm f/2.8 AIS turns up in every used-gear bin in the country, usually for less than a tank of gas, because Nikon sold them by the truckload from 1981 onward and nobody throws a metal lens away. It is small for a 135, compact enough to disappear in a bag, with a built-in sliding hood and that knurled AIS focus ring that turns like it was machined yesterday.

Wide open at f/2.8 it is soft in a way some people love and some people hate. There is a faint glow on highlights, a slight veil over fine contrast, and the corners trail off well before the center does. Stop down to f/4 and it snaps awake; by f/5.6 it is genuinely sharp across most of a 35mm frame, with the kind of clean, neutral rendering Nikon built its reputation on. The bokeh is the reason to own it. Out-of-focus backgrounds go smooth and creamy without the nervous edges you get from cheaper teles, and at portrait distance the focus falloff is gentle rather than surgical. Skin looks like skin.

The optical formula here is the classic short telephoto layout Nikon had been refining since the 1970s, a modest count of elements in a barrel that is mostly air and brass. It is not a fast lens and it does not pretend to be. What it does is hold contrast in flat light and resist veiling flare better than its price suggests, though shoot it straight into a streetlight and you will catch a green ghost or two. That sliding hood fixes most of it.

This was the head-and-shoulders lens of its generation. School photographers, wedding shooters working a reception from across the room, anyone who wanted compression without lugging a 180mm. On a 35mm body 135 gives you that flattering background separation at a comfortable working distance, far enough back that your subject stops performing for the lens. People still buy it as a first manual-focus portrait optic, and the obvious cross-shop is the slightly faster, much pricier 105mm f/2.5, the portrait lens often tied to McCurry's Afghan Girl, though McCurry has also credited a 180mm for that frame. The 135 costs a fraction and gives up very little except a stop and a few millimeters of reach.

The honest weakness is that f/2.8 wide-open softness. If you want a clinically sharp 135 at full aperture for available-dark work, this is not it; the later 135mm f/2 DC or a modern Sigma will bury it. But almost nobody shoots a 135 portrait wide open anyway. Stop it down one click and the gap closes fast.

One metering note. Wide open in dim window light is exactly where this lens lives for indoor portraits, so meter for the shadow falling on the face and let the highlights sit where they land. If you screw a 52mm ND or a warming filter onto the front for color work, dial that filter factor into Zone Light Meter so your shadow placement holds. The glow at f/2.8 is forgiving of a little overexposure, which is part of why people keep loading film behind it.