Review of Nikon 105mm F2.8D AF Macro Lens

I have been dreaming about getting a macro for a long time, as one of my favourite subjects are close-ups of flowers. In the past, I was using my pair of Nikon close-up diopters, namely the 3T and 4T, with my legendary Nikon 75-150mm Series E zoom lens and got decent results. The drawback of this approach is that the distance that the lens plus diopter combination can achieve focus is limited to a narrow range. To get around the problem, I figured a macro lens should be bought. I narrowed down my choices to the Nikon 105mm macro and the 200mm macro, as the 70-180mm macro wasn't released at that time. Finally I decided on the 105mm as I think it could also serve the dual purpose as a sharp proprait lens.

 The Nikon 105mm F2.8D AF macro lens is a real gem to use. It is very well built. The lens barrel has quite a lot of metal in it, hence it is also on the heavy side. The lens has 52mm front filter threads. The lens can probably be viewed as IF, as it does not extend itself much when being focused at normal distances. At close up distances, the inner barrel of the lens extends from the front. Unlike its manual focusing cousin, this lens can focus up to 1:1 without the use of extension tubes.

 The manual focusing of the lens is smooth and well damped. The feel is much better than the less expensive AF lenses I have. To engage manual focusing, I do not have to toggle the switch on the camera body. All I need to do is to turn the A-M ring on the lens barrel to M and rotate the wide focusing ring. The only small worry I have is that the A-M ring is a little on the flimcy side such that it might fall off one day with heavy use. However, so far this was not realized yet for the last 2.5 years.

 I didn't get a lens hood for the lens, thinking that it might be an overkill. For normal shooting distances, the inner lens barrer is well retreated inside the outer lens barrel, making me think that a lens hood is not very useful here. For macro distances, the presence of a lens hood may actually do harm because of the small distances.

 There is also a focus limiting switch on the lens barrel. By engaging the switch, I can limit the focusing distance to either the macro range (0.314m to 0.44m) or the normal range (0.44m to infinity). I found this feature somewhat useful because when my bodies wanted to hunt for focus due to poor lighting conditons, the lens focusing was usually driven all the way from infinity to minimum focusing distance and then to the correct focusing distance. Limiting the focusing range will help to get it focused faster. Manual focusing feel is good for an autofocus lens. To get from the minimum focusing distance of 0.314m to infinity, I have to rotate the wide focusing ring approximately 200 degrees anticlockwise. I notice that most of the rotation changes the focus little in the macro range. For example, changing focus from 1m to infinity only takes about 15 degrees of focus ring rotation.

The lens delivers high quality results. Slides taken are sharp. Contrast is excellent. The ability to focus all the way to 1:1 is very useful. This is definitely a pro quality Nikon optic. Light falloff is well controlled. No darkening of the corners was observed with my slides even when wide-open.

I also tried the lens with Nikon manual focusing teleconverter TC-201. I tried quite a few shots mounting the lens-teleconverter-camera combination on a tripod. The resulting slides are very good at the center, a little bit soft at the corners, when compared to those shot without the teleconverter. The advantage of this combination is that now I can have a little bit more working distance than before. This could be sometimes useful especially with shy insects. The only drawback is that I lost auto-foucs, which isn't much use for macro anyway. I think this combination yielded usable shots, but would not use it unless it is really necessary.

This lens is a beautiful lens, and is a must have if you are into taking portraits of flowers and insects. I am always amazed by the slides taken with this lens.

The drawback of the lens is that it is too sharp. If you intend to use it for portraits then quite a bit of post-processing work may be required to render your subjects less sharp. The other problem is that the lens has its focus changes very quickly in the normal focusing distances. With a slight turn of the focusing ring the focus changes a lot. This could be problematic if you intend to use a lot of manual focusing at the normal focusing distances.

There are also other macro alternatives. The Nikon 60mm macro lens is supposedly a sharper optic, but you will give up some working distance. The Nikon 200mm macro is big, heavy and slower at F4, but you gain some working distance for shy objects. The Nikon 70-180mm macro zoom is an interesting choice as you can change reproduction ratio by zooming in and out without moving your tripod. Of course there are some 3rd party choices which are supposedly pretty good as well.

In short, I love this lens. I highly recommend it. The lens has a permanent place in my camera bag.