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p.3 #5 · p.3 #5 · 85mm/1.4D/1.8G vs. 135mm/f2 DC vs 105mm/f2DC? | |
I love to shoot portraits. I've owned most of the lenses discussed in this thread. I owned the 105 and 135mm DC lenses. Both are gone now.
While they definitely have traits that people love for soft portraits, these same traits limit there usefulness outside of portrait shooting, imho. They have insane amounts of CA and are fairly soft wide open. They are the sharpest with the DC control centered but it isn't always centered by default (mfgr tolerances.) Changing the DC moves the focus point so you need to adjust your fine tune if you are going use different DC settings. They are old screw drive lenses which aren't quite as reliable or repeatable focusing as modern internal focus motor lenses. IMHO, these are lenses from another era, optimized for film where you can't post process like you can with digital. They soften and smear colors and are low contrast. Today I prefer a sharp lens with great micro contrast. If I want to soften a portrait I can do that with a couple processing steps in Photoshop
The Nikon 105 micro isn't a bad portrait lens in a pinch if it's all you have but it focus breaths and loses aperture at closer distances so instead of a 105mm F2.8 you end up with a 95mm F3.5. That makes it less versatile than your 85mm F1.8 Nikon which isn't a bad lens (though the 105 does have VR which is nice.)
The 70-200 F2.8 is a very good portrait lens (probably the most popular studio lens), sharp with a nice range of portrait focal lengths. It focus breathes heavily though and ends up being only 132mm at it's closest focus distance. It's image stabilization is a plus.
The Zeiss 135mm APO F2 is insanely good, one of the sharpest lenses available, fantastic bokeh, and almost no CA. It is, however, a challenge to manually focus any lens on a modern SLR but especially a 135mm.
The Sigma 85mm F1.4 is really, really sharp. It has very nice bokeh and fairly good CA performance. It is my goto portrait lens. I don't know that you would see a huge difference between it and your Nikon F1.8, though, and the Nikon is much smaller and lighter.
Honestly, I think you should spend a little more time with your Nikon 85mm F1.8. It is a very nice lens, lightweight, sharp, fairly good CA performance and decent bokeh.
Another one to consider, if you are willing to give manual focus a try, is the Samyang 135mm F2. It is a much sharper lens with much less CA than the Nikon DC. It has 90% of the Zeiss's performance at one third the price.
For portraits in the studio, stopped down with monolights there any number of lenses will work. I prefer to work with sharp primes myself, most of my shots are from the 35/50/85/135 primes, but most zooms are more than adequate (just bulkier to work with.)
To recap, you already have a decent portrait lens in the 85mm F1.8. Go out and give it a try and when you start running into specific limitations you may have better direction on what to buy.
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