aerospace99
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v5planet wrote:
I know this is an older thread and OP has already made their decision, but since it resurfaced I thought I might add my redundant thoughts for future readers, as I've owned and used both of these lenses.
I had the 85/1.4G for many years first, and loved using it for portraits, mostly of my wife. This is the lens that I used to develop most of my earliest off-camera flash skills, so in general these were pretty controlled setups (though mostly outdoors on-location).
Years later, curiosity and GAS won out and I picked up the 105/1.4E. By this point I had a 1.5-year old and my photography was dominated by outdoor candid environmental portraits when we were on family outings. In this context, for me, the 105 is better than the 85. There are some obvious optical quality things: sharpness is better at the wider apertures than the 85, for one. But more importantly, given I am outdoors at the whims of whatever garish natural light is available -- CA on the 105 is MUCH better controlled. This was apparent from the first time I took it to our local beach on a bright sunny day, which had been fairly torturous on the 85. CA is still present some of the time, but it's much less severe and frequent. I would expect Z lenses to be even better in this regard.
Then there is the matter of "look". The two lenses have different rendering. Don't get me wrong, the 85 is no slouch here. However -- and I don't know how much is the nature of the optics and how much is the focal length -- for me the 105 hits much better. Again, I mostly do environmental casual portraits of my kids. I'm not particularly interested in maximal subject isolation and razor thin DOF (though you can accomplish that more easily with this lens than the 85, too), but in standing a decent distance away and capturing a bit of context. To my eyes, it just looks better with the 105; enough to offset the SIZABLE weight/size penalty vs the 85. My personal aperture sweet spot for this lens, as a balance between subject detail, typical working distance, and background rendering preferences, is actually f/2. If Nikon comes out with a 105/1.8 Z lens that has similar rendering, I'd probably switch to that to cut down on bulk/weight and to drop the FTZ, as I rarely go wide open. However, I could see myself using wider apertures for similar subject isolation in ADULT subjects who we would need to stand further away from than a 3-year old child :-)
If you need to shoot indoors, I think your calculus will need to be different. One of my other use cases is the painfully staged "baby is x months old, look at my mastery of diffuse cross lighting and pleasant backdrops!". You just need more space to pull this off @ 105 than @ 85, and the nature of the end product is almost indistinguishable given the smaller apertures and simpler backgrounds. I got rid of my 85 a while back to clear up cabinet space and reclaim some cash, but if space and money weren't factors, I'd probably have retained it just for this purpose.
For indoor candids... well, I don't care for either lens, though the 105 is inarguably harder to use because of space constraints. This is probably sacrilege, but I find uncontrolled indoor lighting so poor in quality and volume that I would rather use my iphone 99% of the time as I don't feel the big-boi camera juice is worth the squeeze. But I'm a hobbyist taking photos of my family; if you're a professional you won't have that luxury!
Alright, I've left my long winded 2 cents.
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I would second most of what you say here but would add that the 85 1.4G has incredible AF accuracy in multiple situations on Nikon mirrorless cameras. While not quite as fast as the 85 1.8S, I have experienced less rejections in some cases with the 1.4 G over the 1.8S on a Z7II body indoors, I consider it a brighter lens than the 1.8S. I like its results with the less bulk than the 105 which on a Zf is a bit of a chore. I do like both of these lenses and they are the only F mount lenses I have owned and tried that I still have. Am waiting for the 85 1.4Z which may knock out the 85 1.4G in the end.
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I used to have the 85 f/1.4G, a very nice lens but the 105 has 'something' extra about it, compared to the 85 (which I don't own anymore)