American photographers don’t spend enough time thinking about the quality of image blur. The Japanese do, though, and they have a word for it: Bokeh.
| A lens with good, natural-looking Bokeh is valued. Thankfully, Nikon–and others–have created lenses with good Bokeh in mind. The Nikon 105mm f/2 DC Nikkor is one of the pioneer “Defocus Control” lenses that produces excellent bokeh.
The Nikon 105mm f/2 DC Nikkor allows you to control the shape of the aperture which, in turn, changes the quality of the Bokeh. The nine aperture blades are rounded, which produces more natural-looking, rounded spectral highlights (By contrast, on typical lenses, the shape and angles of blurred spectral highlights tends to have straight edges. reflecting the shape of the aperture blades.) Very few lenses allow for this degree of “defocus control.” The front element of the lens doesn’t rotate during focusing, which is an advantage when using polarizing or graduated filters that depend on precise positioning. At its widest aperture, f/2, the lens produces a shallow depth of field that can lead to stunning portraits, and also allows for low-light photography without flash. Spectral, blurred highlights are rounded and natural-looking. When used on an APS-C Nikon DSLR, the lens’s field of view is equivalent to 158mm on a 35mm camera—a bit too long for portrait work as it requires you to back up farther. Until last year, that was your only choice when going digital, but fortunately, things have changed. Now that Nikon has added DSLRs with full-frame 35mm-sized sensors to its lineup, such as the D700, the 105 Nikkor can once again be used as a primary portrait lens. With outstanding optics, defocus control and quality build, the Nikon 105mm f/2 DC Nikkor, which was introduced in 1993, is an influential lens that has has passed the test of time. |
