AF-S VR Micro-Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED

Lens Review: Nikkor 105mm Macro VR

Thoughts and Opinions:

Where to begin... well lens may be my favourite lens.  I just thought about it for a second there and concluded that it is my favourite lens.  I thoroughly love this lens.  Here is why:

This lens is tack sharp, hands down.  The detail it can pick up just makes you want to take pictures of everything to see what things look like at a macro level.  It is a great macro lens.  It is great at taking 1:1 photos and they look great.  I can go on about why this is a good macro lens but I would rather keep this review shorter than a novel if I can.  

If I have space to back up, I use this lens for portraits as well because it is tact sharp.  Turns out it is a wonderful portrait lens.  Personally, I want a 85mm however between a 50mm and this 105mm, a 85mm might not have it's own niche there.  I have decided that if I keep doing portraits a lot and such, I may get a 85mm but as it stands my 105mm does the trick just fine.  

One bad habit that this lens allows me to get away with is not having to lug around my tripod with me everywhere I go.  Now this is just from my personal experience and I do not suggest doing this but, the VR on this lens lets me get away without using my tripod.  Any website you find on taking macro shots will have "use a tripod" in there however I find it just limits what I can do.  Yes, I am sure I could have better shots if I use a tripod.  I agree there, but I was in Saskatchewan and I was chasing shy dragonflies around these bushes which was difficult to begin with.  It was hard to slowly sneak up on the dragonflies and would have been nearly impossible with a tripod.  Another time I was balancing myself on a branch on a muddy river bank to take photos of frogs.  Again, it was very difficult and if I had my tripod I could have ended up swimming with it in the river.  So that is just my personal view and I know it isn't the best way but it works for me.  I can't promise it would work for you but I can tell you this is an amazing lens.

The cost has dropped since I bought it but that only means it is even better for its cost performance.  Also a lens this good, which has the Nikon's pro gold ring around it, is a no brainer if you like macro or want a good sharp versatile lens.  It is pro glass and it less than $1000.  

One thing about this lens that always makes me happy is the colour rendition.  As I mentioned in my Tokina 11-16mm review, I want photos that look like what I saw with my eyes.  The closer the photo is to what I saw then the happier I am.  My examples of this is taking photos of leaves in the fall because I find with other lenses the colours get a little darker and muddier looking.  I took a photo of yellow leaves in the fall and it was exactly how I saw it.  Also I took photos of a pow wow in Saskatchewan and the colours of the all the outfits was truly amazing.  And again, the 105mm passed with flying colours with colour rendition.

Before I got this lens, I tried out my Godfather's macro lens.  He owns the Tamron 90mm.  This was a good lens and I got some nice shots with it however I had a few issues with it during the short time I had it.  The autofocus was slow and loud.  I know AF is not used for 1:1 because it is easier using manual focus but I wanted a lens for more than just macro.  A slow and loud AF wouldn't be fun for portraits other other non-macro uses.  I could be wrong but I don't believe it had any vibration reduction either.  This was also a negative because I didn't want to have to be attached to a tripod for everything I did with a macro lens.  Another feature that caused the Tamron to lose points was the lens did not have internal focusing.  The barrel extended almost half of the original length of the lens.  It was almost far enough when you are doing 1:1 you could bump into things.  Also having this large object moving towards a shy insect could be troublesome.  Because of these things, I ruled out the Tamron.

I put a lot of thought into getting the Sigma 150mm Macro.  It was a worthy contender however it did not have stabilization as well, and I know sigmas are known to be heavy.  For these two reasons I did not want to chance it if I wanted it to work well being hand held and hiking with it. 

My only bone to pick with this lens is that it actually is not a fixed aperture lens.  Depending on focusing distance, it can go up to f/4.  It is a minor detail since that is only when you are very close to something which helps most of the time because it gives you larger depth of field (DOF) which aids with macro photography.  At f/2.8 in a 1:1 photo, the DOF would be smaller than a dragonfly's head.  

Just as a side note, the lens hood for this lens is very good.  It stops the sun from coming in from bad angles for outside shots as well as protects the front element from easily being hit by anything.  

Usage:

As I have mentioned, I use this lens for macro work, portraits and anything where I want the colours to be perfect.  

Pros:

- Sharpness

- VR

- Relatively fast and quiet focusing

- Internal focus

- Good for macro, portraits and vibrant coloured photos

- Cost for performance 

- Pro glass

- Not too heavy

- Built like a tank

- Focus range switch

- Nice lens hood

- FX lens

Cons:

- Aperture changes with distance, but that helps increase depth of field which is nice for macro shots

Sample Images:

Portrait of Hayleigh - 105mm (Portraiture) 

Frog - 105mm (Macro work)

Fall Leaves - 105mm (Colour rendition)

Conclusions: 

As I am sure I you’ve noticed, I think very highly of this lens.  The Nikkor 105mm Macro VR is a very good lens.  I highly recommend it for macro use as well as portrait or nature shots.  It doesn’t have a lot of reach with this lens for only being 105mm however for my purposes I find 105mm is perfect.  Also on the D90 it is more around 150mm because of the crop factor.  Anyways, this is a very solid and sharp lens.  For the price and the versatility of the lens it would be a little silly not to own.  Haha, but that is just my opinion.  So in conclusion this is my favourite lens, and I am very happy with it so far.  If you are thinking about purchasing this lens, I would, but if my word is not good enough I would keep reading reviews of it and you’ll find nine times out of ten this is the lens people pick for macro work.  I did a good month of research into macro lenses and that is what I found.  Hope this helps if you are sitting on the fence.

I would definitely give this a near perfect score if I had a rating system.  


If you have any questions please don't hesitate to e-mail me at tomhoustphotography@gmail.com.  Also if you are interested in visiting my photography website to see my top work, please visit it here: www.tomhoustonphotography.ca.


Rating: Overall 4.5/5


Macro Photography: 4.9/5
Portrait: 4.5/5
Overall: 4.5/5


Lastly, I have started doing video instead of writing my long blog posts.  I started up a Youtube channel and I will be re-reviewing all my gear there in a video so here is my one for the 105mm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfbknCpkio0

Hope that helps!