Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 85mm f/1.4G Lens

Product Information

If you want a fast, tough 85mm, that's why this lens has been sold out for most of its 15 years as Nikon's top fast telephoto lens. Honestly, I'd get a 67mm -> 77mm step-up ring, and treat this lens as a 77mm-threaded lens from now to eternity. This will save you a lot of aggravation, unless you really plan to build a system around 67mm filters.

The newest professional 85/1.4G is sharper and has even better bokeh and allows instant manual-focus override, but costs twice as much. On the D4, D800, D3, D700, D300, D200, D2 and F6, use the "Non-CPU Lens Data" menu option to set 85mm and f/1.4 to get full matrix metering, EXIF data and finder read-out of set aperture. It works great in aperture-preferred as well as manual modes on these cameras. Super Integrated Coating (SIC): Witness enhanced light transmission, consistent color, and minimized flare Spherochromatism is what's causing the highlights on the rear buttons to flare green, and the highlights on the closer bezel to flare magenta. You can judge the effect if you look at the shadows at the lower left of the camera body and the mounting-plate. The shadows become lighter and the overall image contrast and dynamic range is reduced by almost one stop when the lens is stopped down from f1.4 to f5.6. The effect is nothing dramatic but for optimal results you should prevent the sun from shining into the lens. Gallery

Summary from original test in 2011

The very best protective filter is the 72mm Hoya multicoated HD3 UV which uses hardened glass and repels dirt and fingerprints, and is also multicoated. I love any 85/1.8 as a fast prime portrait lens or general-purpose fast, short tele at a reasonable price. It's the one fixed tele I'd grab along with a wide lens for day-to-day shooting. On the subframe D200, the 85mm ƒ/1.4 presented very little corner shading - wide open at ƒ/1.4 the corners were a half-stop darker than the center, and by ƒ/2, corner shading was minimal (less than a quarter-stop). On a full-frame body however, corner shading is more of a factor. Falloff in the corners when shot wide open was over a full stop (you only need to look at our samples images shot on the Canon 5D to get a sense of the dramatic difference seen here). This corner shading gradually lightens in a linear fashion as you stop down - 3/4 of a stop at ƒ/2, 1/2-stop at ƒ/2.8, and a quarter-stop at ƒ/4. By ƒ/5.6 on full-frame, corner shading is negligible. Grab the ring at any time for instant manual-focus override, unlike the previous 85mm f/1.8 AF-D which requires moving a switch on the camera.

At f/6.3: Waterfall, 28 November 2013. Nikon D610, Nikon 85mm f/1.4 G, f/6.3 at 1/640 at ISO 100, Auto ADR, VIVID Picture Control with 6 sharpening and +3 saturation, Athentech Perfectly Clear. Full resolution (5 MB). The waterfall isn't flat, so not everything is in focus.Nikon Super Integrated Coating is Nikon's term for its multilayer coating of the optical elements in NIKKOR lenses. Film is a more forgiving medium than 12MP-and-up FX digital when it comes to lens performance, thus this stellar-on-digital lens looks incredible on film at any setting. Processing was done in CaptureNX2 at standard settings, with white-balance adjusted to a neutral white and some exposure compensation to make the brightness match. CA-removal is ON. Focus was achieved as usual live-view based with a little optimization by hand and it was done separate for the center and the corners because the lens has slight field curvature. But I’d doubt that this is field-relevant. With its straight 9-bladed diaphragm, the 85mm f/1.4 makes magnificent 18-pointed sunstars on bright points of light. Spherochromatism, sometimes mistakenly called "color bokeh" by laymen, is a minor aberration which can add slight color fringes to out-of focus highlights.

For 100% crop examples, see Coma, above for corners, and see Sunstars, next, for central sharpness. These night-time shots exaggerate any lens imperfections; if you loot anything other than the point light sources you'll see sharp images, even in these huge blow-ups, even wide open. The biggest limitation will be your depth-of-field and your own skill. results. On the D800, autofocus is dead-on to sometimes a tad far at f/1.4. If so on your camera, AF Fine Tuning will take care of it. Dildoplant. 85mm f/1.8 G, Nikon D800, f/6.3 at 1/160, ISO 100, VIVID +3 Saturation, Sharpening set to 6. LARGE BASIC Optimum Quality JPG file (losslessly rotated in iView 3.1.3).

Because of those characteristic and its fixed focal length, this lens is ideal for portrait. It is also good for candid portraiture such as in wedding. For Nikon pro wedding shooters, this lens is one of must have lens. Since even I wouldn't point this fast long lens at the sun, the images in which you can get these stars are night photos, in which street lights and other point sources can bloom into a star. This lens is obviously a portrait lens, and gives top-shelf images when used properly. However the design needs some updating to make it truly spectacular, especially in indoor sports shooting. Here are crops from the center of 100% FX 12MP (D3 or D700) images, focused on a reference phase lattice at 3 meters (10 feet) with synthetic reference vegetation at 15 meters (50 feet). Printed full-image at this size, these would be about 42 x 28" (105 x 70cm) prints, at least as seen on most 100 DPI computer monitors:

The next lens to compare the sharpness to is the newer Nikon 105mm f/1.4E, which is a remarkable lens, as you can see below: The hood is a crappy bayonet plastic excrescence, not the real screw-in 77mm HN-31 hood of the 85/1.4 AF-D or the beautiful turned-aluminum 72mm HN-20 of the 85/1.4 AI-s. So the score in the “features-department” is three negative, four average and nine positive (3[-] / 4[0] / 9[+]). MotivationThe Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.4G was announced August 2010. It’s the longest of four prime lenses sporting an f1.4 focal ratio in Nikon’s current range, with the 50mm, 35mm and 24mm completing the line-up.