Lens for both macro and portrait

My first time moving to Nikon DSLR so I don't know much about the lens selection.

I am having Nikon D500 but plan to get ff one day.

I narrowed it down to three lens

Nikon AF-s 105mm F2.8 VR Micro Nano
Sigma 105 F2.8 Macro OS
and the old chap:
Nikon 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro Nikkor

I will need the lens for both macro and portrait for now.
I found some review in the sharpness, look like Sigma is sharper with apsc and nikon is sharper with ff (no idea why??)

and this is from image resources

Which one should I pick?

Peace_VN wrote:

My first time moving to Nikon DSLR so I don't know much about the lens selection.

I am having Nikon D500 but plan to get ff one day.

Do those plans involve DSLR or EVIL (aka "mirrorless")?

I narrowed it down to three lens

Nikon AF-s 105mm F2.8 VR Micro Nano

An excellent all-around lens on FF. Sharp, low distortion, and as a portrait lens it's got pretty good bokeh. It was an eye-opener as far as the old belief that you can't get decent portrait and macro performance out of the same lens.

But... I find a 105mm to be a bit long on an APS camera. It's a 157mm equivalent, and on FF or flim film my gotos are the 85mm for torsos and couples, the 105 for head and shoulders, and the 135 for headshots.

156mm is more like a face or half-face, although I usually use a 200 for that.

1. Humans are great at judging the perspective of a shot: the ratio of nose to eyes to ears size, the apparent angle of the cheeks, etc.
2. We also have a strong sense of personal space. Generally, for an American or European, being around 6ft from a subject has an "intimate" perspective, 10ft is "formal" or a bit "distanced", and farther than that is more like a statue. The term commonly used is "flat".

I'll generally find a portrait taken from maybe 8ft with a more generic prime or a zoom to feel better than a portrait from 12+ft, even if that 12+ft portrait is taken with a prime of great merit.

My typical goto for portrait on APS are an 85m f/1.4 AF-D Nikkor (127mm equivalent, it can do a lot of what I'd do with a 105 or 135 on FF) and a 58mm f/1.4 Voigtlander (a pleasant 85mm equivalent on APS, but it is manual focus.

I believe Tamron makes a 60mm AF macro that's suitable for both macro and portrait work, although I haven't shot it.

Sigma 105 F2.8 Macro OS

I don't like the bokeh as much as the Nikon.

and the old chap:
Nikon 105mm f/2.8D AF Micro Nikkor

Yeah, skip that one. It's got a relatively harsh bokeh that doesn't really help either portraits or macros, and it won't autofocus on EVIL cameras.

I will need the lens for both macro and portrait for now.
I found some review in the sharpness, look like Sigma is sharper with apsc and nikon is sharper with ff (no idea why??)

The Nikon is pretty uniformly sharp across a whole FF. Imagine there's only a finite amount of "sharpness" available. When optimizing a lens design, a designer can choose to spread that sharpness evenly across the frame, or they can concentrate it in the center, leaving the corners short on sharpness.

It's not that big a thing: either lens will blow you away with sharpness, and it takes discipline (sturdy tripods, stabilizing subjects, using a focusing rail, etc) to get shots where the lens becomes the limit to sharpness on a 1:1 macro.

And... look at your pictures. How often is something important in the corners? It normally doesn't matter if those aren't as sharp as the center.

Which one should I pick?

I'd go for the Nikon AF-S VR. It's more "future proof", performs well in multiple tasks and is guaranteed to be compatible with EVIL cameras on an FTZ adapter. Some third party lenses have problems, and sometimes they don't have a problem today, but next week's firmware update to your camera makes it incompatible with the third party lens.

The 105mm AF-S VR Nikkor will quickly become your goto for a whole bunch of projects.

Peace_VN wrote:

Thanks Joseph for such details 👍👍👍

You're quite welcome.

Knowledge exists to be shared.