Got Bokeh? DxO reviews the Nikkor AF-S 105mm F1.4E ED

I repeat:
This lens is 95mm F/1.4; at infinity! The 105mm are a blatant lie.

Great lens! Just very expensive...

For that price I'm getting the 85 1.8g, The 180 2.8 afd, the 300 f4 Afs with a teleconverter and still have 500$ to spare.
They cover everything I need and want and are much more natural in color rendition(for my eyes) and don't have that distracting cat eye bokeh and swirly bokeh that make me dizzy.
they are also better built and last for decades. And can be used with my bmcc camera and other systems with a single adapter. The new electronic controlled apparatur make it impossible.

Zeiss Otus 85mm optical quality (or slightly better if you go by Lenstip) with blazing fast AF for half the price of the Otus? Sounds good to me. With this lens Nikon has proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are still one of the best optics makers in the world.

Word from a retouching professional:

Fake bokeh either looks terrible or takes way to long to do correctly. It doesn’t fool anyone, makes our brains feel wierd, and lends a CGI/Photoshop art sheen to the image. It will only look right the background has no depth and neither does the subject. So it your shooting a cardboard cutout against a flat wall, go and ahead fake it all day. But with 3d subjects it is very very difficult or time consuming to get right. Our brains are better at recognizing these things than we realize.

Don’t do it unless you want you images to jump out as amateur. Besides, does the world need another thoughtless image of a person/flower/cat etc. in front of a wall of blur?

Oh by the way the lens looks pretty cool too…

Fine lens no doubt ...But why do portrait photogs need a super sharp lens when they soften the skin and blur everything but eyes and lips and a few strands of hair in post??? It looks to me a super sharp lens is counterproductive for portrait work or am I the only one who is scratching his head ??

I think bokeh is silly and useless and a sign of laziness.

If the photographer would just spend 5 seconds looking for an adequate background, then it wouldn't have to be blurred almost out of existence.

Whenever I see a photograph that is crisp and sharp everywhere, my own eyes can scan the whole frame as though it is the best 2 dimension representation of our 3D world. Whatever I'm not looking directly at is a little blurry, when I look at it then it resolves and is sharp.

Whenever I see a photograph with far too much bokeh in it, such as anything made with this lens wide open; I can't resolve any of the detail at all except for the subject. So it is not an accurate representation of the world, and it's just silly. Like a toy.

If I felt that I needed to make the background blurry to accentuate the subject, then I could do that in post with photoshop. Maybe not as good, but really is anyone even looking that hard? Put my doctored pic against this lens and most wouldn't even know.

I use the Nikkor 105mm DC f/2 (on my Canon 5D Mk IV), and it's so sharp its almost scary. I wonder if an even sharper 'portrait' lens is a good thing? Maybe for other subjects, but at the size, weight and cost of this new '1.4'... dunno.

Good lens no question. Very expensive no question. Many will stay with 85`s Nikkor or Sigma art. Yes this lens are not 105mm but there are far mor affordable and in some cases more usable as focal lenght. Prefer - 135/2.0VR or 85 1.2.

The isolation is fantastic but there's something almost disturbing about the bokeh in the aperture sweep photos of the rose. The effect is mostly on the leaves on the left side. If I didn't know better I would say say they were blurred in post owing to how unnatural they are rendered relative to the rest of the frame. There is also a double image being formed within the bokeh which is something I have never seen before. I hate being an armchair critic and overall the lens seems like a pinnacle of measurable optical performance so take my observations with a grain of salt. In the end I am left wondering is if maybe modern lens development has been backed into a corner by high pixel density sensors and we are now sacrificing the qualitative for the quantitative.

Wide open bokeh looks fine - smooth and no doubling. The cat's eye shape that shows up in the second image at 2.2 is not distracting and while not the ideal shape, everything else looks fine. Where does one get the masters degree in bokeh judging? I want that qualification.

This lens appears to be quite remarkable. I just wonder why Nikon have chosen not to update the old 105 2.5 that was such a venerable workhorse in the film era. It would have been a superb and reasonably priced lens. All the hopes and aspirations of the past 30 years have landed on yet another $2000+ lens.

DXOmark doesn't test for aesthetics, so the score for the 105mm F/1.4E doesn't account for swirly, catseye bokeh or a generally bland presentation, not to mention that plasticky, plastic, made in China build quality. DXO also doesn't take into account some major issues like the dinky micro AF motor with the plastic gears. Nobody was saying that this lens didn't product reasonably high resolutions wide open, but the images in question are unremarkable in terms of aesthetics. I'm not even going to go into the issue of the photoshopped official sample images, because I'd expect a large aperture exotic lens to have fairly low color contrast wide open.

Bokeh on this lens is incredible buttery smooth. Even in these very tough shots with the very busy and dark tree branches with the bright sky background that can be extremely challenging for any lens. Gives you all that goodness plus sharp as a tack. The rest of it is up to a good photographer to achieve.

Beware gentle reader, the:

My lenses are better,
My brand is better,
I can do better,
I know everything pseudo-experts are on the floor!

Defienietly not my favourite Bokeh, actually it does not impressed me at all.

Not sure if its only me but I find the "bokeh" on most of the portraits here disturbing. It takes too much attention. And the eyes are not in focus on neither one .... so we see bokeh eyes.

Looks a little nervous, inferior to 85f1.4 definitely

To be honest I find the Bokeh this lens produces a bit boring. Also it's rendering is too dead. Over correction of lens flaws probably. It's so perfect, it doesn't seem really alive anymore.

The bokeh looks a bit busy on this lens, not creamy (or as circular) as one would expect considering the price tag.

This lens is just amazing. I have a mint 1.8/105 and soon I will have this, a massive improvement.