I had been on the fence about getting this lens for years. Partly because there are so few high quality examples of it's many claimed qualities. And since I shoot mostly street portraits, I was very interested in what a portrait would look like with this lens. So I took the dive and got it. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, since most of the reviews either praised it for sharpness (many claimed it very sharp wide open) or complained of lack of sharpness wide open and front focusing. My feeling was that it seemed to be one of those lenses which takes lots of practice and playing around with to understand and get the best out of. I got mine from a japanese seller on ebay. It was used, but in immaculate, like new condition. This is one reason I don't see any reason to buy new anymore. I basically got a new lens and saved $500. I couldn't tell that it had been mounted. Anyways, when I got it, I mounted it to my D300 and took some test shots around the yard, my first impression was how smooth and pleasantly fast the focusing was. Then I noticed what appeard to be front focusing, wide open. I made some fine tune adjustments and that didn't help much. I set fine tuning to +15 and left it, went out for real world street portraits and it worked beautifully. Not complaints. I think the combination of focal length, combined with wide aperture makes the lens very, very tricky to work with for certain things, but doesnt necessarily mean the lens is soft or defective. For portraits and street photography, I can say mine performed amazingly. And it is quite sharp wide open. Not quite as sharp as the 85mm 1.4D, which is what I use for much of my portraits, but darn close. I really think this lens can absolutely shine in the hands of a very patient and observative photographer. The build quality of the lens is absolutly amazing. Similar to the 85 1.4D, but much heavier, robust, which I like. It's really an engineering masterpiece and work of art in one. My new favorite lens, i'm looking forward to talking more shots with it. It's a poorly understood gem, introduced in 1995 and oddly is one of the oldest D lenses STILL in production (one of the oldest lenses, period) and available on the Nikon website, along with the 50mm 1.4D lenses. I believe all other D lenses have been discontinued and replaced with G lenses. I can say that this lens is AMAZING, but you cannot shoot and expect amazing results right away. One must get to know how to use it. I like the bokeh a tad better than the 85, but they're different. It's produces such good results as a normal lens, that I haven't used the Defocus Control feature yet. Here's a few examples of the The DC-NIKKOR 135mm f/2D, all shot wide open:
Originally posted by Ian Stuart Forsyth 
Post #1 by outsider
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