Can a lens really be perfect? Nikon thinks so and calls its new Nikon Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena lens “the perfect bokeh lens”. Aimed at portrait photographers, the one-off Nikon ‘Plena’ is only the second mirrorless lens from the camera giant with its own name, after the Nikon Z 58mm f/0.95 S ‘Noct’.
The Noct was a real showpiece portrait lens in the Nikon Z system, with a list price of a whopping $8,000 / £8,300 / AU$14,000, making even Leica’s optics look like a bargain. The Plena is thankfully a relative bargain, costing only about a third of the price of the Noct – it costs $2,600 / £2,700 / AU$4,600, and goes on sale in mid-October.
That price is still significantly more expensive than Sony’s equivalent FE 135mm f/1.8 GM, not to mention the even cheaper Samyang 135mm f/1.8 and Sigma’s own version, which is available for multiple lens mounts. However, Nikon thinks its new showstopper is next level, with flawless circular bokeh and zero lens distortion, with sagittal coma, onion ring, vignetting and flare all under control.
If that technical feat is indeed achieved, the Plena will undoubtedly be one of the best Nikon lenses ever made, and should prove hugely popular with professional portrait photographers – the lower price also helps.
Nikon’s best lens yet?
I had some hands-on time with the Plena alongside the Nikon Zf prior to the global announcement (they’re not a natural pairing, by the way), and it’s a hefty piece of glass, with familiar design cues from Nikon’s other professional S-Line lenses, with a similarly engraved yellow signature like the Noct (pictured above), on an otherwise all-black, cool exterior.
At 35.1 oz / 995 g, the Plena is much smaller and lighter than the Noct, and in a similar design and price range to the Nikon Z 85mm f/1.2 S, which is considerably more expensive than a lens like the Nikon Z 85mm f/ 1.8. And unlike the manual focus-only Nikon Noct, the Plena is an autofocus lens, with quiet internal focusing and a minimum focusing distance of just 0.82 meters.
These professional S-line lenses have to offer so much more to justify the extra cost, and Nikon says the Plena has the highest overall rendering power of any Z-mount lens to date. So it will be razor sharp across the entire image area, at any aperture, and will produce heavenly-looking bokeh that retains its circular, buttery-smooth qualities right into the corners, in any light.
This is what the very best mirrorless lenses do so much better than DSLR lenses: maintain the best optical performance at any aperture, with better control over lens distortions. And the Plena, with its eleven rounded aperture blades and sixteen elements in fourteen groups, should outperform most, at least on paper.
It all sounds dreamy, and while I took a few photos with the lens during that sneak peak, we weren’t allowed to take those digital files out to look at, so for now I’ll have to make do with some sample photos. images from Nikon pros (above), and I look forward to seeing what the Plena is really made of in a full test.
I’m especially curious whether the bokeh is indeed round and smooth in the corners of the image – that would be something, because with other lenses the bokeh towards the corners usually takes the shape of a cat’s eye. The Plena is certainly a product test to look forward to, and should deliver a fun portrait shot that’s a little different.