Nikon Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena Lens Review – Perfect Portrait?

Announced in September 2023, the Nikon Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 S Plena is a large-aperture prime lens with a short-telephoto focal length that is ideal for portraits. It is designed to take advantage of the larger-diameter mount that the Z system offers over its F-mount SLR/DSLR predecessor, and should easily be a Best Nikon Z Mount LensesIt aims to deliver perfect, well-rounded bokeh across the entire frame and excellent sharpness at maximum aperture.

At a glance,

• Price at time of review: $2,499 / £2579
• 11 round diaphragm blades
• 82cm minimum focus
• 139.5 mm length x 98 mm diameter, 995 g
• 82mm filter thread
• NIKON Z MOUNT

It has been named Plena in the hope that it will be considered a “classic” for years to come, and will be referred to by name rather than by focal length or other designation. The name apparently comes from the word “plenum”, which means “fully filled”. It has nothing to do with how you feel after a big meal, but instead, refers to the lens’ ability to “support the user’s creative vision”.

Unlike the other named lens in Nikon’s line-up – the 58mm “Noct” – the Plena offers autofocusing, but, like the Noct, it demands a very high price, which may be hard for many to justify.

Portraits are the obvious use-case for a 135mm lens, it’s an option for something like this Nikon Nikkor 85mm f/1.2 S Lens (Which is currently selling for a higher price than the Plena.) Other subjects for this type of focal length include still life, close-up type subjects (like flowers), and even some aspects of landscape or architecture if you want to pick out fine details.

features

The lens has a complex lens structure, which explains its high price. It consists of 16 elements in 14 groups, including 4 ED elements, 1 aspherical element, 1 SR element, and elements with Meso-Amorphous and ARNEO coats). All of these elements are designed to come together to suppress ghosting, reflections, and flare.

It has 11 diaphragm blades designed to create that beautiful, perfectly rounded bokeh (out of focus area) that many people desire and crave.

This lens is not designated as a macro lens, but it offers 0.2x magnification and a closest focus distance of 0.82mm. Given the focal length of the lens and the fact that this distance is measured from the sensor, it gives you good scope for creating close-ups of typical macro-type subjects like flowers or food.

The lens is dust and drip resistant, so you’ll feel like you can shoot in many different weather conditions. The Plena lens has the “S” designation for sharpness, but it doesn’t have the “VR” designation for inbuilt vibration reduction. This is perhaps a surprise at this focal length, but given that all full-frame Nikon Z mount cameras have in-body stabilisation, it shouldn’t prove to be too big a problem.

It is theoretically possible to use this lens with an APS-C Nikon Z camera, which would give an equivalent focal length of about 200mm. However, this seems unlikely to happen with any great frequency.

Construction and operation

This brings me to the point of build and handling – one of the big reasons you definitely won’t want to use the Plena lens with anything other than a full-frame Z camera is its size and weight.

Weighing in at nearly 1kg and measuring almost 140mm in length, it’s a hefty piece of kit. I used it with the Z7 II and the Z8, and it definitely felt more balanced with the larger Z8 – so that’s something worth considering. However, it’s actually lighter and smaller than Nikon’s 85mm f/1.2 lens, so it’s not the biggest portrait lens for your Z camera.

The Plena has a fairly simple exterior design, but it does have “Plena” etched on its exterior in yellow. A nice finishing touch, and a great way to show all your photography mates that you have a fancy expensive lens, of course.

Near the mount-end of the lens is a switch to go between autofocus and manual focus. In front of this is a control ring, which you can use for aperture, exposure compensation or ISO – you can choose whichever you prefer from the camera’s main menu, or alternatively, set it not to control anything if you’re worried about accidentally knocking it over.

There are two customizable buttons on the lens, which you can set to control dozens of different options. However, both will do the same thing—you can’t set one for one function and the other for another. The purpose of this is so that whether shooting in landscape or portrait orientation, you always have access to one button.

At the front of the lens is the focusing ring, which takes up about a quarter of the lens length. There’s no hard stop at either end, but there’s enough room to make fine adjustments nice and intuitive.

The HB-108 lens hood is included in the box. It’s quite large and extends the length of the lens considerably, but you can flip it upside down when not in use to save space.

Although the 135mm is ideal for portraits, giving you the opportunity to throw the background beautifully out of focus – you need to be aware of the limitations of the space you’ll be working with when using it. This is not a lens to use in a compact room, for example, and even when shooting outdoors, you’ll need to stand quite a distance from your subject to take half-body shots or more.

This won’t necessarily be a problem for some people, however, if you’re working in relatively tight spaces such as an office or wedding venue, an 85mm lens might offer you a little more flexibility – so it’s certainly worth considering.

Autofocus

The Nikkor 135mm Plana lens uses an internal multi-focusing mechanism that uses stepping motors (STMs), which are designed to be fast, accurate, and quiet.

During this review I used the Plena with both the Nikon Z8 and the Nikon Z7 II. With the Z8, I found that focusing was really fast and accurate – using i-focus for portraits gave me mostly sharp photos.

With the Z7 II, results were a little more mixed. Even with eye-AF enabled, I found there were a number of instances where something other than the eye was actually in focus, such as the nose. With a long focal length and very wide aperture, this can ruin portraits. The Z8, with its improved focus capabilities didn’t have the same problems, so I assumed this was due to the camera rather than the lens – still, when working at maximum aperture it’s beneficial to take multiple shots and keep reviewing to make sure what you want is coming into focus.

You can also use the lens with continuous AF (C-AF) selected, which makes it useful in some action scenarios. I found this worked very well on the Z8, while a colleague also found it working similarly on the Z6 III. Again, the Z7 II isn’t as fast, so essentially you’ll need to pair the Plena with a Nikon body equipped with the latest focusing specifications to really get the best in those scenarios.

The lens is actually very quiet, so would be suitable for plena video work, and also for situations where quiet focus is preferred, such as during a wedding ceremony for example.

image quality

As you’d expect from a lens of this type and price, the photos it’s capable of taking are superb. They’re beautifully sharp across the frame, even when shooting at the widest maximum aperture of f/1.8.

The all-important bokeh is beautifully rendered, with bright highlights being perfectly rounded, and there appears to be no incidence of onion-ring or cat’s eye shaped bokeh. I tested this by photographing in front of some trees and the background bokeh is beautiful. You can also get similar results by shooting with little lights in the background.

If you don’t have any small light sources in the background, you get lovely, creamy, very dreamy bokeh that fades away from your main subject. In some cases, if you’re shooting with a very plain background, it can definitely be a bit dull, but if you choose something like a brightly coloured graffiti wall, you’ll get some beautiful results.

Although it’s tempting to constantly shoot at the widest aperture with a lens like this, you can certainly expect great results throughout the rest of the aperture range too. If you want to give a bit more context and not have everything completely blurred, something like f/2.8 or f/4 provides a good balance between subject and background – and it can also be helpful when shooting faces quite closely, as otherwise you might find that not every element of the face is in focus.

As I expected from this lens, I saw no evidence of flare or ghosting or any chromatic aberrations, even when shooting in high-contrast situations. With the standard lens-corrections applied in-camera, I couldn’t see any incidence of unattractive vignetting, even when shooting wide open.

When viewing a RAW file or JPEG that has the inbuilt lens-correction applied, there’s no obvious barrel or pincushion distortion on display. Turn it off and you may notice a small difference, with pincushion distortion slightly more apparent in some frames. Most users will experience the lens with corrections turned on, there’s no obvious reason to turn them off, so for most this shouldn’t be a problem.

Decision

For those who shoot portraits or similar/related subjects, such as events, the 135mm Plena is a fantastic lens capable of producing exceptional imagery. But, given its price – this is exactly what you would expect.

With this lens you can get pin-sharp images, beautiful bokeh and lovely out-of-focus areas. Autofocusing is generally fast and quiet, although the best performance comes from the latest and best cameras equipped with Nikon’s most recent focusing technology.

However, there are other things to consider besides the price. The size and weight of a lens like this – it’s not something you’ll take out every day, for example.

It’s also tricky to use such a long lens for portraits. In small spaces, it can be hard to get what you need – in which case the 85mm would be more appropriate. If you’re torn between two focal lengths, maybe consider where you do most of your shooting and start there. For anyone on this sort of budget, I’d probably go with the 85mm f/1.2, but the 135mm has something undoubtedly special – if you can justify getting both, you’ll have a fantastic setup.

In short, the Plena represents the best that Nikon has achieved with its lenses and Z mount technology. Do you need it? Well, probably not – but it’s pretty great, so it’s highly desirable for those who shoot a lot of portraits.

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Full specifications of the Nikon Nikkor Z 135mm f/1.8 Plena lens