Nikon Nikkor Z MC 105 mm f/2.8 VR S review - Summary

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Nikon Nikkor Z MC 105 mm f/2.8 VR S

29 May 2025

Maciej Latałło

11. Summary

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Pros:

very solid, closed, and weather-sealed mechanical construction,
excellent resolution in the frame centre,
very good resolution on the edge of the APS-C/DX sensor,
good resolution on the edge of full frame,
practically zero longitudinal chromatic aberration,
slight lateral chromatic aberration,
lack of problems with spherical aberration,
slight distortion,
moderate coma,
low astigmatism,
very nice out-of-focus areas,
negligible vignetting on the APS-C/DX sensor,
efficient image stabilization,
silent and accurate autofocus.

Cons:

high vignetting on full frame near the maximum relative aperture,
performance against bright light should have been better,
monstrous focus breathing.

After comparing the list of pros and cons of the tested Nikkor Z MC 105 mm f/2.8 VR S you have to admit you deal here with a very well-put-together instrument. If you additionally analyse the list of cons you find out these problems are stemming from conscious decisions of the constructors. They had to optimize the lens for macro photography so these flaws in main usages of the tested lens become not especially important.

At the same time you have to emphasize the fact that Nikon took proper care not only of excellent image quality in the frame centre but also decided to optimize image on the edge of full frame in an efficient way. Few rival lenses can boast of such a performance.

The Nikkor Z MC 105 mm f/2.8 VR S is not a cheap lens, as currently it costs about $850. Still, you have to remember that the cheaper models produced by Tamron and Laowa are devoid of optical stabilization and they correct edges of the frame in an inferior way. What's interesting, for a quite similar amount of money you can buy the Sigma, also without optical image stabilization, and the price of the Sony model exceeds $1500 so is really over the top. Taking it all into account the sum of money you have to pay for the tested Nikkor doesn't sound especially outlandish and it might encourage the purchase.