Nikon 55mm f/2.8 ais lens

The Nikon 55mm f/2.8 AIS micro lens is a normal focal length manual focus lens designed for close up work. It’s an old school lens made of metal that makes ultra sharp images. The lens has a long focus throw designed for the close up manual focusing required in macro photography.

I bought my copy in 2019 primarily to adapted it to my Fuji mirrorless camera and use it to scan hundreds of my Grandfathers kodachrome slides in a cost effective manner. Most of the time I am shooting film I get a lab to do it but when I was going to digitize so many old slides it would have been too expensive to do that professionally. Besides, I was really just digitizing these slide for sentimental reasons. It was also a justification to buy a macro lens that I wanted anyway.

I’ll write more about my experience copying slides with this lens, my camera, and using a light table to do it in another blog post. I’ll say that it performed well for this purpose but if this is your only purpose for buying a macro lens you’re probably better off getting one with a 1:1 reproduction ratio. The 1:2 reproduction ratio limits the resolution you can reach copying a 35mm sized frame. It was fine for copying my grandfathers old photos but anything more serious and if is better to look at something like the Nikon 60mm f2.8D lens which has a 1:1 reproduction ratio or something from another brand.

The process of copying slides using this method quickly became tedious and I was glad when I’d completed copying all the images that were worthwhile. I liked the results copying my own black and white film using this method but it was still too boring to do this regularly.

There is a reason that I bought the 55mm AIS lens over the 60mm 2.8D lens that has the better reproduction ratio and is optical 'better' than the 55mm. I even had the option of buying the 60mm in good condition at roughly the same price. The reason is, I like Ai-S lenses. It’s that simple. The color and contrast that comes out of these lenses is just nicer, in my opinion, and I like working with a manual focus lens most of the time.

Over time I have used this lens a for close up product photography, macro work on my Fuji XT1 where it provides a roughly 80mm(ish) field of view, and over time it has become one of my normal lenses on my 35mm camera.

In macro work the focus throw is smooth to enable precision focusing. I’ve cut down on a lot of photography gear recently so no longer have a 50mm prime lens. I’ve turned to this lens more often and used it just as a 55m prime for regular photography. I have got used to the long focus throw when using it for this type of work, the only possible downside is that it may be too sharp sometimes. I may have to look at possible options for filtration, if I don’t buy another lens, at some stage.

There are a few alternatives I considered when looking to buy a macro/micro lens. One was the Nikon 55mm 3.5 AI lens. If I had found this lens in good condition locally then I may have bought it. It has a great reputation online for its optics and the image examples I’ve seen look fantastic. The problem was I couldn’t find it. I did find a copy of the Nikon 55mm 3.5 non-ai lens for sale local to me. This would have worked with my Fuji adapter but not on my Nikon film camera and I wanted one I could use on both. The Nikon F3, which I now have, can mount non-ai lenses but I didn’t own it at this stage.

The Nikon 60mm 2.8D I did find local to me second hand for a good price, it’s a better lens technically, and I could use it both my Fuji (with adapter) and Nikon cameras. But you shouldn’t base gear decisions on technical specs alone. I wanted the 55mm AIS version because the results I saw were more to my preference and in the five or so years since I bought it I haven’t regretted that decision.