Half of reason I even bother with full frame is wide open.

Any smartphone these days can give perfectly good sharp photos. I lug the beast around to get shots you can't get with a smartphone.

Shooting wide open is fashionable because it’s a sign of expensive gear. Once artificial bokeh is perfected I expect people will stop obsessing over blurry backgrounds.

Maybe for outdoor daylight situations. Any indoor or night time shot, fast lens wide open means getting shots that aren’t possible on a phone. Night mode on my phone is fine for still subjects but humans like to move. I guess if they keep adding more cameras to phones, they’ll get enough light to construct a usable image without having a 1 second exposure.

I can't speak for lmilcin, but wide open is also critical in low light to minimize ISO noise or to even have a stop or 2 down from the widest to have a little width in the focal plane while still capturing action.

Agreed on the shots where you're at 1.4 and pushing the limits of your shutter speed.

It's the new high dynamic range - splattered everywhere in a gatekeepery effort to substitute "I have spent a lot on camera equipment" for "I know how to compose photographs in an interesting way".

I hope not. My Nikkor 135mm dc is quadrupled in value since I bought it :)

DC stands for “defocus control", as distorting the bokeh forward of backward.

I picked up an old stock 105mm last year, case included. I love how it makes people look, it's a great bridge between vintage and modern lenses.

How do you feel abbout the DC function? I've found R settings don't really focus correctly with AF, so it's best to focus manually. Is that the case with the 135mm version too?