Interesting article. Thanks, Akira, for the heads-up.
I consulted what I wrote up on this lens some ten years ago, and found most if not all points explained and elaborated in the 1001 Nights article.
A nicely balancing lens that is sturdily built and fairly heavy. It produces very sharp and contrasty images within its optimal range from f/4 to f/11. Wide open, image contrast is lowered by internal flare, so the f/1.8 setting shouldn't be used indiscriminately. It is moderately resistant to flare and ghosts under normal shooting conditions. Set it to f/5.6 if you are keen on getting the maximum quality from this lens.
On the D2X, the flare at f/1.8 is even more prominent and it looks more like residual spherical aberration to me. Anyway, image detail is very good at f/1.8 despite the lowered contrast, and by stopping down to f/2.8 you do get very high contrast, and superb image sharpness. The excellent image quality holds up surprisingly well to near f/16, but from here you do get some softening mediated by diffraction effects. There is virtually no chromatic aberration (CA) to be seen at the normal aperture settings, but a tiny amount of CA begins to creep in when the lens is stopped down beyond f/11.
IR: No issues were detected when using this lens for IR work on my Fuji S3Pro UVIR camera. Testing with the D200 (modified) confirms this information.
I purchased my sample of the 105/1.8 around 1989 and it has been with me ever since. Still working as when brand new. Only a CPU chip has been added otherwise no maintenance has been required. The wobbling pull-out lens hood annoys me still, but I tend to put a separate 62 mm lens hood on the 105 to avoid the annoyance these days.
Tristin and I independently have found the optimum aperture for landscapes to be f/11, at which setting nice "star burst" are produced. However, as I already found out long ago, you certainly can use the lens stopped down further than that.
