Joe Lacey and I were trading comparison shots made by various lenses shot wide-open,looking for chromatic aberration,and so I dug out a bunch of prime lenses and tested them at their widest three stops,testing for CA. Honestly, I seldom think of shooting my lenses wide-open unless I really,really must do so--not for image quality reasons usually, but much more frequently because I know I need some depth of field to shape my images--and since I like telephoto shooting the most, the widest aperture often gives shallow DOF, and I am usually after MORE depth of field than a thin sliver. Focusing accuracy errors, human focusing placement errors, and subject movement can all combine to throw off the focus in a photo,and the best insurance against improper focus placement ruining a photo or a whole series of photos, is having greater DOF.And so with that philosophy held in mind, whenever possible I often will consider that f/4.8 and f/5.6 are my very first real choices as starting points.It's a major disappointment to shoot a series of photos and find that your paper-thin DOF band has caused 30 to 50 percent of the photos to be somewhere between 'unusable' to 'less-than-optimal' due to focus placement issues or DOF issues. Most times I want to be shooting at an aperture that gives a little bit more than the barest minimum of DOF,and I almost always prefer having at least a small DOF cushion.
Overall--CA is worst at maximum aperture in every one of these lenses. CA often decreases at one stop closed down from maximum aperture, and by the third f/stop CA is virtually undetectable or is at the worst,of very minor consequence with any and all of these lenses.
Clockwise from left laying on their sides are the 105 AF-D D.C., a pre-1993 135 AF D.C.,and a 180 AF-D. In the upper right,sitting on their rear caps are the 85mm AF-D 1.4, then the 60mm AF-D 2.8 Micro-Nikkor. Returning to the bottom left of the picture, the left-most lens is the 20mm AF-D 2.8,which is a 62mm filter thread lens,and is the largest-appearing of the wide angles in this photo. The next lens is the 24mm AF-D 2.8, then the 35mm AF-D f/2, and finally,with the 180mm's objective lens pointed at it,is the 50mm AF 1.8.