Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 X-Mount Review

We now have a name for Viltrox’s series of small, lightweight, and yet surprisingly high performing lenses – the “Air” Series. We’ve seen 20mm F2.8 and 40mm F2.4 full frame lenses, a really excellent 56mm F1.7 APS-C lens, and now a companion to that lens in the form of the new Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7. I’m delighted to see this lens, as I really liked the 56mm, and this is arguably an even more useful focal length. Fuji has two 35mm options already: the 35mm F2 (which I reviewed here), and the 35mm F1.4 (which I haven’t reviewed). Their most recent lens in this general vicinity is the excellent 33mm F1.4 LM WR lens which I reviewed here. I’m a big fan of the 33mm F1.4, which has beautiful rendering, but it also retails for a a whopping $799 USD, which is, of course, out of the range of many buyers. The Viltrox provides a much cheaper alternative at just $179 USD while still delivering a lens with a lot of great qualities. Is it worth checking out? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below…or just keep reading.

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Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Fujifilm X-H2 camera.

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35mm is a slightly oddball focal length on APS-C, landing at a 52.5mm full frame equivalent. It stands to reason why the 33mm (49.5mm) is more conventional, as it is delivering that typical 50mm “normal” angle of view. That extra 3mm is hardly likely to make much of a difference. This is a great focal length that gives a very normal, relatable point of view.

In Viltrox’s earlier days they released an F1.4 series with a 23mm, 33mm, and 56mm option. This new series is going to naturally provide a bit of confusion, as the newer lenses have smaller maximum apertures (F1.7 rather than F1.4), have a slightly downgraded build (no aperture ring, plastic housing rather than metal), but are actually better lenses in terms of autofocus and optical performance. Viltrox has improved their optical glass, the smoothness and effectiveness of their autofocus motors, and has generally become much more competent in their optical designs. There’s also the fact that the new 35mm F1.7 is 17mm shorter and weighs a full 100g less, which is a core part of why the “Air” series has proven so popular.

Much like Samyang’s “Tiny series”, this lens is for those who don’t care about bells and whistles and just want a lightweight, high performing lens. Add in the fact that, like the 56mm F1.7, this new lens is one of the least expensive lenses that can fully resolve the extremely demanding 40MP sensor. It’s sharp even at F1.7, has nice bokeh, and can produce extremely nice images.

Sound interesting? I suspect so, so let’s dive in a little deeper into the details.

Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 Build and Handling

The first thing to note is the slightly unusual maximum aperture value. Similar lenses are going to be F1.8, not F1.7, but I like this move as it sets the lens apart and gives it a small but real advantage over F1.8 lenses. F1.8 is 2/3rds of a stop slower than F1.4, while F1.7 is 1/2 half stop slower. That also means that this lens has a full half stop advantage over a lens like the Fuji 35mm F2. That’s a reasonably useful improvement, giving some additional light gathering and that slightly larger maximum aperture will also mean slightly larger and softer specular highlights, which helps close the gap a bit with F1.4 lenses.

As noted, the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 eschews the heavier metal casing typically used for the earlier Viltrox lenses and embraces a more conventional, lightweight design in polycarbonates (engineered plastics). I wouldn’t call the build high grade here, but what I can say is that nothing about the plastics feel flimsy. It doesn’t have the feel of the early Samyang Tiny series lenses but instead feels tough and durable; its the kind of lens that feels like it could survive some falls (not that I intentionally dropped it!)

The new AF 35mm F1.7 is extremely compact, only 64mm in diameter (2.6″) and 54.7mm in length (2.15″), making it pretty much identical in size to the 56mm F1.7. It weighs only 170g (6oz), which is 1g less than the 56mm.

That makes for a very compact profile on your camera. I happen to be using the larger X-H2 body, but the small size will be even more compelling on Fuji’s more compact cameras.

Up front we have a 52mm filter thread, which is a small but relatively common filter size.  The front of the lens fascia has a variety of information imprinted on it and has a classic profile. I’m a fan of having some lens information on the front fascia, as I feel it adds character to the lens.

There is a lens hood included that bayonets into place with more confidence and precision than the 56mm lens. It locks completely into place when mounted, and won’t be knocked off kilter by little bumps. It’s also considerably larger than the very compact hood included with the 56mm, and just feels more robust and better made in general.

A lens pouch is also included. The pouch doesn’t add a lot of protection value, but, like the hood, at least it is included. There are many more expensive lenses that include neither a pouch or a hood.

This inexpensive series is set apart from most of Viltrox’s lenses in that there is no aperture ring in the design. There are no switches, either. The only feature on the lens barrel is a wide manual focus ring. The manual focus ring has a nice amount of damping and moves smoothly. All manual focus aids (including automatic magnification of the focus area) will work with the Viltrox, and I appreciate the fact that manual focus speed is improved to where you can make larger focus changes with one twist of the wrist, particularly if you move faster (this is a non-linear focus ring).

The Viltrox AF 35mm has 9 blades in its aperture iris. The blades do a very reasonable job of maintaining a circular shape as the aperture is stopped down. When stopped down far enough, an 18 bladed sunstar will emerge.

We have an important Viltrox standard in the form of a USB-C port on the metal lens mount that allows you to connect the lens to a computer and update the firmware directly.  The firmware update process is very simple; just unzip the upgrade folder, drag the firmware update file to the folder that shows up when the lens is attached to the computer, and the update is done in seconds.

One area of improvement over the 56mm is that the minimum focus distance is 33cm (0.33m) and provides a higher magnification level of 0.13x. This is only very slightly bested by the 0.14x of the Fuji 35mm F2. Here’s what that looks like:

The previous Viltrox 33mm could only focus as closely as 40cm and delivered just a 0.10x magnification, so this is certainly improved. You certainly won’t be able to do any “macro” work with it, but you can certainly get close enough to strongly blur out a background.

While some Viltrox lenses have started to come with weather sealing, this inexpensive 35mm lens does not have it. It does have a HD Nano multilayer coating with water-resistant and antifouling coating on the front element.

Though the AIR series is short on bells and whistles, the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 does excel in one key area: it is very compact and lightweight. And while there aren’t any special features, the lens feels sturdy and well made. As I noted in the intro, this is a lens designed for a specific market, and I feel like Viltrox has made the right choices in order to give us a functional lens that at the same time is extremely inexpensive.

Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 STM Autofocus

The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 STM utilizes a lead-screw type stepping focus motor (STM) that makes for reasonably fast and definitely quiet focus changes.  Focus felt silent unless I put my ear up next to the barrel, where I could hear some very light whirring during major focus changes.  Focus speed is about average for an X-mount lens. There are some obvious steps (howbeit rapid ones) from this particular stepping motor during significant focus changes. I noticed focus speed far less in normal work where it’s rare to go from close to distant all the time. More minor focus changes happen fast enough that it didn’t stand out.

I’ve reviewed about four Viltrox lenses on both Fuji and then Sony, and in every case I’ve found AF more snappy and appealing in general on Sony. But even here on Fuji, I’ve had good focus accuracy overall. I had good success locking onto a variety of subjects, up to and including portrait work. I didn’t do formal portraits during this review cycle, but I did shoot a number of casual portraits during autumn hikes, and always got accurate focus on the eye.

General purpose shooting produced a lot of well focused results.

Ferrari the cat followed my wife and I on an evening walk, so I turned to take an extended burst of photos as he came towards us. As per usual with most non-sports lenses on Fuji, autofocus was initially fine, but as Ferrari continued to move closer and closer, focus remained a bit behind him, and its not until he stopped and looked to the side that autofocus caught up.

This is part Viltrox, yes, but also a big part on Fuji, as even some of the best of their current cameras (like my X-H2) just aren’t matching what I see from other brands in terms of autofocus. This lens should be fine if you’re doing event, general purpose, or portrait work, but if you are looking for a lens fast enough to keep up with young children or animals moving around, look elsewhere.

Video AF is also a mixed bag. Focus pulls are rather unimpressive. They aren’t fast, and there is some obvious stepping in the process. This is quite different from what I saw on Sony with the AF 56mm F1.7 lens, so at least part of this is the nature of Fuji’s video AF, which is a fair bit behind what I see on Sony and Canon. As per usual on Fuji, I also had issues with responsiveness on the touchscreen to try to change focus subjects.

My hand test was also a mixed bag, as while transitions from my hand to my eye and back were sometimes smoother, I also had moments where focus racked too far (past my head), and had to pull back to my face after the obvious rack.

Real world focus transitions could be smoother, but was very much shot dependent. I fully anticipate better autofocus results on Sony and Nikon based on past experience. Overall, autofocus performance is roughly average from what I’ve come to expect from lenses from Fuji. I went back and looked at my results from the premium Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 WR with a linear focus motor, and the results in the video tests were no better.

Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 Image Quality

The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 has an optical design of 11 elements in nine groups. What’s surprising in such an inexpensive lens is how many of these are exotic elements. There is one ED (extra-low dispersion) element, 2 HR (high refractive index) elements, and one aspherical element as a part of the design. The MTF looks excellent, though just a hair softer than than the 56mm F1.7.

All of this adds up to yet another Viltrox lens that is punching well above its weight class optically, which is important, as the 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 is the most demanding sensor for lens performance of any platform that I test. It’s not hard to produce beautiful, highly detailed images with this lens.

We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette.  The 35mm F1.7 does well in the distortion department but slips a bit with vignette.

I used a -3 to correct a tiny bit of pincushion distortion, though for portrait work you probably don’t want to correct that (a bit of pincushion distortion is flattering). Vignette required a +75 to correct (3 stops), though it is fairly linear and largely “works” for portraits, creating a natural vignette that draws the eye to the subject. These results were very consistent with what I found from the 56mm F1.7. A correction profile does exist in Lightroom for RAW images already. The linear nature of the vignette means that even uncorrected images don’t look bad.

Viltrox seems to have discovered the formula for largely eliminating fringing in their lenses. The 35mm F1.7 shows very low amounts of longitudinal chromatic aberrations.  Fringing is well corrected, leaving very little fringing in my tests.

Real world results also look clean.

Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas (like bare branches framed at the edge of images). There are minimal amounts of fringing on either side of the black/white transitions.

I also didn’t spot any issues in real world results, with branches in images looking clean of fringing.

So how about resolution and contrast?  All chart tests done with a Fujifilm X-H2 (40MP) using a tripod and a two second timer. Here’s a look at my test chart:

And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner at F1.7:

We see here what the MTF chart suggested. There’s a very consistent performance across the frame, with the corners really not all that far behind the center performance. To put this performance in context, here’s a look at the premium Fuji XF 33mm F1.4 WR stopped down to F1.8:

I see some contrast and detail advantage for the Fuji in the center, with results about equal in the corners (and in the midframe, which is not shown here). Certainly the inexpensive Viltrox lens delivers quite a competitive result for costing many times less.

In real world images wide open contrast isn’t flawless in the way a lens like the Viltrox Pro AF 75mm F1.2 is, at least on Fuji’s 40MP APS-C sensor, but I suspect it would be on 26MP sensors from Fuji or Sony. Even on 40MP, however, results look really solid.

Stopping down F2 does give a bit of contrast boost, but without a radical improvement. I see a bit more at F2.8, then at F4. Peak performance comes at F5.6-F8:

Real world results in this aperture range are nice and crisp, with good detail and contrast.

On a high resolution body like my X-H2, diffraction comes early, so while F8 still looks as good as F5.6, by F11 you will see some softening of the fine details due to diffraction, and by F16 (minimum aperture) the image is considerably softer.

I suspect that no one is going to be disappointed by the amount of sharpness you can get from the AF 35mm F1.7, particularly for the price tag.

My chief objection to early Viltrox lenses was that I didn’t really love the quality of the optical glass. Colors felt a little “cheap”, but their optical glass has improved by leaps and bounds, and these days I would consider color rendition from the optical glass a strength for the company, even when we’re talking about these inexpensive little lenses.

It’s autumn in Ontario, Canada, where I live, and that means that colors are naturally rich and beautiful. Fuji cameras also have great color science, and that all makes for a winning combination.

Here’s another that shows rich, vivid colors.

One area where I do prefer the more expensive Fuji lens is in the rendering and quality of the background blur. The Viltrox is fairly good, but the Fuji has a really pleasing rendering that I found very appealing. Here’s a look at the specular highlights from the Viltrox.

I found the overall bokeh rendering pretty good at a variety of distances, though not quite as creamy as the Fuji lens.

Stop down a bit and you can get fairly round specular highlights across the frame even near the edge of the image.

Flare resistance is a bit of a mixed bag despite the robust lens hood. Flare resistance head on is fairly good, with only minimal ghosting and veiling, but there are points with the sun right out of frame where you’ll see some flashing and loss of contrast.

It’s largely fairly artistic, however, so I have no major objections.

I also found that coma was fairly well controlled. The low fringing helps star points to look clean (not purple fringing), and there isn’t much comatic distortion near the edges of the frame.

All told, this makes for a pretty compelling “nifty-fifty” style lens for Fuji, and at a great price. If you want to see more images, visit the image gallery here!

Conclusion

Viltrox didn’t have a “name” for these new lightweight, compact lenses when they started selling them, but now they do. The “Air” series has proven to be a hit with a winning formula of light weight, low price, and surprisingly strong optical performance. I was a fan of the Samyang “Tiny” series for similar reasons, but the “Air” lenses typically only cost about 50% of what the Samyang lenses did.

The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 has generally been a lot of fun to use. It’s a great focal length, doesn’t have any meaningful flaws, and can easily produce images that I really like.

The fact that this lens can be had for well under $200 is an even bigger bonus, and the 50mm(ish) focal length is beloved for a reason. This is a great walkaround lens, perfect for capturing the varied moments that life brings. Lenses like this are great for APS-C owners who want that perfect mix of small, light, cheap…and high performing. Kudos to Viltrox for making yet another lens that I’ve immensely enjoyed using.

Pros:

• Lightweight, compact design
• Lens feels tough and well made
• Well executed, smooth manual focus ring
• Lens hood is improved
• USB-C port for firmware updates
• Good focus accuracy
• Cinematic focus transitions for video
• Outstanding sharpness from F1.7 on
• Nice bokeh
• Fairly low distortion
• Good color rendering
• Fantastic price to performance ratio

Cons:

• Autofocus a bit slow
• Some visible steps from focus motor
• Vignette a bit heavy
• No weather sealing or features

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 here: https://geni.us/Dustin35mmAir (extra 15% from December 18-30th)

Purchase the Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7 @ Viltrox (use code DUSTINABBOTT for 8% off starting April 23rd) | B&H Photo | Adorama | Nuzira | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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