Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR Review

Viltrox’s series of small, lightweight, and yet surprisingly high performing lenses is called the “Air” Series. We’ve seen 20mm F2.8 and 40mm F2.5 full frame lenses along with a truly excellent series of APS-C lenses, including the 25mm F1.7, 35mm F1.7, and 56mm F1.7. The AIR lenses have all been pretty uniformly excellent, combining great optics with small, lightweight (howbeit very simple) designs and equally low price tags (all under $200). Viltrox is back with yet another AIR series lens, and this is another full frame option. While the 20mm may still stand as the most useful lens for travel, the new Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR is easily the best performer yet in the series, and is very possibly the sharpest “nifty-fifty” style lens that has even been made. It seems to best even the impressive Sigma 50mm F2 DG DN from their iSeries, a lens I thought was very impressive. There’s no question the Sigma lens has a much higher degree of build quality and functionality, but at a price tag more than 3x higher than the sub-$200 AIR 50mm, I suspect that Viltrox will have another best seller on their hands. It is the new lightweight 50mm to grab (just 205g)? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below or reading on in the text review.

https://youtu.be/cZnA2-0p__A

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 Sony a7RV and the Sony Alpha 1. You can find the product listing page for the Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR here.

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Viltrox AIR Series Reviews:

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I probably don’t need to say much about the 50mm focal length at this point. I have probably reviewed more 50mm lenses than any other. It would be easy to ask the question, “Do we even need another 50mm lens?” The short answer might be “no”, but I suspect there will always be room for a lens like the AIR 50mm, as, shockingly, it is one of the sharpest 50mm lenses that I’ve tested.

For example, here is the Sony 50mm F1.4 GM (my favorite 50mm lens) at F2 compared to the AIR 50mm in the center of the frame:

But here is something absurd: check out the corner comparison!

Oof! The Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR is SHARPER than the $1300 GM lens in the corners. In fact, all told, the tiny little 50mm Viltrox is the sharper of the two lenses. It’s absurdly sharp for a sub $200 lens…and it’s a full frame, autofocusing, full functional lens.

Now, to be clear, this is not a BETTER lens than my 50mm GM. It might be sharper at wide apertures, but it doesn’t have anywhere near the quality of rendering, feature set, or build quality, but the very fact that I’m even having this conversation is absurd. I’ll hit some of the weak points of the AIR 50mm in this review, but if we are just talking about sharpness, this lens is just silly sharp. Here’s a deep crop from a photo taken in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district:

Before jumping into the review proper, there is one matter that needs to be cleared up. Viltrox has an existing 50mm F1.8 lens, which I reviewed here. That lens has exactly three things going for it: it has a metal build, very slightly brighter maximum aperture, and does have an aperture ring. Beyond that, you need to forget about that lens. It costs about twice as much, isn’t nearly as sharp, doesn’t have as good of autofocus, and the optical glass and color aren’t nearly as good as this cheaper lens. What’s more, the older 50mm F1.8 weighs 340g (+135g), is physically larger (+22mm in length), and I would argue that the AIR lens is better made despite being pastics rather than metal. I won’t be surprised to see the older APS-C F1.4 and FF F1.8 series phased out in the near future.

The AIR lenses are great! Much like Samyang’s “Tiny series”, these lenses are for those who don’t care about bells and whistles and just want a lightweight, high performing lens. This won’t be the series for those looking for aperture rings, buttons, or rings, but if you want a light, tough, high performing lens at a great price, then grab a Viltrox AIR series lens. Sound interesting? I suspect so, so let’s dive in a little deeper into the details.

Viltrox AIR 50mm F2 Build and Handling

The theme for the AIR series is “Carry Less, Capture More”. Sometimes Chinese expressions get lost in translation to English, but I think this one works. The key attribute of the AIR series that makes me personally want them in my kit is how easy they are to throw into the bag and bring along while knowing that I’m still going to get great optical results. Initially I was far more excited by the notion of their PRO and LAB series of higher end lenses, but Viltrox has won me over with just how good these AIR lenses are. Many of my images in this review were taken on a recent trip to Japan, and while I had both a new LAB lens along with a new PRO lens to test, it was the AIR 50mm that went on the trip with me. Why? Because it is small and light.

As noted, the Viltrox AF 50mm F2 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!)

As noted in the intro, The new AIR 50mm is much more compact than the earlier 50mm F1.8 lens, only 65mm in diameter (2.6″) and 56.5mm in length (2.2″). It weighs only 205g (7.23oz), which is a bit heavier than the Sony FE 50mm F1.8 (186g), but this makes sense as the Viltrox is actually the better made lens (and hugely optically superior as well). The three full frame AIR series lenses look extremely similar.

That makes for a very compact profile on your camera. The lens is very small and lightweight on my Sony full frame bodies (Alpha 1 and a7RV), but would also be a great fit on the smaller cameras like the a7C series.

Up front we have a 58mm 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.

It seems like Viltrox has switched from the more confusion sensor dimensions they previously had on their lenses (43.3mm) to just including the term “full frame” there instead.

There is an included lens hood made in high quality, thick plastics. It bayonets into place precisely and stays locked there.

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 manual focus experience on Sony is good.

The Viltrox AIR 50mm 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. Here’s an image taken at F8:

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.

With a few exceptions, Viltrox lenses have generally not been very good when it comes to minimum focus distance and maximum magnification, and I would love to say this lens is an exception to that rule, but that’s unfortunately not the case. If I can give any credit, it is that the 51cm MFD is slightly better than the 55cm on the older 50mm F1.8. That very slightly improves maximum magnification from 0.10x to 0.11x, but that is unfortunately still considerably below the 50mm average of 0.15x. Here’s what that looks like:

You can get a blurred out background if you get closer to subjects, but not a high level of magnification.

Viltrox’ more expensive lens series have weathersealing, but the budget AIR series does not. The AIR 50mm 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 50mm F2 AIR, like other lenses in the series, feels sturdy and well made. It is lightweight, will balance easily on a wide variety of camera bodies and sizes, and doesn’t really feel “cheap” in any way.

Viltrox AF 50mm F2 STM Autofocus for Stills

The Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR, like other AIR lenses, utilizes a lead-screw type stepping focus motor (STM) that makes for fast and quiet focus changes. Focus felt silent unless I put my ear up next to the barrel, and even then I could hear very little focus noise other than a slight click from the aperture blades at first. Focus speed is well above average for a budget lens. In my focus tests I found that focus changes were fast and accurate, and even while doing the tests I felt a sense of surprise at how snappy focus felt.

That made it a great street lens, easily able to quickly nab focus even at night. Daytime focus was effortless.

The Canon booth at CP+ in Tokyo had basketball players on a court, and I found it easy to shoot action sequences there.

The Sony booth had breakdancers doing their moves, and again I found it extremely easy on Alpha 1 to track the action with the AIR 50mm and get perfectly focused results.

Easier work like portraits was obviously effortless.

Frankly I never really thought about focus at all, which is just what I want in a lens like this.

I could get the shots I wanted without any issue, and that’s what matters to me.

Focus for Video

Video AF was actually surprisingly strong. Not only are focus pulls smooth and well damped, but focus breathing is quite low as well, making for a more cinematic feel to focus changes.

My hand test went very well, with successful transitions from my hand to my eye and back. The low focus breathing helped to keep the shot looking relatively cinematic. It’s worth noting that the footage also looked very sharp and with good subject delineation.

Here’s a grab from a video clip, shot at F2:

Real world shots that should be fairly static were just that. They locked on a subject and didn’t bounce around and pulse. In another clip where a woman walked up an alley towards the camera, focus moved smoothly with her and was consistently well focused.

Overall I would say that focus is excellent.

Viltrox AF 50mm F2 Image Quality

The Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR has an optical design of 13 elements in 9 groups. Seven of these are exotic elements, including three ED (extra-low dispersion) element and 4 HR (high refractive index) elements. The MTF looks excellent, with basically a flat line until the very edge of the frame, but even there it is only a mild drop on the sagittal plane.

It would be hard to overemphasize how sharp this lens is, even at F2. I was repeatedly impressed when I zoomed into images at just how much detail was there.

This is a lens that can easily handle even the highest resolution sensors on Sony, which is really pretty mindblowing from a sub-$200 lens.

We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette. The AIR 50mm shows a tiny amount of pincushion distortion and moderate amount of vignette.

I used a -2 to correct a bit of pincushion distortion, and vignette required around +50 correct (right under two stops). That’s really quite good for such a compact lens, and shows why Viltrox was probably smart to make an F2 lens rather than an F1.8 lens. This shot, for example, was shot at F2 and you can see that the corners don’t look bad (no corrections).

Likewise distortion is low enough that I doubt you will ever see it in real world images…even without correction.

Viltrox seems to have discovered the formula for largely eliminating fringing in their lenses. The 50mm F2 shows almost no longitudinal chromatic aberrations. Fringing is pretty much perfectly corrected.

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). Again, there is no evidence of any fringing.

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 the a7RV (61MP) 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 F2:

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. Centering is excellent in the copy that I tested, with even results in all four corners. Here’s a handheld, real world shot at F2, showing oustanding sharpness all across the frame.

The balance across the frame that the AIR 50mm shows even at F2 is so incredibly rare. You can see from the comparison below that the result from the mid-frame (left) is only a tiny bit sharper and more contrasty than the upper left corner result (right).

So with such an impressive wide open result, is there even any room for improvement when you stop the lens down? Turns out the answer is yes, though not in an extreme way. Stopping down F2.8 does give a bit of contrast boost. It’s not huge, but I could see it all across the frame.

Corners are also very mildly improved, with better contrast and slightly more detail.

Stopping down to F5.6 gives a tiny bit more sharpness and contrast in some spots, while other places look pretty much identical to F2.8.

Bottom line is that very few lenses at any price point are sharper than this. It’s pretty incredible just how sharp the AIR 50mm is.

Landscape apertures look great, with great contrast and delineation of fine details, as you might expect. Here’s a look at Yohohama Harbor at F5.6.

Diffraction will show up as usual at smaller apertures, with some softening by F11 and more obvious softening at F16.

This is a lens that repeatedly made me smile when I looked at images at 100% magnification. It’s actually pretty hard to believe that these sub-$200 lenses are so good.

I’ve been noting the improvement to Viltrox colors over the past two years since they switched suppliers for their optical glass. Once again I’m very happy with the color rendition from the lens, which feels neutral in color balance, nicely saturated, and with good contrast levels in the colors.

Images accurately captured what I saw and I thought they looked great.

The challenge for lenses with good natural contrast (particularly those that aren’t huge to give the engineers space to try to do everything well) is that the bokeh quality suffers. That’s partly the case here, as there were moments where I thought bokeh looked a little busy.

Specular highlights actually looked pretty decent, though.

How about some “Canon bokeh”:

In most shots I thought rendering (if not exceptional) looked pretty good.

I don’t think the bokeh is great, but neither is it terrible, either.

This shot, for example, has the foreground mostly blurred out, and I think it works well here.

And, where the AIR 50mm shines is obviously in the ability to have great contrast and subject delineation.

Flare resistance is actually pretty great. You can see in this shot there is bright evening sun, but without any ghosting or veiling.

The image above was shot at F5.6, but I found that flare resistance was actually pretty consistent across the board. The flare response at F2 and then at F11 looked pretty much identical.

There was no veiling in this shot. Contrast was perfect.

The bottom line is that there has never been a better lens optically at this kind of price point. I love the idea of having a lens that is priced like a nifty fifty but pretty much performs like a GM lens. It’s crazy! This lens feels like it belongs on a camera like this:

If you want to see more images, visit the image gallery here.

Conclusion

The Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR was just a fantastic lens to take on a trip. It is obviously incredibly sharp, but also it focuses great, is small and lightweight, and clearly the “risk factor” feels lower when you are travling with a sub-$200 lens vs a lens that costs $1000+.

And the lens just takes great pictures. No, the rendering is nothing like the magical 50mm F1.2 GM, but who expected that anyway? The sharpness is like that lens, however, and the overal rendering good enough that you really could use it professionally if you were on a tighter budget.

The APS-C lenses in this series (25mm, 35mm, and 56mm F1.7 lenses) have all been impressively good, but I’ve never been as impressed by an AIR series lens as much as the Viltrox AF 50mm F2 AIR for the simple reason that it is a full frame lens. Engineering a full frame lens is much more difficult, and the fact that Viltrox has done it so impeccably here really is mindblowing. This lens is absurdly good for the money, and makes me wonder just what Viltrox is going to do with the Pro 50mm F1.4 and LAB 50mm F1.2. Can’t wait!

Pros:

Lightweight, compact design
Lens feels tough and well made
Well executed, smooth manual focus ring
Includes lens hood and pouch
USB-C port for firmware updates
Excellent focus accuracy
Good focus speed
Strong video focus
Low focus breathing
Exceptional sharpness from F2 on
Low distortion
Moderate vignette for so compact a lens
Good color rendering
Good flare resistance
Fantastic price to performance ratio

Cons:

No weather sealing or features
Maximum magnfication isn’t great

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GEAR USED:

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