Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 E Review

Each one of Viltrox’s Pro series lenses have proven to be serious disruptors in the lens market. The 75mm F1.2 set the bar from what was optically achievable in a fast APS-C telephoto, while the 27mm F1.2 proved to be an exceptional general purpose lens great for everything from portraiture to fine art photos. This will be the first time that a Pro series lens went directly head-to-head with one of the top Fuji lenses, however, as the new Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 is in every way a top contender with the Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 WR, a lens that I gave a largely positive review and then subsequently purchased myself. I love the optics in the 56mm Fuji, but the autofocus motor is coarse and primitive. The Viltrox Pro 56mm offers the robust build (including thorough weather sealing) and awesome optics of the Fuji lens but adds their high end HyperVCM focus motors for faster, quieter, and smoother autofocus. I have the unique opportunity to test both the Sony E-mount version along with the Fuji X-mount version, as Viltrox sent me test copies of both. In my Fuji X-mount review, I’ll have the opportunity to do a direct head-to-head with the Fuji XF 56mm F1.2 WR, while here on Sony I’ll focus on alternatives like the Sirui Sniper 56mm F1.2 and Sigma 56mm F1.4. Is the Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 the new portrait prime of choice? You can either read on in this review or watch the video review linked below to find out.

Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 E APS-C Review | Viltrox Steamrolls the Competition

Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review sampler 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 APS-C mode (26MP) Sony a7RV. You can see the product page for the 56mm F1.2 here.

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AI SUMMARY: The Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 lens emerges as a strong contender in the APS-C lens market, challenging even the well-regarded Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 WR. Renowned for its high-quality optics, robust build, and superior autofocus capabilities, this lens is versatile across various mounts—offering more intricate control options on Sony E-mount compared to a simpler Fuji X-mount version. Despite being somewhat heavier, it excels in performance, with sharp image quality, minimal distortion, and beautifully defocused backgrounds. Comparatively affordable at $580 USD, the Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 offers a compelling package that disrupts its competition with impressive features and pricing.

Strengths:

Exceptional optical quality with sharp, high-contrast images even at a wide aperture.
Fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus, thanks to the HyperVCM focus motor.
Robust build quality with thorough weather sealing for durability.
Competitive pricing compared to similar high-end lenses, offering good value.

Weaknesses:

Heavier and larger than some alternatives, which might affect portability.
Some flare issues in bright light, though not significantly detrimental.
Focus performance on Fuji may have occasional misses compared to Sony.
Lacks some advanced video-focused features on the Fuji version.

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It’s a bit of an irony, but I would argue that with the Pro 56mm and the other two Pro APS-C lenses, the better version has been the Sony while the more important version is the Fuji. There tend to be more choices on Sony, though that is increasingly less true as more and more lenses find their way to Fuji’s X-mount. The first Pro lens (the 75mm F1.2) came at a time when few third-party lenses were available on the system, so it sold very well as a less expensive premium alternate to lenses like the 56mm F1.2 or 90mm F2. Viltrox’s first Pro series lens had an AF | MF switch on X-mount, which is unconventional on that platform and so they dropped it for later models. Fuji’s own lenses never have an AF | MF switch as Fuji often has direct physical controls on their camera bodies for controlling this function. The Fuji standard is to have an aperture ring, but not the ability to declick it. I actually hope the Fuji standard changes in the future, as Fuji cameras often have excellent video capabilities but thus far their lenses have not shifted to a more video-friendly feature set.

Viltrox has aligned its lenses with the feature set of each platform. On Sony E-mount and Nikon Z-mount, you will get a more robust feature set, including the ability to declick the aperture, an AF | MF switch, and a custom/Fn button. The Fuji version will be simpler, featuring just the aperture ring. All three mounts will share a very robust build quality, a nice aperture ring, and thorough weather sealing throughout the lens.

I’ve had the opportunity to test a lot of the alternatives to the new Pro 56mm, which includes the:

Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 WR (my review here)
Sigma 56mm F1.4 DN (my review here)
Sirui Sniper 56mm F1.2 (my review here)
Viltrox AIR 56mm F1.7 (my review here)
TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 (my review here)

There are others as well, but these tend to be most popular. Viltrox also has an older 56mm F1.4 as well, though I would prefer this newer F1.2 lens in every way but size/weight and price. The Sirui Sniper is a direct competitor on multiple platforms, and while it can be had for considerably less (at right under $300 USD it the value alternative), it doesn’t really compete on any level. It has much poorer autofocus and optical performance. The Fujinon lens is over 100g lighter, is 16mm shorter, and has fantastic optics, but it suffers from rather crude autofocus and is priced at $1100 USD – making it about double the price of the Viltrox. The Sigma is considerably smaller and lighter, weighing about half the Viltrox Pro lens and measuring about 32mm shorter. It is about the same in price, but has a smaller maximum aperture, no features, less thorough weather sealing, and a smaller maximum aperture. The final lenses on the list are budget alternatives with much smaller maximum apertures for those who want to travel light or who are on a tight budget.

I would say that the new Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 positions itself very well, with the only real marks against it being size and weight. It otherwise dominates the competition. It oozes quality.

But does that make it the lens for you? Let’s dive in a find out.

Build and Handling

*As noted, this section will be a little different for the Sony E-mount version that I’ll focus on in this review as compared to the Fuji X-mount version which you can access here.

56mm is a valued focal length for the simple reason that once you apply the 1.5x APS-C crop of all of these camera systems, the resulting focal length is an 84mm full frame equivalent. This is the APS-C 85mm lens, essentially, making it a prime portrait lens. Combining that with a faster maximum aperture of F1.2 allows a lens like this to produce images that look more like they were taken on full frame, with that nice shallow depth of field and 3D pop.

Viltrox’s Pro Series has maintained a consistently high level of build quality. The lenses are feature rich, well made, though definitely big and heavy. The Pro 56mm is about the same size as the 27mm F1.2, which makes it smaller than the 75mm F1.2.

In Sony E-mount, it is 78.4mm (3.08”) in diameter by 91.7mm (3.61”) in length. That is slightly narrower than the 27mm (82mm) but almost identical in length. The 75mm is +8.5mm in diameter and 9mm longer. The weight of the Pro 56mm is 570g (20.1oz), which is 1g lighter than the 27mm lens but 105g lighter than the 75mm. That makes the Pro 56mm very slightly the smallest lens in the series.

Fuji X and Nikon Z mounts are very slightly larger and heavier than the Sony E-mount version.

The Pro 56mm shares a 67mm front filter size with the 27mm.

Viltrox gives us a thoroughly weather sealed design here. Because I’m reviewing a pre-release copy, I don’t yet have a diagram of the internal seals, but based on previous lenses, I would expect 10-12 different seal points inside the lens. Viltrox definitely gives these lenses a professional grade of weather sealing.

This is an internally focusing lens, so there is nothing that moves where dust might intrude. There’s also an HD-Nano multilayer coating on the front element to help with water and fingerprint resistance, making the front element easier to clean. As always, however, “moisture-proof” does not mean “water-proof”, so don’t go crazy!

I slightly prefer the appearance of the Sony E-mount versions, as, for some reason, Viltrox employs a stylish orange/red color to the rear sealing gasket only on Sony that adds a bit of style points.

Viltrox continues with a trend that other lens makers are now imitating by including a USB-C port in the lens mount that allows you to do firmware updates right to the lens. I’m a fan of this approach, as it eliminates the need for a separate dock or lens station for firmware updates, and I find the process a little more intuitive than even doing firmware updates through the camera. This allows Viltrox to future proof their lenses and continue to improve them through firmware…and they do release updated firmware when needed.

The manual focus ring is made of metal with tight ribbing. It moves smoothly and with nice damping, and, while manual focus is a simulation (this, like all autofocusing lenses on mirrorless, is focus-by-wire, meaning that input on the focus ring is actually routed through the focus motor which then moves the focusing group of elements), it’s very good manual focus simulation. Precise focus is easy to nail, as are focus pulls, though if you need to do a long focus pull you might find the rotation too long to do in one stroke.

On the left side of the barrel is the AF | MF switch along with a custom/Fn button. The switch is nice and precise, and the focus hold button works well. That custom button can be set to whatever function you prefer in the camera menu.

There is a “Viltrox” badge on the upper right side of the lens, and it feels like a nice balance to the Pro badge on the opposite side. The Click/Declick switch on the Sony version is now beneath that badge. I was able to perform reasonably smooth aperture racks with the aperture in the declick mode.

In the clicked mode the aperture has detents at each one-third stop position, with a nicely sized gap between F16 and the “A” (Automatic”) position for controlling aperture from whin the camera. There is a nice degree of firmness in that gap to help prevent accidentally bumping in or out of the aperture ring, though there is no actual iris lock.

The “clicks” are a little lighter than some lenses. I would prefer just a bit more resistance there to inspire a bit more confidence on the current aperture value by feel.

The aperture iris has a high 11 blade count, which helps maintain a circular shape with the lens stopped down. While the geometry has a bit of lemon shape specular highlights near the edges, those become perfectly round by F2 and remain that way as you stop down (F2.8 also shown).

The Pro 56mm matches the Fuji XF and Sigma 56mm lenses in having a 50cm minimum focus distance, which is actually higher than either the older Viltrox 56mm F1.4 or the Sirui Sniper 56mm F1.2, both of which have a 60cm minimum focus distance and lower magnification. The Pro 56mm achieves a 0.13x level of magnification, and while that’s not exceptional in a general sense, it is on the high end of this focal length. Here’s what that looks like:

That’s enough to get in there reasonably close and blur out the background thoroughly…particularly when you have an F1.2 aperture available. Detail is impressively good up close even at F1.2:

The included lens hood is plastic and petal shaped. It is a narrower hood than the one found on either 27mm or 75mm lenses, and thus the Pro 56mm takes up a little less room in your camera bag. I’ve complained about a less than definite click after bayonetting the lens on in previous Pro lenses, but this one is definitely upgraded. Viltrox is clearly listening, as this one clicks into place with great precision.

The lens hood is plastic, but the rest of the lens is all high grade in terms of materials. These are great looking lenses, with a beautiful finish and a look that screams quality. I would be hard pressed to point to another Sony APS-C lens that exceeds the build quality here. It’s a lot of lens for the money and brings a GM-like level of build and features to APS-C, and that’s something that rarely happens on Sony. There’s room to complain about the size and weight, but not much else.

Autofocus

Viltrox employs a stepping motor (STM) for the focus system, but that is pretty much ubiquitous on mirrorless lenses save those equipped The earlier lenses in this series employed an STM focus motor, but the Pro AF 56mm F1.2 is the first to receive the more sophisticated HyperVCM focus motor that debuted in the premium LAB series. This is a higher thrust voice-coil motor that delivers faster and quieter autofocus, and is, frankly an autofocus experience that few other APS-C lenses can match.

As per usual, I found a significant difference in performance between the E-mount and the X-mount versions. While the latter performed fine by Fuji standards, focus just isn’t as sophisticated there, and I had a few random misses on Fuji. I had none on Sony, with focus instantly hitting the mark.

That was true in images of Nala, where focus shows perfect precision on her iris.

You can see the same if she is looking in profile.

I shot a number of casual portraits at a wedding rehearsal, and everything was exceptionally well focused.

I layered in this shot of Lana, and you can just how excellent autofocus is despite shooting through some foreground layers.

Here’s another F1.2 shot of my youngest on the day he moved out and onto his university campus.

My formal AF tests showed near instant focus speed. I can go from a close to a distant subject without any visible lag. What’s more, the maximum aperture of F1.2 means that indoor focus looks as fast as outdoor. I can hear nothing from the focus motor under normal operation. If I put my ear next to the lens and focus back and forth, I can hear the faintest of a low whirring sound. I suspect you’ll never hear focus noise unless you do the same. All I could hear during my formal tests was just the sound of my finger clicking on and off the shutter mechanism.

I even had some success with my biggest challenge – picking individual bees out of the air. This was a particularly challenging setting because it was a cooler day and fewer bees were going in and out of the hive, meaning that the focus system had to locate a single fast moving bee out of the air. I only had about a 30% success rate, but any success in this scenario is impressive…particularly when shooting at F1.2!

Check out that pollen stored and ready to turn into honey (the bright yellow in her “pollen basket”)!

The bottom line is that you aren’t going to get a better focusing APS-C 56mm anywhere at the moment. This is as good as it gets! The MSRP will be $580 USD (599 Euro and 530GBP), though you can drop that a bit by buying through Viltrox and using the code “DUSTINABBOTT”.

Video AF

There’s little to complain about on the video side of things, too. I’ve used the Pro 56mm for roughly half a dozen of my video review segments, and focus was always excellent. That was true even when I put layers in front of myself so that the focus system had to be selective about following me.

Video focus pulls were very nicely damped and confident. They had a fairly cinematic quality, and focus breathing is fairly well controlled, with only a minimal amount of size change even at large apertures.

Focus transitions were also smooth and confident from my hand to my eye and vice versa in my “hand test” where I alternately block the lens from seeing my face with my hand and then remove it. The focus motor is tuned for smoothness, so focus adjustments weren’t always quick, but you could turn up the sensitivity in camera if you want more reactive focus.

Natural transitions were smooth, and footage looks awesome. Very detailed, nice bokeh, and generally all you could ask for from a lens like this. The image above is a still frame from one of my video clips.

Image Quality Breakdown

Viltrox has gotten ridiculously good at optical design, regularly able to produce lenses that compete with the very best in class optically. That’s certainly true here, as this is an amazingly good lens even at F1.2. The optical design is 13 elements in 8 groups, including 3 HR (high refractive) elements, 1 ED (extra-low dispersion) lens, and 1 element I’ve not previously heard of – a UA element, which stands for ultra-large and precision aspherical). The MTF shows excellent center and mid performance with only a mild drop to the corners. Astigmatism is low, with both the sagittal and meridional planes staying close together. At F8 (shown in the red), the MTF basically shows a straight line – perfect.

No lens is perfect, but the Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 comes pretty close.

There is essentially no distortion, and even at F1.2 the vignette is a mild +42 to correct.

I didn’t feel like I needed to correct it for most images other than those where something like the sky had little in it. This image is at F1.2 and represents the most extreme example I saw.

This F1.2 shot of my cute little grand-nephew has zero corrections, and it looks perfectly fine.

I can’t really see any LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations) on my test chart. The transitions before and after the plane of focus are nice and clean.

I do see some mild fringing in my 3-dimensional test on my father’s old SLR, but it isn’t bad.

Lateral style chromatic aberrations that show up near the edge of the frame are well controlled, with very little false color on either side of black and white transitions.

For those interested in full frame coverage, here’s a look at the mechanical vignette you’ll see on full frame versus the APS-C crop.

I could crop in that full frame image to about 30MP, which isn’t much larger than the 26MP APS-C crop. I definitely wouldn’t buy this lens to use on full frame.

So how about resolution and contrast? I’m testing on the 26MP APS-C crop of the Sony a7RV, which matches the current highest standard on Sony for APS-C. All tests done on a sturdy tripod with a 5 second delay, and crops are shown at 200% magnification to emphasize any flaws. Here’s a look at the test chart.

And here are F1.2 crops from the center, midframe, and lower right corner.

You can see the excellent consistency of sharpness from the center to the corner, with only some mild softening becoming apparent near the edge.

What’s more, the lens shows excellent centering, with roughly equal performance in all four corners. Here is the upper left and the upper right corners compared.

In real world use this equates to exceptional detail and contrast for an F1.2 lens, with textures popping due to the low astigmatism we saw in the MTF chart. Here’s a difficult subject at F1.2, and it looks fantastic!

There’s a bit more contrast at F1.4:

A bit more can be seen from F1.4 to F2:

You’ll see steady gains as you continue to stop down. By F4 the image is pretty much perfect across the frame.

These improvements are subtle, and the biggest real world difference I see if I compare a deep crop from an F1.2 image with the same image at F5.6 is an increase in contrast.

Real world landscape images are full of fine details from edge to edge.

This shot at F2.8 shows that each person’s face has great detail and the image as a whole looks great.

Diffraction will show up by F11, and a bit more by the minimum aperture of F16, resulting in a bit less sharpness and contrast. It isn’t bad here on Sony, but will be a bit more pronounced on Fuji’s 40MP sensor.

Sharpness and contrast are definitely well covered here, with no real optical shortcomings emerging. But what about bokeh and overall rendering? My beef with the Sigma 56mm F1.4 was that while that lens was very sharp, the bokeh and rendering was lacking. The Viltrox is an easy winner in this category, though, allowing for nicely defocused backgrounds that are surprisingly soft considering how sharp and high contrast the lens is.

How do you like them apples?

This shot of Lana and I at F2 shows the very nice bokeh falloff.

My “lock shot” that I often include shows fantastic contrast and detail on the lock but a nicely defocused background including a smooth transition to defocus.

I often shoot these dead cones on a fallen pine in large part because it is such a difficult scene. It is all hard edges, with a lot of potential for fringing, but the Pro 56mm handles it like a champ, with most soft results despite all the hard edges and no apparent fringing.

Medium distance shots will show a bit of a swirl effect near the edges, which I personally like.

If you don’t like that look, stop down to F2 for even circular geometry right out to the edge.

Get a favorable ratio where the subject is close and background is distant and you’ll get nothing but cream.

Lovely!

Colors are lovely as well, with nice skin tones and good saturation levels. I felt like I had the latitude to edit images if I wanted to. Colors could be “pushed” a bit without the images falling apart.

Sometimes wide aperture lenses like this struggle with flare related issues. How does the Pro 56mm handle bright lights?

Not perfectly, though nothing majorly bad, either.

Wide open there is a bit of light veiling and a streak at the light source. Ghosting is mild. Stopped down to F11 (image 2), the veiling is minimized but ghosting is more pronounced. With the sun right out of frame (image 3) there is a bit of mild flashing, though it seems largely artistic.

The coatings aren’t doing a perfect job, though I also didn’t see anything that I would consider majorly destructive, either.

In conclusion, this is pretty close to a perfect lens optically. Yes, it is a little bigger and heavier than you might light, but you are getting nothing short of exceptional for that extra size and weight. Check out this mini gallery of additional images.

Conclusion

I was already a fan of the Viltrox Pro AF 27mm F1.2 after reviewing it on Fuji, but the Sony E-mount versions of these Pro Series lenses have Viltrox’s APS-C Pro series lenses have all been winners. The 75mm F1.2 redefined what was possible on APS-C at the time, and the 27mm F1.2 was my choice for APS-C lens of the year when it was released. The Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 might just be the best of the bunch, however, as the formula is now refined and the addition of the HyperVCM focus takes performance to the next level.

The lens is beautifully made even if it is on the heavier side, and I found it a genuine joy to use in the various situations I found myself in. Focus was fast and accurate (particularly here on E-mount), and image quality is pristine.

On Sony I can’t think of an 85mm equivalent lens that I would prefer. This is a top tier package. It has extremely fast autofocus, as robust a feature set as we are seeing in this class, and high-end optical performance. The Viltrox Pro AF 56mm F1.2 is a treat, and while it isn’t cheap at $580 USD, the equivalent Fujifilm lens is nearly double the price, and you could easily argue that the Viltrox is the superior lens when you consider the autofocus performance. This is a big part of what makes Viltrox so hard to contend with these days – they have a lot of lenses that simply offer more for less…and that’s a winning proposition. The Pro 56mm is the new “exhibit A” in this argument.

Pros:

Professional grade build
Feature rich
Advanced aperture control including declick option
AF/MF and Focus Hold Button
Thorough weather sealing
First of APS-C lenses to get HyperVCM
Extremely fast, quiet autofocus
Good video AF, including confident video focus pulls
Low focus breathing
Extremely sharp lens
Low aberrations
Low distortion
Moderate vignette for F1.2
Nice bokeh
Beautiful colors
Great price to performance ratio

Cons:

Large and heavy for an APS-C lens
Some minor flare issues

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