Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4 Z-mount Review

Viltrox’s full frame jump into their “Pro” series took off with a bang in spring of 2025 with the release of the Pro AF 85mm F1.4, a lens that I gave a very positive review. They followed that up the Pro AF 50mm F1.4 in the fall of 2025, which was another lens that I really liked. While other Viltrox releases like the 50mm F2 AIR, the 14mm F4 AIR, and even the 85mm F2 EVO found their way to Nikon Z-mount fairly quickly the initial release on Sony, that hasn’t been the case for either of the new Pro lenses or the LAB 35mm F1.2 (which we are still waiting on). But fortunately the wait is over for the Pro 85mm F1.4 Z, which has finally arrived on Z-mount. The Pro series is a very welcome addition on Z-mount for a few reasons. The first is that Z-mount has hardly been the place for lightweight lenses anyway, particularly when it comes to the F1.2 S-Line options, but the second is because Nikkor’s own F1.4 lenses have fit a somewhat unusual niche. They are typically both cheaper and lower performing than the F1.8 S-Line lenses, leaving a door wide open for higher-performing premium F1.4 options…which describes the Viltrox PRO series perfectly. This review will explore how effectively the Pro 85Z survives the transition to Z-mount and whether it constitutes a suitable alternative to the 85mm F1.8 S…or even a budget alternative to the 85mm F1.2 S-Line lens. Can this $600 (less with the discount code DUSTINABBOTT at the Viltrox store) shake up the market on Nikon? Find out more in either the video review below or by reading on in the text review.

Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review copy 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 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here. You can find the product listing for the 85mm F1.4 Z here.

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Viltrox Pro Series Lens Reviews

APS-C

Full Frame

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AI SUMMARY: The article reviews Viltrox’s Pro AF 85mm F1.4 for Nikon Z, praising its pro-grade build, rich feature set, and compelling price relative to Nikon’s own 85mm options. Image quality is strong: very good wide open with beautiful bokeh and excellent sharpness by F2.8, plus minimal distortion and lateral CA, though some LoCA persists. Autofocus is silent and reliable for stills and video with smooth transitions via the new VCM drive, if not class-leading in speed. The lens is heavier than some rivals and can show veiling flare, but it meaningfully fills the premium 85mm F1.4 gap on Z-mount and challenges the pricier 85mm F1.2 S.

Strengths:

Pro-level build, weather sealing, USB-C updates, aperture ring with click/declick, custom button, AF/MF switch
Beautiful rendering and bokeh; excellent sharpness by F2.8; low distortion and lateral CA
Quiet, smooth AF for stills and video; good close focus and reduced breathing via floating elements
Aggressive pricing versus OEM competitors while delivering premium handling

Weaknesses:

Heavier than key competitors; no optical stabilization
Some longitudinal CA and occasional coma; corners softer wide open
Prone to veiling flare in certain backlit compositions
AF speed

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85mm lenses tend to be the top choice of many portrait photographers for a reason. I personally find images from a 135mm lens slightly more exotic, but the focal length is often too long for a lot of environments. An 85mm lens allows you great subject separation but isn’t so long that you can’t use it in an ordinary room. It still works great for outdoor, environmental portraiture, too (this shot take from the FE version).

We see the Pro formula brought forward to this full frame series, though with a few of the most recent Viltrox tweaks. The 27mm and 75mm Pro lenses for APS-C relied on STM focus motor technology, but the Pro 85Z will use their new VCM (voice coil motor) technology for more thrust and smoother focus action. We’ve got a full set of features, including an aperture ring that be clicked or declicked, a custom/function button, an AF | MF switch, weather sealing, and a USB-C port for easy firmware updates. This is a lens with an S-line level of build and features.

On paper everything looks great…but does the Pro 85Z deliver the goods in the real world?

Let’s explore the details…

Viltrox Pro 85Z Build and Handling

The first thing to note is that this is definitely a pro-level build quality, which is interesting considering that this is not their most premium lineup. The more I use the Pro 85mm, the more I appreciate it. It has a clean, streamlined design that is really growing on me. The Nikon Z-mount version is mostly similar to the E-mount version, though the larger diameter of the Nikon’s Z-mount necessitates a wider diameter near the lens mount, and the difference in the flange distance (the proper distance between the sensor and the optical path) is slightly longer on Z-mount as well, making for a slightly longer lens.

This area around the lens mount is not the widest part of the lens, so the overall diameter remains the same, but you can see that the length is roughly 2mm longer. The Pro 85Z is 84.5mm (3.3”) in diameter and a fairly long 110.5mm (4.35”). The combination of extra girth and length adds up to additional weight, too. The Pro 85Z weighs in at 830g (29.2oz) on my scale, which compares to 796g (28oz) for the E-mount on my same scale.

There’s also a slightly different design at the lens mount, with a larger opening on the Z-mount.

There are things that I love about Viltrox’s design philosophy on the LAB series, but their integration with the aperture ring is not one of them. The Pro series takes a more traditional approach to controlling aperture, and in this case you can call me a traditionalist!

The aperture ring works perfectly here, with markings at the one third stop positions and light detents at those places if you have the “clicks” on. You also have a declick option where you can smoothly rack from F1.4 to F16. There is a firmer detent between F16 and the A (automatic) option which will allow aperture to be controlled from within the camera. The one aperture feature that is missing is an iris lock which would allow you to either lock into or out of the aperture ring.

I was able to perform aperture racks in the declicked mode without visible steps. Some who are familiar with using the focus ring as a customizable control ring may need to adjust to having a dedicated aperture ring, but, to me, this is the superior arrangement. There is no iris lock, but there is a firmer and longer detent between F16 and A (automatic mode).

The iris itself has 11 aperture blades, and these make for a nicely rounded aperture even when stopped down a fair bit. Here’s F1.4, F2, and F2.8.

Here is the aperture iris itself, stopped down.

The Pro 85Z utilizes a 77mm front filter thread.

If you want a smaller, lighter lens, the new (and excellent) Viltrox EVO 85mm F2 is now available in Nikon Z-mount (my review here). It weighs just 360g. Small and light is not Viltrox’s priority here. The body of the Pro 85Z is very robust, utilizing an aviation-grade magnesium-aluminum alloy blend. This is similar to the materials used in camera bodies and ensures that the lens will be tough and durable for years of use. It has a black anodized finish that looks classic and and elegant. The lens is understated but attractive, with no loud accent colors or attempts to demand your attention.

I do kind of miss the LCD screen from the LAB series as central visual element, but I’m glad that the aperture control is more traditional.

Like the LAB lenses, the Pro 85Z sports floating elements in its design. This has a very positive benefit that we’ll detail momentarily, but those unfamiliar with this design element may be thrown by the fact that something seems to move (and clunk) a bit inside the lens when you tip it up and down. Floating element groups do in fact move forward and backward when the lens is powered off, though as soon as the lens is powered on, those elements are energized and no longer move. You can then tip the lens up and down and nothing happens.

The primary reason for employing floating elements is that it allows the lens to function better at close focus distances. The Pro 85mm can focus as closely as 79cm and produces a reasonably high 0.13x magnification. This bests the Sigma (85cm and 0.12x) and the GM II (80cm and 0.11x). The fact that the Sony focuses closer than the Sigma but produces lower magnification is evidence of some focus breathing, and the floating elements on the Viltrox helps alleviate that focus breathing and produce a higher level of magnification, which looks like this:

Up close performance is good but nothing macro-level. Contrast and detail looks good, though there is some fringing if that includes shiny surfaces.

Other features on the lens include a custom/function button and an AF | MF switch. There are more controls here than what the 85mm F1.8 S has.

What’s interesting is that this will technically be the Viltrox mid-level option, as there will be an even more feature rich 85mm F1.2 LAB coming that will go head-to-head with the 85mm F1.2 S-Line lens.

Part of the Pro design philosophy is the inclusion of thorough weather sealing. This includes a HD Nano coating on the front element that resists fingerprints and moisture.

There is also a bright red/orange gasket at the lens mount (which I think is very stylish), internal seals at the switches, rings, and near the front element, as you can see in this diagram.

I count ten seal points in addition to the coating on the front element. I always love when companies are confident enough in their weather sealing to share the cutout of the internal design. Very nice.

You’ll also have noticed the USB-C port, which allows for quick and simple firmware updates.

The manual focus ring is wide, very nicely damped, and provides a great manual focus experience, with good precision, no lag in the focus (as sometimes experienced on mirrorless lenses with their focus-by-wire systems), and a nice amount of focus throw.

There is no lens based stabilization, so you will need to rely upon the in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped.

Viltrox has redesigned their bigger front lens caps with a bevel along the front that makes it feel slimmer. The lens also comes with the hood and a leather pouch (similar to Canon L-series lenses). There is some cushion on the bottom, but I don’t find these pouches nearly as useful as a good padded nylon case like what Sigma provides. The lens hood itself is fine, with a gripped section for removing it similar to what Sigma provides, but without the rubberized edge seen sometimes on nicer lens hoods.

The lens hood doesn’t have a lock, but does have a firm bayonet into place that sits securely. I had no issues with it coming loose. It will reverse and fit closely for storage.

The Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4 Z is a beautifully made lens that does weigh a bit more than its primary competitors but compensates nicely by undercutting them in price anywhere from $500 to $1000 while providing a build quality and handling experience that equals those competitors. I am once again very impressed by how Viltrox is able to make beautifully crafted lenses and sell them so much cheaper than competing brands.

Autofocus for Stills

Viltrox has now moved to higher end HyperVCM (voice-coil motor) focus in their recent premium lenses. Thus far they seem to be reserving their multiple-motor “hyper-VCM” focus systems to the LAB lenses, but even the single HyperVCM motor powering focus is nice because of the quality of the focus motor, though I suspect the focus speed on the LAB 85mm lens (when it arrives) will be superior if the LAB 35mm and 135mm lenses are anything to go on. Focus speed here is moderately but not exceptionally quick.

Focus is perfectly silent, without any accompanying noise or drama. I can put the lens right next to my ear and focus and not hear anything.

I haven’t yet reviewed the 85mm F1.8 S, but I would surprised if the focus from that lens wasn’t faster than the Pro 85Z. It doesn’t feel quite as quick here on Nikon as it did on Sony, though I definitely focus the native Z-mount version focused faster and more confidently that the E-mount version adapted via the Megadap ETZ21 Pro+.

Focus changes are not quite instantaneous, but there is only a split second lag. I was able to accurately focus on narrow subjects.

I had a much tighter window before release with the 85mm F1.4 Pro for Z-mount, so I didn’t have a chance to use it in a portrait session. I did use it for a family evening, and I got perfectly focused results.

I did shoot portraits with the FE version, and eye detection worked great. I would expect nothing different on the Z version.

Here was another example shot on the FE version, this one with some strong backlighting.

There isn’t really much to complain about here. Viltrox has levelled up their autofocus systems in their premium lenses, and the end result is improved results across the board.

Video AF

One of the chief advantages of the move to VCM from STM is that VCM moves in a linear fashion as opposed the steps involved with an STM (stepping motor), which means that the likelihood of smooth focus transitions in video is higher. Such proves to be the case here, as focus transitions are nice and smooth. My touch to focus test doesn’t work quite as well on Nikon due to having minimal control over how those focus pulls go, but, for a third party lens on Nikon, the results were quite good.

There is some minimal focus breathing, but it really is fairly good for an 85mm lens.

My “hand test” where I alternatively block and unblock the camera’s view of my face with my hand went mostly well, with smooth and confident transitions from my hand to my face and back, though a few times when I moved my hand in front focus stayed locked on my face. I likewise got very good results in tracking if I approached the camera and ducked in and out of frame. Focus picked me back up quickly and confidently.

All of my outdoor clips using the lens for segments on my YouTube channel were nice and stable, so, for the way that I personally use lenses, video AF worked well.

Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4 Z Image Quality

The Z-mount version of the lens has an identical optical design as the E-mount versions, namely an optical design of 15 elements in 11 groups. This includes 3 ED (extra low dispersion) elements, a whopping 9 HR (high refractive index) elements, and one aspherical lens. That leaves only two “normal” elements! The result MTF shows a strong center and midframe and a mild dip in the corners at F1.4, with a little lower center sharpness at F8 but a more consistent performance across the frame.

I haven’t previously reviewed any of the Nikkor 85mm lenses yet, so I will reserve any comments on how they compare until I have tested them. I have tested the Sirui Aurora 85mm F1.4, and while it also has very nice rendering, it isn’t as sharp as the Viltrox and doesn’t have as good of optical glass. Viltrox’s own EVO 85mm F2 is excellent, though obviously it is a full stop less bright and is a very different kind of lens.

The full frame PRO series lenses have exhibited a unique personality that seems to be forging a slightly different course than the LAB series, though, to this point, we haven’t yet had both a PRO and LAB lens with the same focal length. The LAB lenses are extremely well corrected though somehow retain very nice rendering. The PRO series seems to be a bit less corrected and not quite as sharp wide open, but really have lovely rendering for F1.4 lenses at their focal lengths.

The Viltrox is pretty much distortion free, requiring just a -2 to correct a bit of pincushion distortion. I needed a +56 to correct the vignette, which is a bit higher than on Sony, but not extreme.

There is a bit of longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) visible on my test chart.

It is more pronounced on my test with my dad’s old SLR.

That’s more fringing than I prefer.

I see only the tiniest amount of fringing around specular highlights, so no big deal here…and the specular highlights are fairly clean, with minimal outlining inside them.

There is zero issue with lateral style chromatic aberrations found in the contrast transitions near the edge of the frame.

How about resolution and contrast. These results are shot on a 45MP Nikon Z8 and the crops are shown at roughly 200% magnification level. Here’s a look at the test chart that the crops are taken from.

If we zoom in and look at the 200% crops from the center, mid-frame, and lower right, we discover that sharpness and contrast are excellent in the center and mid-frame, with a slight fade in the corners.

A real world shot with a reasonably flat plane of focus (depth of field is still impacting this image a bit) shows that the center is excellent while the edges look softer.

You can see that stopping down to F2.8 really improved that edge performance.

Wide open performance in real world situations is often very good, as it is rare that we compose F1.4 shots right in the corner of the frame. This shot is fairly representative, as I found detail and contrast very good but not LAB series good.

While Nikkor has not yet released an 85mm F1.4 lens on Z-mount, none of the F1.4 lenses have been as sharp as this.

I would say the sweet spot for wide open sharpness is medium distance where contrast looks pretty impressive.

There is plenty of wide open sharpness for shooting portraits, and while I didn’t shoot a portrait session on Z-mount, I did do some with the E-mount version and found that there is plenty of sharpness to take this wide open result…

…and tightly crop it into a very different looking image like this:

This is a nicely sharp lens.

Contrast improves at F1.8, a bit more at F2, and is up to awesome levels by F2.8…even in the corner.

This means that landscape images in the F2.8-F8 zone will be impressively sharp all across the frame.

Diffraction is an unfortunate reality on higher resolution cameras, so you will see a faint softening by F11 and a more obvious softening by the minimum aperture of F16, though the lower maximum resolution of my Z8 means that it wasn’t as pronounced as it was on the 61MP Sony a7RV.

Bottom line is that sharpness is excellent. Wide open sharpness is good, but by the time you’ve stopped down to F2.8, it is fantastic.

The single greatest strength of the Pro 85Z is that it also happens to have absolutely beautiful bokeh rendering. I’ve chose the FE version for a lot of my video segments for my YouTube channel because the overall rendering (contrast, colors, and bokeh) are just gorgeous. Put it in advantageous situations, and the bokeh is simply amazing, like here.

But even in a very tough scene (this shot is basically all ice covered sticks!), the rendering is still pretty decent.

This shot out the window of falling snow gives you a look at some of the geometry and soft rending from the lens.

This is a lens that does a very nice job of balancing “punch” with softness.

I did have a chance to test coma with the FE version of the lens and found that the results were okay, but I did see some coma smear (some wings growing on star points in the corner). It’s not a bad result, but not exceptional, either.

I do have one other area of complaint, and one that seemed to pop up a bit more on the Z-mount version of the lens than on the E-mount (though it shouldn’t). I found the lens a bit prone to veiling related to flare with the sun in certain positions, with a loss of contrast or a bit of look of “fog” on the image.

It is very composition specific, as this image had a lot of light flooding it too, but I composed at an angle where the sun wasn’t causing the veiling.

Just a slightly different composition with the bridge photo above produced a completely different result, with none of the veiling.

Just be careful with your composition if you buy the lens, or fully embrace it and use it as an advantage, like this:

There have been a LOT of happy customers with the Sony E-mount version of this lens, and since there are even fewer alternatives on Nikon Z-mount, I suspect a lot of people will enjoy it here as well.

Here’s a mini-gallery of more images for you to enjoy!

Conclusion

I really liked the Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4 on Sony…enough so that I let my beloved Sigma 85mm F1.4 ART go this year and kept the Viltrox. I’ve been excited for this lens (along with the PRO 50mm F1.4 and the LAB 35mm F1.2) to arrive on Z-mount, and in many ways it is worth the wait. Yes, you can adapt Sony E-mount lenses to Nikon via adapters like the ones from Megadap, but there’s definitely an improvement in stability and autofocus when using a native Z-mount lens. The Pro 85Z has been fun to use, and easy to get nice photos with.

The biggest shortcoming for the Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4 is its weight, though that feels like less of an issue on Nikon for a couple of reasons. First of all is that the Nikon bodies tend to be beefier (my Z8 is bigger than any of my other cameras from Sony, Canon, or Fujifilm), making bigger lenses a more natural fit. To this point, at least, if you want to travel light, Nikon is not your best choice. What’s more, however, is that Nikkor Z lenses are mostly big and heavy themselves. The 85mm F1.8 S with its slower maximum aperture isn’t bad (470g), but the 85mm F1.2 S is a whopping 1160g. Since an F1.4 lens falls roughly between those two, the fact that the Viltrox’s weight is pretty much the average of the two lenses means that on Nikon this is an average weight for a professional grade lens.

In many ways the top competition for the Pro 85Z might just be the Viltrox EVO 85mm F2 that was released just two weeks before it. It is small, light, and highly performing. If you can tolerate the smaller maximum aperture, it is a sweet lens. But there’s no denying the beautiful rendering of a nicely executed 85mm F1.4 lens, and the Viltrox PRO AF 85mm F1.4 Z is certainly that. Viltrox has pretty much doubled the number of quality 85mm offerings on Nikon in a couple of weeks. Thank you!

Pros:

Beautiful built lens
Feature rich
Very good weather sealing
USB port for firmware updates
Clean and elegant design
VCM motor delivers fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus
Focus pulls are nicely damped
Comparatively low focus breathing.
Exceptionally sharp lens that competes with the very best in the center and mid-frame
Extremely sharp across the frame by F2.8
Little distortion
Vignette isn’t bad
Colors look great
Gorgeous bokeh
Amazing price to performance ratio

Cons:

Some minor issues with fringing
Some might be put off from the “clunk” of the floating elements
Can be a bit flare prone in certain situations

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GEAR USED:

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Purchase the Viltrox EVO 85mm F2 Z @ Viltrox (use code DUSTINABBOTT for 5% off) | B&H | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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