Viltrox 20mm F1.8 Sony E-Mount: Final Review | 4K

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Hi, Hi
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I'm Dost I'm Dustin Abbott
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And as you can see from this early footage, It has continued to be a very cold, very snowy season
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And so we are here cuddled in front of the fire, but we also have a chance to look at some video footage
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courtesy of the lens that I'm looking at today, which is the new Viltrox 20mm F1.8 lens
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and this is for Sony FE. Viltrox, of course, is not a brand new company
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and that they've been producing other things, but what they haven't been producing is lenses
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And they have just come to market, with actually three lenses that they're coming simultaneously to market with
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including a 85 millimeter F1.8 for Sony F.E, and auto-focusing 85 millimeter F1.8 for FujiX
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and then this lens, a 20-millimeter F1.8 for Sony FE. This lens, of course, is the most complicated in the sense
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that it's the most challenging focal length and aperture combination. And so that's where we're starting and taking a look at this lens in my final review
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Now, in my first look episode where I broke down the build and handling, and I would recommend that you take a closer look at that as I cover things as a part of that that I won't have time to cover in the review today
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But as I started off this review, I noticed that, you know, on every lens, seems like every lens manufacturer, they have their own, you know, kind of lens designations for different aspects of the lens
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And you have to kind of learn to speak their language, so to speak. There are some things here that I didn't understand
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For example, PFU, RBMH. I had never heard that designation before. And it turns out it's for good reason
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It's actually an English kind of translation or representation of Chinese characters
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that speak of being kind of honest and true to your purpose
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And so it's more of kind of a Chinese catchphrase representation than some kind of lens design that you should be aware
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But, I mean, they're putting forward a theme that they're going to be true to themselves, true to their purpose
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So, you know, sure, great. on the side of this there's a badge that says DF and then RBW
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Now RBW actually refers to their kind of their own kind of designation for their lens coatings
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And so it refers to their kind of proprietary name for their multi-coatings on the front
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element of this lens. It help it to be, you know, help it to be resistant to some fingerprints and moisture
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And so that coating is there on the front. And then D-F refers to the fact that this is for a full frame camera
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In this case, it is designed for Sony FE or full frame Sony mirrorless
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And so as I noted in that first episode, there are a number of good things to point to here
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The lens is designed of very heavy grade materials, very solid metal, but not just solid metal construction
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I also noted that in terms of the actual handling on the various rings, that we have actually got a really, really great
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physical construction here to point to. And much better than what I have seen in times past from
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startup companies. You know, I think back to when I first started reviewing like Sam Yang or Rokinon
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lenses that at that point, I mean, it's plastic construction. And, you know, you were always kind of
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basically making excuses for the physical design because the optics were pretty good and the price was
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pretty good. That's really not the case at all here. I mean, as I noted in that first look episode
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that if you were to put this lens in my hands four or five years ago without any kind of branding on it
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I would have guessed it to be a Zeiss lens because it really has that kind of grade of heavy metal materials
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all metal and glass, beautifully constructed, and it handles mechanically really beautifully
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I've got a focus shifter on here right now and I'll come back to that as I talk to you about it for a video lens
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But everything moves here with just near perfect damping. It's really, really well executed
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Now, I noted in the first look episode that all of this does come at a cost, and that is
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when it comes to the weight, it's 775 grams or 1.71 pounds
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And so it is a hefty lens because of all that metal construction It also not particularly compact It is over four inches long and three inches around or 102 millimeters in length by about 77 millimeters in diameter One of the things I noted in that first look
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episode that I think is fantastic is that while you have a curved front element here, which means
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that, you know, typically this would be a fixed lens hood to help to protect that, but it's not
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It's metal and it's ribbed on the inside. So a very nice quality lens hood
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But you also have a secondary lens hood slash filter adapter. And that's kind of the principal purpose here that also bayonets on there really nicely
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So it's a shallow lens hood. It's not going to give as much kind of light protection from flare
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But it's long enough that it's going to keep you know you from bumping that front element if you hit the front of the lens
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But really the purpose of this is it's threaded on the inside. an 82 millimeter filter thread and so that you can use traditional filters. And I noted when
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using filters on it that in some cases I did see a little extra vignette that was introduced
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mechanical vignette from putting another bit of substance on here. But it wasn't particularly
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heavy. You can remove it fairly easily in post. You're going to have to correct for some vignette
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anyway because there is no manual profile. Everything is manual on this. There's no electronic
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contacts. And when I asked about that, because I was a little perplexed after my first episode
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because they're also launching an 85mm F1.8 for Sony that has both electronic contacts and
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electromagnetic aperture iris. And so I said, you know, basically asked, you know, why is that
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Because that lens is actually less expensive than this one. And they gave me an honest answer
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in that essentially that they're, their capabilities are not yet up to kind of
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delivering that on a more complex optical lens, you know, like this 20 millimeter F1.8
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which even for the established brands doing a, you know, a wide angle, wide aperture lens still
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takes some engineering chops to pull that off. And so, you know, in all honesty, it doesn't
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have electronic contacts because they're not ready to engineer to that level yet. So, yeah
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I can accept that as being straightforward. But I do like the fact that they've got a clever
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filtering solution here and they have handled that well. I did note in that first episode also that
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there's a lot of great stuff in terms of having a lot of focus aged etched in there. It does have a
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decliked manual aperture ring, but the aperture ring really moves very, very nicely. Everything
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just feels substantial here. It feels quality. The one other thing I want to highlight about
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the build is that this lens has a unique 14 blitz. appeture iris. And so the interesting thing about that is that you can see as you watch it close down that it remains nearly perfectly
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circular no matter what the aperture. And so, you know, obviously with a wide angle like this, you're not going to be able to stop the lens way down and still see, you know, a lot of bouquet from it. But what it does mean is that the quality of that bouquet is is improved, at least in the sense that the circular shape is retained even when you begin to close the aperture down
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Now, in a secondary episode, we took a look at the optical quality from the lens
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And I would recommend that you take a look at that because it's a complex topic
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and I handled it a lot more thoroughly in that episode of what I'm going to be able to do here
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But I will highlight a few of the things from that if you're in a hurry
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So one thing that I noted is that when it comes to the resolution performance
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the lens is actually surprisingly, very strongly sharp over a fair portion of
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of the frame even from F1.8. What you find is at F1.8 and F2 is that there is a, it's, as I said
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very, very strong, very contrasty across a good portion of the frame, but when it drops off
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it drops off fairly strongly. And so the extreme edges at wide apertures are, they're not very sharp
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Now, a good news about that is that if you're using a lens kind of in a typical fashion
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to have strong center and two-thirds of the frame. Sharpness is incredibly useful because that's typically we're going to be composing anyway
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And so that is a plus. Stopping on down, the big jump is from F2 to F2.8
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And by F2.8, I saw basically kind of peak performance in terms of the jump and then consistency
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across the frame whereas we saw the sharpness extend all the way to the you know the center edges And then in the extreme corners it sharpens up but not as much as what it does you know mid frame along the edges
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And so the extreme corners, even if you stop further down to smaller Raptors, F5.6, F8, F11, it never gets as sharp as other portions of the frame, but it gets, you know, usability sharp
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And so all in all, in terms of the resolution, it's quite strong
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Because it has very, very low, basically non-existent longitudinal chromatic aberrations, it means that even if you're shooting at wide aperture, F1.8, that if you're within your kind
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of sweet spot of sharp, it's very sharp, very contrasty, impressively so
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And so a very good job when it comes to that. Kind of a similar observation is when it comes to vignette
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At F1.8, I found that it has on the lower side of what I would call moderate vignette
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a lot of wide angle lens that I've used that vignette much more heavily. But one thing that I did
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see here is that while vignette is primarily reserved to the extreme corners and kind of extends out from there
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once again at the mid frame points along the edges, it's not particularly strong. It's mostly
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in the corners moving out. But what I also found is that while it improves, once again about
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F2.8, you see kind of the most noticeable improvement. But what I found is that even at smaller
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raptors, there still is a little bit of lingering vignette. And of course, as I noted in that episode
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it is kind of highlighted this time of year where I'm shooting because if you have a foreground
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that's all white snow, it tends to really show off if there's any kind of vignette there
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unlike scenes at other times of the year where you're likely to have something a little bit
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darker in your foreground corners. And so anyway, it doesn't completely clear up of its own accord
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And of course, the fact that there are no electronic contacts, as noted here, and it means
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that you're going to have to do manual corrections when it comes to those optical
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deficiencies. The other thing that I noted in terms of optical deficiency, again, it's
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fairly mild is that the barrel distortion is actually not all that strong, which is, you
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know, good for such a wide angle of view. What it is, however, is it has a little
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bit of that mustache pattern, which means that it is, while the distortion itself is
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mild it's also not easily correctable because it doesn't correct in a linear fashion
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and I noted in that episode that for most people in most situations you're probably
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better off to not even correct it at all because unless you're shooting something
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like you know my brick wall kind of thing you're probably not likely to see it and
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if you correct it you may introduce some other kind of quirks into your actual end
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result as far as the actual coma performance there again it's kind of a little bit
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of a mixed bag. So huge positives are the fact that obviously with an F1.8 aperture, this lens has a
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pretty significant advantage compared to a lot of competitors and that it can suck in a whole lot more
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light. And so it allows you to keep your ISO value down. And so it sucks in a lot of light
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You get a lot of star points on the frame. So that's great. Also as noted, the vignette is not
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particularly heavy and it's primarily in the extreme corners. And so the fact that it has
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very little vignette even at F1.8 mid-frame means that that actually translates pretty well
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to the look of images for the night sky. And so it's very sharp throughout a lot of the frame
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as we noted. So center point sharpness looks great. Along the very edges, there is some coma
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And what it looks like is a little bit like buzzing insects, a little bit of wings, a little bit of a
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tail. If you stop on down, F2.2.5 range, if you'll stop down, you know, into that range. You don't even have to go to F2.8. A lot of that coma is reduced
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You can still see left over that there's a little bit of the shape, but it's reduced to the place
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that I suspect it probably won't be objectionable really to much of anyone. And so I do think
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that it's a useful lens for shooting the night sky. That's one of the good applications for this
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lens. I also found that color rendition is actually quite good. And because I have the Zysooxia
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25 millimeter F2.4 on hand, a lens that I think has great color rendition
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that even though I haven't been able to shoot the Viltrox in a
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what I would consider really good color situations, this time of year, January and Canada is a fairly drab time of year
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And so I haven't been able to use it in optimal situations. But when I compare images taken in the same settings between the two lenses
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they look much more similar than different. And so I think that color rendition is fairly good here as well Flair resistance at wide apertures just results in a little bit of you know a general bit of a little bit of veiling kind of prismatic veiling near the epicenter
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You stop down and you will start to see some ghosting artifacts coming down in that, you know
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kind of descending pattern that's pretty common. And you can see that some in this video here
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You know, it's so there's a little bit more than what I would like at the same time. I also note that some people may also find that somewhat artistic and useful
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So anyway, you can check that out and your mileage may vary. That leads us to our final discussion, which is in reference to video
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And this is the kind of lens that is actually really useful for video type shooters
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Now, the downside, of course, with a physically larger, heavier lens, is that depending on your gimbal system, if you're going to use it on a gimbal and its payload capacity
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you know, a heavier lens is not as good as a lighter lens when it comes to that
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I use the Mosa Air and for, you know, I'm nowhere near the payload threshold of that
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And so it works just fine for me. It's not a super long lens, so it's not really all that hard to balance
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And so all of that equates to a, you know, a fine experience for me
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The fact that it has a declicked aperture is useful for video shooters
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And unlike some declicked aperture lenses, I've used, it is actually nicely damped and so it is possible to do aperture racking without
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you know any kind of major issue. And then of course it has a beautiful manual focus ring
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with as you can see a pretty good amount of focused row enough for accuracy but also it's a very
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precise, very nicely damp and so whether you're using a gearing system which you can certainly
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do or you know this is a fairly inexpensive device i'm using here it makes doing focus throws very
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nice and it's it's actually a really nice lens for video work and again because it does have some
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defects we've just discussed but none of them are so strongly pronounced as to have a huge impact
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on your video and so as you can see from some of this footage uh video footage is actually really
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nice from the lens and so all in all this is an interesting um
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lens. Now, the price comes in at a, you know, not inexpensive, but I would say a moderate price of
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a little under $500 U.S. And so, you know, obviously the challenge is is that Viltrox is a
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complete unknown in terms of lens design. And so they may have a little bit harder of a
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entry point into the market with a $500 lens as opposed to a $200 lens. But I can also say at the
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same time, this is not a $200 lens. It's not a $200 lens in terms of the physical design
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physical characteristics. It's also not a $200 lens when it comes to the optical performance
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which is, you know, it is competitive with a lot of much more expensive options. The challenge
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of course, is brand recognition, a price that's not so cheap as for people to take a flyer on it
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and also the fact that manual focus is still not for everyone, even though it's much easier with
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mirrorless bodies. There's a lot of people that don't want to mess with manual focus. I will say
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however, if you are a video shooter, this is, you know, kind of like being able to get a much
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larger, but a loxia style lens at a much cheaper price. And so that is intriguing. But if you're
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someone who values a larger maximum aperture at a wide focal length, then I think that the
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Viltrax is certainly worth a consideration and hopefully this review is helped to, you know
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help you to make a more informed decision as to whether it would be a lens that you could use personally
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I'm Dustin Abbott and if you'll look in my description down below, I've got linkage to a full written review
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and so you can get more details that I sometimes overlook when I'm speaking in these video reviews
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There's also linkage there to the image gallery and I always recommend look at photos
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see if there's something that appeals to you and I apologize for the options that I'm
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I have to shoot this time of year, but there are some beautiful photos there even so that I think are worth looking at
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And then, of course, also you can find linkage to follow me on social media, including Instagram now
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You can also become a patron or sign up for my newsletter. And if you haven't already, please click that subscribe button right here on YouTube
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Thanks for watching. Have a great day

Viltrox 20mm F1.8 Sony E-Mount: Final Review | 4K

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Viltrox 20mm F1.8 Sony E-Mount: Final Review | 4K

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