Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Mount Review + Deep Dive Optical Examination

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the Viltrox Auto-Focusing 20mm F2.8, this on Nikon Z-Mount
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Now, I reviewed the Sony e-mount version of this lens in late 2023, but I have been interested in revisiting some of these lenses on Nikon, particularly in the
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this case looking at it from the perspective of the Nikon catalog and of course performance on a
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Nikon, this case Z8 body. The truth of the matter is that at least to this point, there is
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relatively few wide angle options, prime lenses on Nikon Z mount, and certainly none of them that
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fit kind of the check the boxes that this particular lens does, and that it is a lens that only
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cost $175, it's small, it's light, it's very portable, and relatively high performing for such a low price
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You look at a lens like, for example, the Nikon 20mm F1.8 S-line lens
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and it's a great lens, but it's also a lens that cost $1,100
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And so obviously in a completely different size and price category. So this really does, I believe, help to fit a need on Nikon
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But I'm always interested in seeing how these lenses survive the port
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from the original amount that they were designed for or released on
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and then how they perform on a completely different platform. And so we're going to examine that in detail and jump into it together
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So a little bit more on the lens itself at 20 millimeters. This is a 91.6 degree angle of view, a very useful focal link for a wide variety of subjects
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obviously for things like landscapes, architecture, shooting in interiors or smaller spaces
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all of that are useful applications for this lens. The lens is just a slight bit bigger
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on Z mount as opposed to Sony E mount. And so it is 68 millimeters in diameter or 2.67 inches
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That is three millimeters wider. And the big reason for that is that the actual mount diameter of the Z mount is much larger
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than what the Sony E mount diameter is, about a 9mm difference
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And so as a byproduct, lenses need to be a little bit wider to accommodate that
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So there is almost a little bit of a flare out on the lens
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lens barrel right near the lens mount. And so it's three millimeters wider in diameter
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Interestingly, in this case, it's also just a hair longer. And so it's 60.8 millimeters in
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overall length or 2.3 inches. So it's about a millimeter and a half longer. Not enough to be
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statistically significant, but just a little bit bigger. And you combine those things together
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and it is just a little bit heavier. It weighs in at 163 grams, which is 16 grams heavier than
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the e-mount version, that's 6.1 ounces here. At the same time, however, even though it's very
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slightly larger on Z-mount, it is by far the smallest and lightest 20-millimeter option available
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on Z-mount at the moment. Up front, we have a 52-millimeter front filter thread. And as we'll get
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to in the actual image quality section, this is a lens that has very significant vignette
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So you will want to be careful to use, I would say, thinner filters on it just to be sure that you're
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not adding additional vignette into the equation. It does include a lens hood and also a small
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lens pouch. As is the case, unfortunately with all of these little plastic fantastics from
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Viltrocks, the lens hood doesn't lock into place. And so you can rotate it into the proper place
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but it doesn't lock there. So you just have to be careful because if you bump it towards
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kind of on there a bit askew, it can create some additional kind of mechanical vignette because
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it's not, the scallops are not in the right place. position. So just watch out for that. Now, a unique challenge here on Nikon when it comes to that
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lens hood not locking is that actually to remove the lens, you're rotating in the opposite direction
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of what you are on Canon, Sony, or Fuji. And so unfortunately, you need to turn the lens in a
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direction where, because the lens hood's not locking, that might be the easiest place that you grab
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but in the process of turning, as you put it on, you're actually, you lose the ability to grip there
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And so it's just a little bit of additional challenge on Z-mount or Nikon versus the other mounts
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because of the rotation of your actual locking, all being opposite. Now, as far as features, there really isn't much to look to here
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There's nothing on the barrel outside of the focus ring itself. The focus ring is actually well executed
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It has a nice level of damping. You can focus with some precision, but there are no switches, no aperture ring, no buttons
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nothing like that. It is essentially featureless. There are seven aperture blades inside, and so you have a 14-bladed Sunstar, which looks okay, but not exceptional
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What it does contain that is very common for Viltrox lenses is that it does have a USBC port
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And that allows you to do easy firmware updates to it. Minimum focus distance here is 19 centimeters, and you get a fairly decent 0.17 times magnification
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close enough to do some interesting things, to shoot some perspective-type shots
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It's not going to masquerade as a macro lens by any stretch of imagination
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but that is a decent level of magnification for a wide-angle lens
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Now, obviously, as mentioned, this is made out of plastic. It is built around a sturdy metal lens mount
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I will say about the plastics used in this Viltrox series, they actually feel like really good grade-engineered plastics
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because everything feels very tough and sturdy. There no weather ceiling here but there is a HD nano multi coating on the front element that will help with some fingerprints and water there And so it not a professional grade lens but it does feel tough And truth of the matter is is that I been using the email version
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I used it a fair bit. I've traveled with it some, and frankly, it's held up just fine
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It's been tough. It's been durable. So we have a simplistic design here, but again, for 175 bucks, I would say it's more about what's on the inside that matters here
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Now, one of the main areas of differentiation when you're looking at multiple lens mounts is how autofocus is going to perform
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Every system has its own focus algorithms and process for achieving autofocus
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In many cases, the difference between e-mount and z-mount is not all that significant
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But I did note a few things that I'll highlight here. We have an STM or a stepping focus motor here
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It is mostly quiet and fast in operation, but as you can see here in my focus test
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I did see a few micro pulses when autofocus isn't confidently on a contrast edge, for example
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More so than what I saw on e-mount where focus just seemed a little bit more confident
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In real-world use, I did get accurate autofocus. I didn't note any kind of issue there
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I was able to focus on things even if there was a narrow depth of field
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I was able to focus fine if there was a human or animal subject on frame. And then obviously the very typical things are going to do with a wide-angle lens
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I could do all those things without any kind of issue. So overall, good eye detection, though again, eye detection doesn't feel as good as what it did on Sony with this particular lens
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When I switched over to the video side of things, it was kind of an extension of what I saw in my basic auto-focus test
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in that the overall focus pools were good and confident, no obvious steps along the way
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But I did see some of that micro pulsing, where it gets to the focus, particularly in my foreground focus
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and it doesn't seem to quite steady. It just kind of does a little micropulsing
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So a little less confident in that regard. You will see some focused breathing
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but it's not significant, not a major issue there. With my hand test as well
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I just noticed a little less confidence and going back and forth between my hand and my eye
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Not bad overall, but not amazingly good. Now, on a positive note
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when it comes to doing something like vlogging, which I think is a good application for this lens
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It worked well in that regard. I had no issues with it staying confidently on my eye
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and tracking as I moved around in a variety of situations. And overall, in general, I would say in some of these video shots here
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the shots themselves seem confident and stable. So I would say that the lens is going to show its kind of limitations more
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if you're trying to force more significant focus changes between a point A and a point B
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but for just general stability in shots, less of an issue there
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So overall, I would say that this is going to be a good gimbal lens. It's obviously very lightweight, great focal length
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And of course, the ability to pop into an APSC crop is going to give you a little bit tighter 30 millimeter angle of view
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which is also a very useful angle of view as well. And so overall, autofocus is good
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but I wouldn't say as good as what I saw on Sony email. Now, on the image quality side of things, obviously I'm working with a little bit different standard here, 45 megapixels being the high-resolution watermark versus 61 megapixels on Sony
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And so, and there's one area, I think, of actual differentiation between the two mounts, which I'll highlight in just a second
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I'm going to give you a quick overview of optical performance, and then if you want the deeper dive, the optical breakdown will follow at the end of the review
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We have 10 elements in eight groups here. As you can see from the breakdown, half of these are exotic elements
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The MTF, it looks good, but not exceptionally good, and in many ways I think that real world results feel a little bit better
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Now, on the actual different test, I found when it comes to vignette and distortion
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Distortion itself is quite low. There's not a lot of distortion, particularly compared to some other wide-angle lenses
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But what is there, while it's not a lot to correct, it is complex in the sense that you can't just have a linear correction
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So basically what happens if you try to correct for the direction of barrel distortion
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you end up creating more pincushion distortion in the edges. If you try to correct for pincushion distortion in the edges
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you create barrel distortion in the middle. It's not linear, and so the profile is going to do the best job of cleaning it up
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What I did find compared to Sony is that while it had a lot of vignette on Sony
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it has even more on Nikon, which has been the case in all of these lenses
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So I'm essentially maxing out the vignette sliders on Nikon. And so we've got a good full, close to four stops of vignette in the corners there
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So just know that you're probably going to need to do vignette correction
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That is an optical weakness here. Now, one of the things that I observed on Sony
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which seemed to be a little bit less of an issue here, is that on at least the copy that I reviewed on Sony email
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I noticed a big disparity between center and corner performance. And so the corners looked really, really bad by comparison to the center and the midframe on email
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So I tried then going back and focusing in the corner and I saw much better corner performance
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but much poor center performance. So some definite issues with not being able to get a flat plane of focus
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Now, interesting here on Nikon, I saw much less of that issue. And while it's true that the corners are weaker than what the center or midframe performance is
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That's exactly what the MTF chart suggests. But it's not this radical thing to where it is a completely different result if I focus in the corner
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Yes, if I focus in the corner, the corner is a little bit better. The center is a little bit worse
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If I focus in the center, the center is better and the corners are a little bit worse, but it's not extreme
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So overall I would say that you going to find that this lens has good center performance has good mid performance even at F2 and that the corners are weaker and the corners will start to improve as you stop the lens down And I actually found that the best sharpness
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came at F8 in terms of consistency across the frame on a 45 megapixel sensor, but it's good enough
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by that point that I was happy with results. The corners are not the sharpest that I've seen
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obviously, but they're good enough for just about everybody in just about every kind of situation
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Now I did notice as per usual that on higher resolution bodies
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you were going to start to see diffraction pop in by about F11
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It's going to be the most obvious at F-16 which is the minimum aperture here
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But it's not terrible, it's not extreme I was happy with the colors and I will say I was also happy with the overall look of images
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Felt like the images had a little bit of that special sauce that I see with some wide-angle lenses
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Where they just the combination of the overall look of images was very
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appealing to me. And where I was shooting with a handful of different lenses in similar situations
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I actually found that I quite liked the look of the Viltrox 20mm images. Now, more of a mixed
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bag is when it comes to flare resistance. I found that flare resistance was mostly good
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but it's not perfect. You will get a little bit of ghosting artifacts, particularly when you
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stop the lens down a bit. Overall, however, for the price, this is a remarkably good little
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wide angle lens for the money. So my conclusion is this. I would say that relative to the Sony
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e-mount version, the lens itself actually fills an even greater need on Nikon. There's just a lot
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fewer wide angle prime lenses on Z-mount than what there were on Sony E-mount. So I'm really
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thrilled to see it here on Z-mount. I believe that as I just noted, it delivers really quite compelling
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images for $175. And if you're someone that only shoots wide angle rarely, if you're a very
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serious wide angle shooter, I would definitely consider instead the Viltrach 16mm F1.8. It's an
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exceptional lens. But this is, I think, good enough for most people, particularly those who
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like to shoot occasionally at wide angle and they don't want to dump a lot of money on it. This really
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allows you to do that and maybe to expand the ways that you can approach as seen by having a
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wide angle option that you haven't put a whole lot of money into. I also really love a lens like
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this for its form factor and the fact that it's a really easy lens to throw into a bag or even a
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pocket to bring along as a complementary focal length. Maybe you reach for it, maybe you don't
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in a day's outing, shooting, or on a trip, maybe you don't reach for it often, but it also has very
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little penalty for bringing it along in terms of the size and the weight. And so I think that that
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makes it a very, very interesting lens. I think this is a perfect lens for those that either
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don't shoot wide angle often or want to travel light or on a limited budget. There's a lot of
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ways that this checks a lot of boxes and is definitely well worth your consideration. Now, if you
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want more information, you can look in the description down below where it's linked to my new
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text review for the Z-mount version of the lens. There's also linkage to an image gallery there
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some buying links if you'd like to purchase one. And if you want a deeper dive into the office
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optical performance here on Z mount, then stay tuned with me right now
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We'll take a look at that together. So we'll start by taking a closer look here at the vignette and distortion pattern
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So as I mentioned in the overview, you can see that there is a little bit of a mustache pattern here
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And so we've got a barrel style distortion bulge here at the center of the image
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You can also see in the edges, however, that we also have a little bit of a pincushion style distortion on the edges
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And so that makes it a really complex pattern. you really can't do a great job of manually correcting
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So in this case, obviously, I've prioritized limiting barrel distortion inside. Here, you can see on the edges, however, it's exacerbated the amount of pincushion distortion along the edges
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So bottom line is that you'll do a better job by using a actual profile that is kind of custom-tailored for this
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If you're interested, this particular correction is a plus three to eliminate barrel distortion
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Now, you'll also note down here in the vignette slider area that I had to maximize that all the way out to 100%
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And you could see that that doesn't even, that's definitely not overcorrecting into the corners
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And so this has a lot of a lot of vignette. And so you're obviously again, profile correction will help a lot with that
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But at the same time, that's enough correction that there are potential situations if you're shooting at high ISOs
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You could get a little bit of additional noise as a byproduct of that. just something to be aware of
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Now, fringing of any kind is not an issue with this lens. On the longitudinal end of things, you can see that there's really just not any fringing to see before or after the plan of focus
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Likewise, if we look into the corners, I do see a tiny bit of long, or excuse me, lateral chromatic aberrations
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You can see just a little bit of a blue green and a little bit of a red magenta there on the left side
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But it's certainly not pronounced. It's not strong. so it probably won't be an actual real-world factor
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In fact, I didn't really notice it in any real-world images. So now moving on to contrast and resolution
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What we have here is a 45-mepixel Z8 sensor. I'm going to show you results at 200% magnification
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In the center of the frame, nothing to complain about there. Very sharp, very good contrast
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That's a good strong performance for a wide-angle lens. Likewise, in the mid-frame, it's not exceptional, but it's good
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I mean, it looks nice and crisp there. You can tell that there's room. This bill really kind of shows me contrast quite well
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There's room for a little bit more contrast there, but really not bad. We can also see that it holds pretty good towards that lateral kind of the outside one-third beginning
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So it doesn't fall apart early on in the midframe. But going down here into the corner we can see that it is steadily softening towards the corner But though frankly here this is really not a terrible performance So for comparison here on the right I got an example where I actually focused in the corner Now one other thing to observe is because of the amount of vignette that here the camera did a new metering
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And so we have one-twenty-fifth of a second rather than one-60th of a second
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And we can definitely see there is some improvement here in performance. A contrast looks better, a little bit more definition like in the coat here, and in these
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various things here, contrast looks improved. And yes, that means that if we go back to the center of the frame, the center with it focused in the corner doesn't look as good here as what it did when it was focused in the center
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But what we saw on the e-mount version, at least the copy that I tested, is that there was a radical difference between these two things
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That's really not the case here. This is a pretty normal end result
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So let's take that into the real world. Here is an F2.8 landscape
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And so we can see if we look in the center of the frame, it looks really, really good
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There's lots of detail there, and you can see even into the distance. Resolving a lot of fine details quite well
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As we move towards the middle frame, we can see that it's not maybe as crisp
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but still definitely reasonably good. You get off to that edge, and you definitely do see a softening of the image
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It's just not as strong, but again, neither is it terrible at the same time either
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Looking over here on the left side, essentially the same as what we see on the right side
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So stopping down from F2.8 to F4, we do see a... bit of a contrast boost here
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The whites look a little bit brighter. Everything just looks a little bit more contrasty, but not radically improved
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Midframe, I would say, looks a little bit better down into the corner. Corners definitely looking brighter here
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We've had some vignette lift, and overall it just looks a little crisper there in the corner
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By F5.6, things are looking better still in the corner, now looking pretty reasonable
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And we can see that F8, we actually achieve kind of our best
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performance as far as that sharpness reaching right off to the edge there it's now
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looking quite good and if we do a quick run around around the chart itself we can
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see here over here on the left side it's looking good on the left side so good
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consistent centering there up into the upper left again consistently good and then
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upper right we see pretty equal results all around and so that's really it's
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important because that shows a good centering now the fraction doesn't show up
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quite as early on a 45 megapixel body as opposed to, say, Sony, 61 megapixel body
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So we can see that at F11, image is still looking pretty good, I would say
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F-16, it's actually not looking bad. It's softer, as you can see
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There's less contrast than what there is at F-11, but neither has it gone completely mushy either
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So watch for diffraction, but not a huge deal here. So as noted, we have a reasonable amount of magnification, and if you look in the plane of focus
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contrast in detail in that area is actually really good. I think that looks actually quite fantastic
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There's a lot of fine details that are resolved. The negative side, as you can very obviously see
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we definitely are kind of exaggerating that, lacking a flat plan of focus
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And you can see that as you move off center at all, definitely everything is not in focus towards the edge of the frame
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This is actually a result from the e-mount version. It just kind of shows a close to the A7R5 here
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and you can see bocaque quality is okay it's you know it's a little bit busier than what you would like
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this is not really the kind of lens you buy for bocah anyway however i really liked the overall
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match of the optical glass and the color science on nicon body here obviously the greens are
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intense but this is accurate to what it was greens were really intense this was a gorgeous hiking
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area and another shot from this scene here and you can just see there's lots of varieties of green
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there. If I pop in and take a look at my wife, she's obviously not very large in frame
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but skin tones look good, they're accurate. And in this case, you know, here's another
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closer focus shot. And so you can see a little bit of bocha here. And it is, it's slightly
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nervous. There's definitely more outline than what I would like. But again, it's, it is what it is
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for a wide angle lens. Here's another shot where colors are both accurate, but they're also rich
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And as I look at the sum total of the image, I actually liked the wide angle look
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and the color off this image better than several other lenses that I was shooting with
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both on this and other platforms at the same time. So I felt pretty good about that
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Now, popping back to the email version for some Arizona shots here
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so I can get lots of intense sun. So you can see here, we've got a little bit of a ghosting artifact
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but not too bad here. And obviously, this is a very, strongly backlit situation. You can see contrast hasn't fallen apart. Another shot here. And again
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you know, overall, I think that that's really quite good. I mean, this is stopped down. And so the
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image is not falling apart. Contrast still good. You can see detail is pretty great here
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Now, in this stop down image here with email version, you can see that right off to the edge of the
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frame that contrast is quite good. So I think this shot is, let me just double check. Yes, at F11
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So as you stop the lens down to smaller apertures, that sharpness is going to extend right off into the corners
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One final shot here. The Sun Star, I think, is average at best
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It's certainly not spectacular. But neither is it terrible either. And flare resistance, I think, is more good than bad
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So overall, for such an inexpensive optic, really not a bad performance
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So at the end of the day, I think you can agree with me that the optical performance, while nuanced, is really quite good from the
23:45
lens and I hope that the optical deep dive has helped you to make a more informed decision
23:49
as to whether or not it's a lens that should be in your own kit. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z Mount Review + Deep Dive Optical Examination

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