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Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7 Sony E-Mount Review | Big Bang for the Buck!
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Aug 21, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the Sony E-mount version of Viltrox's very good AF 56mm F1.7 STM telephoto prime lens. | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery | Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:24 - Build and Design
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I am back for a second review of the Viltrox autofocusing
0:15
56mm f1.7 lens. So in this case, rather than for Fuji X-mount, which I reviewed back in
0:21
April, we're taking a look at the new version just released for Sony E-mount. Now, Viltrox
0:28
has been building in essentially two different directions. They've been going with more upscale
0:32
lenses in one direction, but then also they have been moving from their kind of $300 range
0:39
lenses also down into the between $100 and $200 with plastic construction, less features
0:46
but also there's a trickle down effect from their excellent optical development that's
0:50
been taking place. This lens is obviously from that category and it is thus far the
0:55
only APS-C lens in that series. So a 56mm f1.7 lens. Now what I have found with the
1:02
Sony E-mount version is essentially it solves almost all the problems with the Fuji X-mount
1:08
version because a lot of those problems tend to be somewhat specific to Fuji autofocus
1:13
So at a price tag of around or right under $180, is this a lens worth buying? Well, the
1:20
answer is pretty clearly going to be yes, and we'll explain why in this review here
1:25
Now 56mm on APS-C, so that's a 1.5x crop factor on either Fuji or Sony, and so that gives
1:32
you a full frame equivalent of about 84mm. So essentially an 85mm lens. A very popular
1:39
angle of view, it's right under 30 degrees angle of view, so great for portrait work
1:44
or anything where you want kind of a short telephoto. This is the second 56mm lens from
1:51
Viltrox. Their first was a 56mm f1.4, but if you take a look at this comparison that
1:55
I've put together here, you can see that at the 80% level how radically improved this
2:01
new lens is over that original f1.4 lens. You'll find that with the original lens there
2:08
was almost nothing that ever reached that 80% threshold, whereas with the new lens there's
2:12
almost nothing that doesn't exceed the 80% threshold. So much, much sharper all across
2:17
the frame and most notably in the corners where it's about 40% sharper than that previous
2:23
lens. Now as noted, this lens is not made out of metal. Initially all Viltrox lenses
2:28
were metal housing. They've gone to an engineered plastics here, but I will note that there's
2:33
nothing about this lens that feels fragile. The original Samyang Tiny series, for example
2:39
they felt kind of flimsy. Like if you squeeze them they would flex a little bit. That's
2:42
not the case here. These lenses actually feel really tough and while it is plastic it feels
2:47
like the kind, I wouldn't recommend dropping lenses, but it feels like the kind of lens
2:51
you could drop a few times and it actually would survive that experience. So f1.7 obviously
2:58
is a unique aperture value, maximum aperture value, just a little bit brighter than f1.8
3:04
So f1.8 is two thirds of a stop slower than what f1.4 is. That's one third of a stop faster
3:11
than f2. In this case, f1.7 is one half stop rather than two thirds stop slower than f1.4
3:20
This is one half stop slower than f1.4. So just a tiny bit of an advantage, but it is
3:25
a little bit of an advantage in that low light situations you can suck in just a little bit
3:30
more light than an equivalent f1.8 lens. Now this lens is extremely compact and while
3:37
I did spend part of my time reviewing it on the APS-C mode of my a7R Mark V, which is
3:43
my preferred APS-C body on Sony right now, but I also spent some time while I was doing
3:48
my review of the ZV-E10 Mark II, a very, very compact camera. I found that this lens mounted
3:55
on it was a really great match for that. The lens is 65 millimeters in diameter, 2.6
4:01
inches and only 54.7 millimeters or 2.15 inches in overall length. It weighs in at just 171
4:10
grams or six ounces. In other words, for getting an 85 millimeter angle of view, it's very
4:16
hard to get that smaller and lighter than what you're going to get right here. This
4:20
is a very lightweight and tough little lens. It has a 52 millimeter front filter thread
4:27
It does include both a pouch and a lens hood, both things that are definitely not always
4:32
expected on a lens with a price point this low. I will say about the lens hood that while
4:37
it bayonets on fine, it doesn't really like lock click into place. And what I have found
4:42
is that it is possible to bump that. And if you're not careful, because if it's off center
4:48
a little bit, it will cause some shading, some mechanical vignette. So you're going
4:52
to want to be careful about that. But at least it is included here along with a little pouch
4:58
for it. There are no features on the barrel here, no switches, there's no aperture ring
5:03
or anything like that. All we've got is a manual focus ring. Manual focus here does
5:07
actually have a nice level of damping. It feels fairly good. What you will find, however
5:14
is that doing large focus changes takes a number of rotations. So I find it better for
5:20
fine tuning focus, but it is, I think, good enough, has good enough feel that if you want
5:24
to do some manual focus pulls, I think you could pull that off for video work. Inside
5:30
we have a very decent nine aperture blades. So the aperture iris stays a little bit more
5:35
round than a more typical, say, seven aperture blades for cheaper lenses. So a little bit
5:40
of a minor upgrade there. A Viltrox consistent feature is that there is a USB-C port on the
5:46
lens mount, which by the way, is my preferred position for it. So you're not messing with
5:51
some little port that has a cover that you can lose. Instead, it's right there where
5:55
it's typically covered up by the connection to the camera or the lens cap. And so you're
5:59
not going to have to worry about any kind of moisture getting into that. But Viltrox
6:03
firmware updates are really, really simple to do. It's basically just a drag and drop
6:08
You do have to have a computer typically, but outside of that, it's very, very easy
6:12
to accomplish. Now I did know one change that on paper, the specifications for minimum focus
6:19
distance is the same. It's rated at 55 centimeters and only 0.11 times magnification, not great
6:26
But what I actually found is that on Sony, I seem to be able to focus a little bit closer
6:30
and I also seem to be able to get a higher magnification level than what I did on Fuji
6:36
In fact, I was comparing it to a full frame 85 millimeter lens that has a supposed magnification
6:42
of 0.12 times. And as you can see here, the Viltrox very noticeably showed a much higher
6:48
level of magnification. I'm going to guess on Sony, this actually plays out at 0.14 times
6:54
at least if you manually focus. And so again, just a little bit more useful here on Sony
7:02
There is no weather sealing on these inexpensive lenses, but what you do get is what they call
7:06
their HD Nano multi-layer coating on the front element. It does help a little bit with cleaning
7:12
kind of an anti-fouling, anti-fingerprint. And so some nod toward that, even if there's
7:16
no actual weather sealing here. Overall, there's not really any bells and whistles, but it's
7:21
also, you know, 180 bucks or less. It's actually a really nicely made lens that feels tough
7:27
feels durable, and as we're going to see is very high performing. Now, a lot of my
7:32
chief objections when it came to the Fuji version of the Viltrox 56 millimeter F1.7
7:38
was when it came to autofocus. Now on Sony, I fully expected that autofocus would be much
7:43
better and it, if anything, has exceeded my expectations. We have a lead screw type STM
7:49
focus motor. And while it was quiet on Fuji, it was a little bit on the slower side, kind
7:54
of slightly below average. On Sony, it seems to be considerably above average. And as you
8:00
can see here, those focus changes either indoors or outdoors are pretty, pretty instantaneous
8:06
I also found that it did a very good job of tracking the eye. And that was true, not just
8:12
in my kind of formal test here, but if I was, you know, shooting animals, birds, insects
8:19
I found that the eye AF tracking was actually really good. I was even able to catch a bee
8:24
in flight, which I'm definitely not able to do with every lens. So an impressive result
8:29
there. I also found, for example, that now, because there's so much more speed and this
8:34
series of Nala moving persistently towards me, autofocus stayed moving ahead and on track
8:40
throughout the whole sequence, about a 40 shot burst. So that in itself is impressive
8:44
because that's not often been the case with inexpensive lenses. I also found that catching
8:50
birds in flight was actually quite easy, both to acquire them and then also to track
8:55
them. I had really great results there. And so autofocus is the kind of autofocus that
9:01
you can do as far as your subjects now include action. And there's not really much you can't
9:06
do with this lens, which is fantastic. I even found in very low light, I was testing on
9:11
the ZV-E10 Mark II to see how its low light performance was. And even shooting in basically
9:16
a dark room, ISO 32,000, I was able to get accurate autofocus. And so no issues there
9:23
Focus didn't even seem to slow down all that noticeably. And so I'm just really impressed
9:29
with autofocus for stills. I was really unimpressed with autofocus for video on Fuji, but again
9:37
it has so much to do with Fuji's autofocus system, which is in desperate need of updating
9:42
unfortunately. And so on Sony here, autofocus pulls for video, even in this challenging
9:47
subject were really fantastic. And it's challenging because it's a dark subject in not a particularly
9:53
well-lit area, but you can see that focus is just confidently moving to the background
9:58
back to the subject without any kind of pulsing or settling. No issues there. When I shot
10:03
my hand test, that was an area that again, didn't go great on Fuji, but here on Sony
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you can see that those transitions from my hand to my eye and vice versa, they're just
10:13
they're very, very confident. There's zero issues there. And so a great result there
10:18
Now when it comes to just normal shots, I'm not going to say that it's like super cinematic
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but neither are the focus transitions really abrupt or noticeable. They're not totally
10:29
damp, but they're good enough. And you'll also note that focus breathing is fairly low
10:34
on this lens for being a longer focal length. And so that helps as well. There's just kind
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of less of that kind of jarring forward or backwards, but rather transitions are rather
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smooth. So overall, I would say that this autofocus system is now pretty fantastic
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at least on Sony, able to accept a lot of different challenging subjects and for both
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stills and video. So great results there. Now on the image quality side of things, here's an area where I knew that we would
11:05
have an easier ride on Sony than what we did on Fuji. Part of that is just practically
11:09
there is no camera system that I tested is demanding as Fuji's 40 megapixel X-Trans sensor
11:16
That is huge pixel density that far exceeds anything from any other brand at this point
11:23
And so with Sony having a threshold of just 26 megapixels and the fact that most pieces
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of software have an easier time with sharpening and de-mosaic-ing on Sony than they do on
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Fuji X-Trans, it just makes for a simpler process. And so this is an optical formula
11:41
of 11 elements in nine groups, surprisingly for such an inexpensive lens, seven of those
11:46
are exotic elements, including extra low dispersion elements, high refractive index elements
11:52
And so it's quite an impressive little optical formula, which shows part of why it's so sharp
11:58
The MTF, as you can see, is just really remarkably consistent. It actually is a little bit sharper
12:04
slightly off axis than what it is in the dead center of the frame, but it's also just surprisingly
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sharp even over onto the corners. And what I found is that when shooting big images
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where I was looking even towards the very edges, looking at fine details, they were just really, really nicely resolved. It's very rare for a lens that's inexpensive to
12:23
resolve fine details as well as what this Viltrox 56mm does. And so what you're going
12:30
to find is in terms of some of the technical things. And by the way, I'll give you just
12:34
a quick technical overview, and then if you want the technical deep dive, you can stay
12:38
tuned to the end of the video and we will explore that together. But distortion, as
12:43
I saw on Fuji, is very low. I registered a minus two of a pin cushion style distortion
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probably not enough to mess with in most situations. In fact, if you're shooting portraits
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leave it uncorrected. It's a little bit more flattering to portrait subjects. It makes
12:57
them look a little bit thinner, which they're typically happy about. But also in this case
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as is almost always the case with these third party lenses, when I compare a Sony E-mount
13:07
to a Fuji X-mount, there's less vignette for some reason on Sony. And so in this case
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that is true. The vignette is, I needed a plus 41 to correct as compared to a plus 73
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on Fuji. So almost a stop less on Sony, which is pretty consistent with what I typically
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see. So now vignette is less of an issue as well. I also saw a consistency between Sony
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or Fuji mounts in that fringing is quite low, whether that's the longitudinal style. You
13:36
can see on my chart that there's really not a lot of fringing there. And then out in the
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real world, in this shot, for example, of flower petals, there's very little fringing
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around them. So that's good. Also in an F8 example from my test chart in the corners
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there's very little fringing there, lateral style chromatic aberrations near the edge
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of the frame. So very well corrected in that regard as well. All of that adds up to really
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excellent wide open sharpness. And as you can see here, the lens is very consistently
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sharp in the crops that are, these are 200% crops. It's sharp center, mid-frame even better
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And then right into the corners, very, very consistently good. So awesome in that regard
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you will find you'll get a slight contrast boost as you stop things down. So a little
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bit better at F2, better still at F2.8. From F2.8 to F8, it's more about depth of field
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It's less about more resolution and sharpness because it's pretty much pegged it already
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And so you can just control aperture for your depth of field, but you're going to have plenty
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of sharpness there. And by the way, that makes this lens really valuable as a lightweight
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nighttime lens to go out with. It's reasonably bright at F1.7, very small and discreet. And
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because it's so sharp, even at F1.7, you can get some really great looking images. As per
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usual, diffraction will start to show up around F11. It's a little bit less noticeable on
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this lower resolution camera, though by F16, which is minimum aperture, it will be the
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softest image quality that you're going to see throughout the aperture range. I found
15:07
that colors are really good. And this is one area where things have really improved
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If you go back to the 56mm F1.4, kind of Viltrox's more first generation of lens design, the
15:18
optical glass didn't overly impress me at that point. But what I have found is that
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the quality of their optical glass has gotten a lot better. And with it, colors are just
15:27
a lot better. They're less garish, they're more natural, more neutral in terms of the
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overall color tone. And thus, I'm actually really pleased with the overall look of images
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Bokeh quality is good. Now, it's not going to be like full frame 85mm F1.4 good, but
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I did find that the quality of the blur is reasonably good. There's not a lot of hard
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edges, a little bit more outlining than what I would like, but not particularly strong
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And so overall, I found that a lot of my images just had a really nice overall look to them
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And again, for the price of the lens, it's a really strong performance there. Even flare
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resistance is reasonably good. Not perfect, but again, good enough to get by. And so overall
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there's really not a whole lot to complain about optically here. So in conclusion, I liked this lens a lot on Fuji, despite the autofocus limitations
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But on Sony, if you're on a budget, this is pretty much a dream to be able to get such
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a high-performing lens for such a low price. Makes this kind of a no-brainer if you're
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a Sony APS-C shooter and you're looking for just a good quality lens to throw on your
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camera. It's very sharp. It's comparable to the Sigma 56mm F1.4 in sharpness. And the
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bokeh quality is, if anything, maybe a hair better. And so it really provides a pretty
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strong value alternative if you don't need to go all the way to F1.4 and thus spend the
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extra money for the Sigma, which is also an excellent lens, by the way
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So I would say that I don't know of a better budget portrait lens on Sony APS-C than the
16:59
Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7. It is pretty much a joy to use. Now, if you want more information
17:07
you can either check out my full text review, which is linked in the description down below
17:10
There's also linkage to an image gallery and some buying links if you'd like to purchase
17:14
one yourself, including a discount code that may get you money off. Kind of Viltrox is
17:20
a little up and down with that, but give it a try. Beyond that, if you want a deeper dive
17:25
into the overall performance of the lens, stay tuned right now and we'll take a look at that together
17:29
Okay, we'll start by taking a look at something that you can't do on Fuji X-mount since it
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only is APS-C. The Sony E-mount obviously is either APS-C or full frame. So if we put
17:39
this on a full frame camera, this is what we get. And so you can see that, no, it is
17:43
not giving full frame coverage. However, if I crop that image we just looked at here
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and then I shot just an APS-C mode, you can see if I cycle here into the pixel dimensions
17:57
you can see that there is considerably more pixels left over than the standard 26 megapixels
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of the APS-C crop mode. In fact, if I did the math, this is about 35 megapixels worth
18:08
of resolution. So obviously you are going to be able to get more on frame than what
18:13
you are by shooting in pure APS-C mode. And so, I mean, it might be advantageous just
18:19
to be able to get that extra amount of information on frame for you in a particular situation
18:24
Second thing here is vignette and distortion. So taking a closer look at this, you can see
18:28
there is a little bit of a pinch here in the center of the frame, pin cushion distortion
18:32
It's extremely mild, very easily correctable. I used just a minus two to correct that. You
18:38
can also see that there is some definite vignette that is there in the corners. But again, it's
18:42
not significant. A plus 41 to correct, that's between a stop and a stop and a half. And
18:48
so it's not super bad and you can see it corrected quite easily. Likewise here with longitudinal
18:53
chromatic aberrations, you can see looking at the, this is the area of focus. So before
18:58
the plane of focus, very, very tiny bit of magenta fringing. After plane of focus, a
19:03
tiny bit of green fringing, but so minuscule that you really aren't going to see it much
19:09
This would be kind of a worst case scenario here. And you can see even at this distance
19:13
that there's a tiny bit of fringing again around just some of those edges, but it's
19:18
kind of a natural transition to the colors beyond. I didn't really see any kind of objectionable
19:23
longitudinal chromatic aberrations in any real world shots. Likewise here with a lateral
19:27
chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame, you can see all of our transitions
19:31
from black to white are really nice and clean. There's no fringing that I see anywhere. So
19:36
no issue there either. So here's the test chart I'm shooting at 26 megapixels of resolution
19:42
which is currently the highest available on Sony APS-C. And you can see here even at 200
19:49
magnification, which is how we'll look at our test chart, that we have very good sharpness
19:53
and contrast in the center of the frame. But you'll notice that unusually it's actually
19:57
even better here in the mid frame. And that's what the MTF chart shows us as well. That
20:02
this lens is one of the rare lenses. It's actually a little bit sharper off center from
20:06
the axis than what it is in the center of the frame. We can see very good consistency
20:11
You can see sharp here and sharp here and right down into the corners and right out
20:15
to the very edge of the frame, a very consistent sharpness and contrast there. That's a really
20:20
excellent performance. We'll take a moment just to pop around to check out centering
20:25
You can see it's good here on the left side towards the bottom. Very good at the top
20:30
Actually that's really fantastic looking up at the left top and then up at the right top
20:35
It looks great here as well. So very consistent centering. So what all of that means is that
20:40
you get excellent real world performance even at F1.7. So if you're shooting portraits
20:45
you can see great detail, great skin tones. Everything looks really fantastic even at
20:50
F1.7. Here a shot of a seagull on the beach. Again, look at the amount of detail that's
20:56
present there. Everything is very nice and crisp. This shot of a bird in flight shows
21:01
that it's able to give us, because of the good autofocus, very good detail and consistency
21:06
even in this kind of setting. Now you can see a tiny bit of magenta fringing along the
21:11
edge of the wings there, but it's pretty minuscule and you could easily correct for that if so
21:17
desired. Final thing here is I made the point about this being a great low light performer. Because it's so consistent right off to the edge of
21:23
the frame, you really have the opportunity to shoot at F1.7 even in dim conditions and
21:29
get really nicely detailed results without having to crank down the aperture to try to
21:35
sharpen the lens up. Now if we compare F1.7 to F2, so that mild little stop down, we can
21:41
see that it does make a difference. You can definitely see some increased contrast that
21:45
is present there. Already our mid-frame is excellent and so it's just slightly more excellent
21:52
Down into the corners, again, corners were already awesome, but you can just see that there is a bit more contrast and overall pop to the textures that is present there
22:00
One of the primary things you see stopping down to F2.8 here on the right is just that
22:06
the vignette issues near the edge of the frame, what was there, are lifting and so just the
22:11
image overall is brighter. So that just allows us to have a slightly more consistent end
22:16
result to where it just looks very, very crisp. Look at the stamping of the letters here
22:21
It really stands out against it. You can just see here that the contrast is a little bit
22:25
more muted at F2. So that's the improvement of shooting at F2.8
22:30
Now once you hit F2.8, you're really not going to sharpen up much from there. We can see
22:34
here with F4 on the right, really not improved. Even if we compare F5.6 now on the right
22:41
it's really not any better either. It's more that it just kind of holds its own. And so
22:45
it's really consistently good. But I would say if anything, there's a mild drop off from
22:51
F2.8, which seems to be pretty much peak performance here in my eye
22:55
So here's a shot on the ZV-E10 Mark II. This is a JPEG image right out of camera. And so
23:00
you can see looking at F5.6 landscape aperture, you've got sharpness right there into the
23:05
very, very corners of the frame. Very, very consistent performance here. And so we can
23:09
see as we look towards the future, lots of details that are shown there and off into
23:14
the distance. Just really fantastic detail. This is an easy lens to carry small and light
23:19
And I've looked at this image already previously. It really impresses me with how much detail
23:24
is present there all throughout this frame. If you look at the fine details, they're really
23:28
resolved. Look at all these trees through this zone. It's really quite impressive to
23:32
see just how much detail is present there. So by the time you get to F11, the image quality is only very slightly softened by
23:40
diffraction. By the time you get to the minimum aperture of F16, you can see that it's the
23:45
softest that we've seen at any point. Diffraction is just robbing some of the contrast in detail
23:50
there. So we've had a bit of a discussion about how that magnification does seem to
23:54
be improved here on E-mount. This is the area that I focused on. You can see even up close
23:59
very good sharpness and contrast there. And so, and again, it goes right off to the very
24:04
edge of the frame. So overall, this is a good performer up close as well
24:09
As mentioned previously, I think that the bokeh quality is not, it's not high end level
24:14
but it's good. I mean, there's nothing really objectionable in the shot. You will see a
24:18
little bit of that deformation of the specular highlights, a little bit more like lemon shaped
24:25
towards the corners, but that's pretty typical. And overall, if you look at the overall just
24:30
quality of the image, this is a raw image right out of camera. You can see that the
24:34
colors look good, detail and contrast look good, really nothing to complain about. This
24:38
shot, even in the midst of a burst of Nala moving towards the camera, you can see that
24:43
really sharp delineation in the plane of focus, really nice and sharp and, and contrasty
24:49
But then as we look towards the background here, you can see the background is reasonably
24:53
soft, a little bit of outlining here, but again, this is an inexpensive lens and that's
24:58
a pretty great looking end result. Another shot here, and again, colors look good, detail
25:04
is good, and then the overall quality of the blur, not bad at all. So really this is a
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pretty strong performance all across the board and really impressive when you consider the
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price point of the lens. So as always, thanks for sticking around to the very end. And I
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hope that the optical deep dive has answered any lingering questions that you might've
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had about the performance of the lens. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great
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day and let the light in