Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 Review | The Best Lens Under $1000 Ever?

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[Music]
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well it's finally here vro is a little different than a lot of other companies in that they release a lens road map
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that allows you to see upcoming lenses a long way out as a result we have known that their lab series is coming and the
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first of those would be the 135 mm f1.8 la lens that I'm testing here today
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because we've had a lot of time to either build or build anticipations I guess I would say there is a lot of
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expectation that's attached to this lens because vro has proven that they can make ever better lenses and the lab
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series is supposed to be the top of the Heap their Zeiss Otis Series so to speak
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the 135mm f1.8 lab lens is an exceptional lens in fact it may be the
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best lens under $1,000 that I've ever tested before but is it a lens for you
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well we're going to find that out in today's review I'm filming on it at the moment right now just to give you a
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sense of the kind of rendering it can achieve even on a lousy rainy day like this but we're going to dive into all of
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the details and break it down right after a word from our sponsor today's episode is brought to you by Phantom
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15% off when you're ready to check out so when your new lens arrives in a
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box this big you know that you're going to be dealing with a large lens and this is in fact the biggest and heaviest lens
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that vrox has ever produced and in fact it is the biggest and heaviest 135 mm lens that I have ever tested it is 93 mm
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in diameter or 3.66 in it is a whopping 145. 7 mm or about 5 and 3/4 in in
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overall length 82mm front filter thread which is common for any kind of 135 mm
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f1.8 lens however the weight here is probably the most significant um kind of
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growth over anything I've tested previously this lens weighs in at 1300 G or right under 46 o so it is definitely
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heavy you are going to feel it that is an an additional 450 G versus the Sony
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135 mm f1.8 GM by the way you will me hear me reference both the 135mm f1.8 GM
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which I've owned for several years along with the samyang AF 135mm f1.8 which I
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also currently have at the moment and I will be doing by the way a direct comparison video between the samyang and
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the vrs in the future so watch for that so why is this lens so big and heavy I
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think that the logic here from what I've understood to this point is that this is essentially going to be very similar to
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I've mentioned zeiss's Otis series already in the intro and the Otis philosophy was is to just let the
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engineers go crazy and to design the very best lenses they could at that particular focal length without really
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being concerned about weight size or price now in the case of the vttr
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obviously price is going to be a consideration in a way that it wasn't for Zeiss and so while this lens does
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qualify for those first few things it's bigger bigger and heavier it definitely isn't more expensive in fact at only
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$899 it is a whopping $1,100 cheaper than what the Sony GM lens is and only
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$1100 more than what the samyang is despite being just a an a whole
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different class in terms of the build autofocus features and even much better optically as we're going to see and so
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uh definitely as far as a value proposition this is a fantastic value but it is big and it is heavy so if that
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turns you off off obviously you're need going to need to look elsewhere now the samyang is actually the lightest lens
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currently in the class and definitely if you're holding them side by side you can definitely tell the extra weight of the
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vtrs at the same time n none of these 135 mm lenses are small enough that
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you're just going to throw them in and forget about them you have to be intentional about bringing them along and so in that sense I don't find the
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vro to be that much more of a burden while it is significantly more heavy it
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doesn't really take up more more room in the bag and it's not like the lightest lenses in the class are super light and
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compact anyway so I mean your mileage may vary uh when it comes to that one
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other thing that I want to deal with here that I is is one of the few negatives that I have to point to is
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that for whatever reason vro went a different direction with the aperture control here than what they did with say
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the 16 mm f1.8 another excellent lens from them that has a very traditional aperture does have the ability to
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declick it but you've got the traditional marked aperture with oneir stop to tents and in this case however
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they elected to have a dedicated aperture ring here but rather than having just marked spots along the way
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they elected instead to just have it all rely on the LED screen for giving you that information and so you have the
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option of having a declick or a clicked but in this case while the clicks are
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nice they feel good indefinite the clicks are not at the onethird stop detents as you might expect they're actually at 1 nth stop to 10 that's kind
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of a weird choice because for one thing the camera bodies that I test on they
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don't even measure in one nth stop and so you can move it to that one nth stop you're still just kind of somewhere in
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between the next one3 stop and also when it comes to the LED screen it doesn't
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show those ninth stops either instead it just shows traditional you know third stop intervals in between the major full
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f- stops it's just kind of a weird choice and I'm not quite sure what the logic was behind it as traditionally you
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can rotate all the way to the left side and you can move past F16 which is minimum aperture and you can move into
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automatic mode if you would prefer to control the aperture from within the camera it's just to me it's kind of a a
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missed opportunity in that a traditional aperture would have been great here and I'm not quite sure what advantage is
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perceived in this different type of approach here now that LED screen is
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useful on a number of levels it does show you as mentioned the aperture information it's also going to show you
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your your focus distance and so it FS kind of a void that is typically missing on mirrorless lenses and that you do
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have a focus distance markings on there so I I do like that part of it and it also becomes handy when you're wanting
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to set your ab Focus parameters which I'll get to in just a second so the
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aperture itself has 11 rounded blades uh it's a great looking aperture it does
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the lens does have pretty good geometry even even wide open just some slight deformation towards the edges but if you
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stop it down to about f2.8 as you can see here you get beautiful specular highlights all across the frame nice and
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round and so that round aperture certainly does pay dividends and I like 11 blade count it's a little bit higher
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gives you just a little bit more circular shape there is a three position Focus
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limiter here on the side of the lens those three options are the full range which I suspect you'll leave it in most
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of the time because AF is really fast as we'll see in just a moment but you also have the option of going at the closer
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range so as little as 70 cm. 7 m up to 2 m or you can choose 1.5 M to Infinity if
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you want to eliminate those close Focus possibilities the uh and as noted the
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LED screen will show you that distance scale you do have a traditional ammf switch here on the side and then you
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have two function buttons now in many lenses that I test the function buttons If you have multiple ones are just
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redundant that's not true here and so so you can assign different functions to the two different buttons here so the
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top function will fill fill whatever your camera assigned value is so in my
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case this is actually selecting different I's for doing I AF and so serves that function the side one
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underneath the ammf switch is actually used for programming your ab focus and so what you can do is if you switch into
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manual focus you set a focus position that you want you can hold that function button down and it will preset that
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distance then you can select a second distance again hold it down and then after that all you got to do is click
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the button and you will immediately go in between those two Focus positions so it is a really Snappy and accurate way
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to get highly repeatable results and it could be a worthwhile way of doing like a focus pull for example particularly if
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you have the opportunity to shoot at a maybe um a a faster frame rate and so
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you can do a slow motion and really have a more slow gradual kind of pull but again an extra function there that some
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of the competing lenses don't have the focus ring itself does move very nicely
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it has nice damping to it it is not linear however and so it is going to be speed dependent so if you focus faster
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it's going to move faster again if you want a repeatable focus pull between one point a and point B use that AB Focus
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that's the better way to handle things it this lens as is standard for vro lenses does have a USBC port at the lens
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mount which you can use for fir more updates but it also has Bluetooth enabled which is unique for vro lenses
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and so you can actually use their app and I was able for example to do a firmware update via Bluetooth just from
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the app and controlling that and and the plan is in the future that there will maybe be some other features that will
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be accessible through that but this is the second of their bluetooth enabled lenses including the uh Nikon Z Mount
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version of the 16mm f1.8 the lens is Thoroughly weather sealed it has a gasket at the lens mount
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it has their HD Nano coating that behaves kind of like a flooring coating on the front element and then there are
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seal points all throughout the lens itself giving you a professional grade of build I will say on the build this
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lens kind of reminds me of being hybrid between a Canon L Series lens and a
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Zeiss Battis lens the btis element is you know around the LED screen but then
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of course the overall casing it's engineered Plastics over metal components obviously this is not a lot
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of plastic because it's very heavy but the build quality and kind of the light
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kind of very very light flocking on there does remind me a bit of a Canon L Series lens the lens Hood itself is a
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cut above your typical vro lens Hood it is thicker it has got a felt lining on
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the inside to keep light from bouncing around it's got that rubberized transition uh at the front which makes
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it very useful for being able to set the lens and Camera like this in a nice stable way and it does reverse for
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storage it does lock into place nice and tight there's not enough actual locking mechanism but bayonets good and precise
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there the only thing I will note is that it because the front Focus ring is also
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rubberized the interior of that is rubberized a bit sometimes when you have reversed it for storage when you pull it
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off the two rubberized surface surfaces want to grab each other it's not a big deal but if you're trying to quickly
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reverse it you may get slowed down there just for a second I do appreciate the fact that it is nice and close fitting
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however cuz that means that it doesn't take up a lot of additional room for storage in your
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bag now the lens does not have lens-based Optical stabilization it will
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rely on the stabiliz stabilization of your camera body one thing I do want to point out for people that are unfamiliar
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with this which unfortunately includes some reviewers and that is that if you tip the lens up and down like this you
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will feel a little bit of a clunking as if something is moving and that's because something is there are floating elements that are part of the optical
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path that allow you to achieve better up close Focus results but you will know that there's nothing actually wrong with
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your lens because if you attach it to your camera and you power it on you will hear those uh those floating elements
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engaged and you can tip up and down and nothing's going to move anymore because now they are actually you know
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electrified and they are being engaged ready to move with Focus so don't worry
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about that it is a lot of high-end lenses feature floating elements like that and as noted the reason for it is
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it allows you to achieve better up close performance this is one of the rare vrox lenses that is really really great up
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close you can focus down to 72 mm and there you can get a 0.25 or a 1 to4
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Times mag or 1: four magnification ratio which is matches the GM is a little bit
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better than what the samyang is and it's not only that it can focus nice and closely but the up close performance is
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noticeably better than what say the samyang is or even the GM outside of the
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included lens Hood you have again kind of a similar element to a Canon L Series lens you've got kind of a Leather Pouch
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here with a padded bottom I don't like it as well as like a nylon case for example like Sigma includes but again
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better than nothing there overall there's you know it's it's big and heavy and there is a questionable ergonomic
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decision around the aperture ring but outside of that this is a really beautifully built lens in your hand this
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feels like a very prograde lens and obviously that's what they're shooting for with the lab series and so if you
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can handle the the size and the weight I this is a lens I think that you're going to find delightful I have used it in the
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rain zero issues the weather ceiling is good on it so let's talk autofocus again
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they're pioneering uh allnew Focus technology in this lab series we have a
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dual not just one but we have dual hyper vcm Focus Motors so those are voice coil
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Motors and what you have rather than the STM Motors that they've relied on the past is you've got as Sony approaches it
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you've got dual motors that are driving autofocus and they are uh higher torqued linear Focus Motors that will allow you
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to just you know quickly move back and forth and you're never going to see any kind of visible steps along the way the
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if you know obviously we've got kind of three tiers here when it comes to autofocus performance the samyang is not
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bad but it is you know represents the lower tier the Sony GM lens is exceptionally good I've used it for
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Shooting Sports fast moving action it is a brilliant lens focusing and much
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closer to the GM level than the the samyang level is going to be the lab series lens now I will always say that
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when you're talking about a Sony G Master lens it's going to be hard for a third-party lens to focus as well or
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better Sony does autofocus with their high-end lenses extremely well but you can see that vro is taking a very
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similar philosophy with the Dual high torque Motors and so as a byproduct the
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focus speed and confidence blows the samyang away and is very similar to what the GM lens is however with the caveat
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thought that on Sony it will be different when this Lens comes to Nikon Z but on Sony you're obviously going to
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be limited by a maximum of 15 frames per second on their Sports bodies that's what they Limited at and so if you're
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like on my alpha 1 I can only shoot 15 frames per second whereas I could shoot 30 frames per second with the G Master
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lens and obviously that's going to be an even bigger disparity when you're talking the new A9 Mark III so just be
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aware of that caveat but this lens is fast enough to keep up with Sports Action in fact I could take it up from
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the hip I took a photo of birds flying overhead it's not an amazing shot but I
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looking at a pixel level focus is nailed and it was just an immediate acquisition uh the focus experience I pulled up from
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my hip took the shot and focus was just right there on it and I found that as you can see here that Focus moving from
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close to distance whether it's indoors or Outdoors it's just extremely quick focus is very quiet it is very confident
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I did need a firmware update I mentioned a firmware update but it was needed on my a7r mark 5 where Focus was not yet
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fully stable remember I've been testing a pre- retail uh lens that had pre- retail firmware on it that firmware
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update however solved all of those problems the alpha one was always stable now the A7 R5 is perfectly stable as
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well autofocus is quick it's confident and I really appreciate what they have done with it here I found that I was
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able to focus confidently in even like a basically dark room and I had a was
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shooting a a a photo that was on a bookshelf and even in near dark conditions it just
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locked right onto the the face of my infant son and able to lock on there and everything was nice and clean I used it
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in a portrait session at a variety of focus distances and I actually used the samyang a little bit side by side let's
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just say that when I took the vro off the camera and put the samyang on I was like I'm thankful I'm not shooting the
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majority of the session with this it's not that I have anything against the saming it served me well but the vro is
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just so much better so much more confident in locking Focus quickly acquiring Focus very stable at different
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Focus distances and out of all the shots I took in the the series I came back and every one of them was perfectly focused
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so kudos to them for designing a really high-end Focus system here now if we
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switch over to the video side of things I really have nothing but positives there either I found that video AF was
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very good in terms of focus pulls good confidence back and forth and uh you know nothing smooth or
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jarring you will see some Focus breathing but it's pretty well controlled remember a long focal length
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tends to exaggerate Focus breathing even more and so I actually think that this is fairly well controlled Focus
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breathing in this instance my hand test where I allowed Focus to go from my hand to my eye and back and forth uh it also
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did well smooth in that and most importantly my real world autofocus for
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video and stills was very good and as you saw in the opening sequence Focus was able to pick up pick me up as I
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walked into frame with no problem and focused accurac accurately there even though it was raining even though there
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was a variety of different textures that were in between the camera and myself so anyway autofocus was fantastic I will
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note the only thing for portrait sessions a lot of people will choose an 85 millim lens over 135 millimeter lens
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even though frankly it's hard to beat the portraits you take with 135 mm but you do have to have more working
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distance and so when I was shooting some of those shots I was 60 70 feet away from my subject that's far enough to
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where you're you're kind of yelling if you need to communicate with them to change poses or do something else and so
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just be aware of that so how about the image quality this is the the part that
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I'm most excited to talk to you about uh you know I have to spend as much time on all the lenses that I review and so I've
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got to take lots of photos with them whether I personally enjoy them or not this is a lens that it was nothing but a
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delight to take photos with because I was was able to get photos that I personally loved with it this is an
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exceptional Optical instrument and I will give you the Deep dive at the end of the video if you want to stay tuned
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for that but right now I'll give you an overview this is an optical design of 14 elements in nine groups four of those
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are extra low dispersion elements the MDF as you can see is exceptionally good
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with just a little bit of a fallof into the corners you can see that at f8 this is literally a Flawless lens it is I
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mean it's it's almost 100% all the way across the MTF chart this is also one of the first
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lenses that I went to I shot my my test chart for vignette and Distortion and
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you can see here that the left and the right image look identical that's because when I went to correct there was nothing to correct for there was that's
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not without any kind of profile helping out this is one of the rare lenses that I really didn't see any venette at all
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and not just on my test chart out of real world shots like this one you can see that there really wasn't any kind of
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vignette in the corners to .2 and so it really is amazingly well corrected I
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also found that fringing was well enough corrected that it was pretty close to being apochromatic levels uh just really
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really well controlled no fringing either the longitudinal variety or of the the lateral style and the corners
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you know this shot for example of just morning dew on some thistles you can see
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that it has that just extreme micro contrast that really reminds me of the recent Sony 885mm f1.4
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uh G Master Mark I lens that I reviewed where it's just you zoom into images and just every little detail is just so
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perfectly delineated there when it comes to the overall sharpness I tested as per
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usual on the 61 megapixel a7r Mark 5 we're examining results at 200% I found
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that the wide open sharpness is amazing in fact this is perhaps the sharpest
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lenses I've ever tested in the center of the frame Center sharpness is impeccably good it was better than the 13 5 mm G
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Master it was better than the samyang it was even better than the 885mm f1.4 G
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Master Mark I in the center of the frame the samyang and the g the GM 135 mm the
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only place they can compete is they're about the same in the corners the vro is is the weakest there but even at its
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weakest it's still competing pretty much on par with them I did find that the 85
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GM Mark I was better in the corners when you it was also better in the mid-frame if you stop this l down to f2.8 it was
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basically the same as the G Master except for in the corners extreme Corners the GM was just a little bit
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better so an amazingly good lens amazing contrast amazing micro contrast other
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thing that I noticed in head-to-head comparisons is that the uh t-stop the so the light transmission is a little bit
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better in the vilr and it consistently comparing in direct test with the samyang consistently metered about a
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third stop faster but allowing for equal levels of bright brightness and so that tells me that the light transmission is
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very very good on the vrs as noted you stop it down to f2.8 and sharpness and contrast improves a bit more so at F4
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and even a bit more at f5.6 very consistent from f5.6 to f8 whereas we
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saw from the MTF it's perfect so landscape images look amazing from this lens great detail great contrast great
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color really really fantastic all lenses are going to be affected by physics to
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some degree and so in this case at f11 you'll see a little bit of of softening by F16 it's going to be softer still due
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to the effects of defraction what I think really sets the vro apart it's is it it's rare to get a
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lens that is just amazingly well corrected really really sharp and high contrast and then also having really
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soft and creamy bouquet it's a very rare combination when a lens can achieve both of those things and probably my main
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critique of the aforementioned Sony 85mm f1.4 GM Mark II is it's an as stunningly
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sharp lens but the bouqu and the overall rendering is is not nearly as amazing to
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me personally the vrox lens manages to achieve similar levels of micro contrast
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but also I found the bouquet quality to be really really nice and so specular highlights look really beautiful in it
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if you've got you know bright highlights there uh you're obviously able to get really close and you have that very long
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focal length and big maximum apture and so you can get beautifully to focus backgrounds but what sets 135 mm lens
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apart is for example when shooting portraits and shooting you know more than full length you can still have a
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pretty amazing subject separation from the background and that is what really makes those images look really really
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special as I've been noting in recent viltrox lenses their Optical glass has improved so much and now I find their
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color to be really really neutral it's not too warm it's not too cool it's kind of the Goldilocks just right and so
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images look really really great I also found that this lens is surprisingly good when it comes to flare resistance a
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lot of times uh telephoto lenses with big Maxim mures and lots of glass they
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tend to struggle a little bit more with Flare but this lens does really really well definitely outclasses the sang in
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that regard and so a really strong performance there and then finally I was able to test the night sky and I found
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that was even very good when it comes to Coma star points are nice and crisp there's no fringing or aberration around
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star points and even right off into the corners still a pretty nice circular shape so overall really fantastic I mean
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obviously there's just nothing to complain about optically when it comes to this lens if vill trox is trying to
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set out to deliver a Zeiss Otis kind of performance I have to say they've pretty
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much done it this lens is exceptionally good so my conclusion is this this is a
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great combination of build features autofocus and Optical performance and
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all of that at a great price ice so yes the lens is big and heavy and if you
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can't get around that then look to some other lens but outside of that there's just not much to complain about as I
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mentioned this is probably the best Optics you can get for under $1,000 and I would say that the lenses
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that I might consider to be optically superior I could probably count on one hand so that makes this lens really
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really amazing it makes me very excited for the scheduled 35 mm 50 mm and 8 5 mm
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f1.2 lenses that are also coming in the lab series and I can't wait to see those
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in the future if you want more information you can check out my full text review which
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is very detailed find that the link in the description down below there's an image gallery where you can see more photos from it also some buying links
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there and if you want a deeper dive into the optical performance stay tuned we'll jump into it together so I'll start with
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a quick caveat that I understand that this is a longer video than usual and so will be this Optical examination this is
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a critically important lens for vtrs and so I want to thoroughly test it in a way
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that you probably won't get in many other places starting here with vignette and Distortion you can see that the
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image on the left and the image on the right they are identical and that is because there was literally nothing to correct there's no Distortion and
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shockingly there is no vignette case in point here's a real world example f1.8
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zero correction and you can see here that all four corners could be bright and in fact are bright
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here there's no vignette there's no need for correction for anything there likewise when it comes to longitudinal
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style chromatic aberration you can see here that we have what is very similar to an AP chromatic performance in that
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you have a pretty perfect transition of just white to black here no fringing
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before after the plane of focus so here are some real real examples where I would just totally expect to see that
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I've seen many times that when there is these kind reflective elements on this
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decoration here that I'll typically see fringing in these bright areas where light is hitting it and you can see it's
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neutral there likewise in the front of the old SLR and the lenses here I'll
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often see fringing in these letters there a big hot bed for that we can see that there's not only no fringing there
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but as we look towards the defocused areas and the bright shiny points again no fringing located there also once
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again here with these lenses prime example of where you can see fringing in the engraved markings as they move
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towards defocus but you just can't see any fringing so really really exceptional there one final real world
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example you can see here bright light coming through this dandelion here and
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you can see just beautifully all the little water droplets here but what you don't see is any kind of fringing
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anywhere in this and also as we look towards the bouquet circles you don't see it there either likewise lateral
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comatic AB orations are essentially perfect there's nothing to see here in any of these transition areas and this
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is again with zero correction so that of course brings us to our examination of
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the contrast and resolution here so at 200% magnification on 61 megapixels we
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jump into the center of the frame and we see a Flawless Center in fact this is one of if not the sharpest Center
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performances I have seen from any lens that I have ever tested before mid-frame
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is also equally exceptional you can just see the detail is just popping everywhere in those textures really
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really amazingly rendered amazing amount of detail and contrast here in a more monochrome and we can see here that it's
29:11
Flawless up here in the left corner we can see a bit of a drop off in the lower right corner and that brings us towards
29:18
the uh extreme corners and we find that they are good but nowhere near as exceptionally good as the center of the
29:24
frame so to put all of this in context we have the Sam AF 135 mm a lens
29:30
considered to be exceptionally good and then we have the vrs here on the left we
29:35
can see in the center of the frame that it's just it's not even a competition the vro just destroying the samyang in
29:42
the center of the frame and doing it by the way while also metering in this case a full stop brighter I don't think the
29:49
difference is quite that extreme from my other examples but anyway it's it's a it's a big difference look here in these
29:55
stamps look at how much detail is there with the St George and the Dragon dep
30:00
depiction you can see over on the left side that by comparison it's just a little bit murky looking we move towards
30:06
the mid-frame and just look through the eyes they look kind of dull here on the samyang look very bright and intense
30:13
there on the vtr's example if we pop over to this other side you can see a similar kind of Truth there and down
30:20
into the corners is the one place where the samyang competes and I would say
30:25
that it is perhaps very slightly better but it's it's not by any kind of
30:31
significant margin at all over on the left side of the frame looking here I would say that again the vrox looks
30:38
better to me than what the samyang does so that just tells you how good this vrox lens is now if I compare it to the
30:44
recent uh Sony 885mm f1.4 G Master Mark I which is I think the sharpest 85mm
30:50
lens I've ever tested one of the sharpest lenses I've tested period we can see that in the center of the frame
30:56
I would still take the vro so you can see that its contrast and detail is just a little bit better even though the GM
31:02
does have an advantage of being stopped down a little bit to f1.8 we can see
31:07
here looking at this Zone as we looked at before they're more similar but again the vro textures just pop a little bit
31:14
more here in the mid-frame it again is very slightly an edge to vro it's
31:20
similar but vro just a little bit better however if we go down to this Zone this
31:25
is where the consistency of that GM Mark I really starts to show up so up here in this upper left corner the two are very
31:32
similar in the lower right corner however the GM is just much better and
31:37
then if we pop down into the extreme Corners themselves you can see that the GM lens is definitely better popping
31:43
over to the left side and you can see that again it's not a huge margin but it is a significant margin the GM is
31:50
definitely better there so for one final comparison the Sony 135mm f1.8 G Master
31:56
now this test is done on the son alpha 1 is that's what I tested the GM on so I retested the vro also on the alpha 1 in
32:04
the center of the frame once again you can see that there is definitely a win for the vro it's just incredibly sharp
32:10
in the center of the frame and it's able to just really pop with all of these textures the micro contrast is just
32:17
exceptionally good now if we look up here in the mid-frame again it's a wind for V TRS GM is very good there but the
32:23
vrox is clearly better and if we uh pop down look at here you can just see more contrast and detail and if we come down
32:30
to this Zone here it's not as dramatically different for the V TRS but you can see that possibly a little bit
32:37
better for the G master and down here in the corner I would definitely choose the G Master performance by a small margin
32:45
not a huge margin but that's the only place that it wins and it's the same over here on the left side in the corner
32:50
contrast and detail is just a little bit better so across 2/3 of the frame the vrox lens is pretty close to peerless
32:57
put all of that in perspective with a few real world shots you can see here that if we punch into 100% magnification
33:04
the amount of just microcontrast and detail is amazing in here you can see the little droplets air droplets um
33:10
moisture droplets from the The Fog that's there in the air and this image here which I made a monochrome you can
33:17
see that the detail in the fur all of that is just beautifully delineated just
33:23
a tremendous amount of resolution that's available there in this shot here also all of these are
33:30
f1.8 by the way you can see that if we go into the textures that make up this dock you can just see that the micro
33:37
contrast is so amazingly good you can just see so many details there even at
33:42
f1.8 this shot really impressed me as well obviously the light's getting lower this is f1.8 and as I zoom into a pixel
33:50
level just the amount of detail of the the stamping in this and the textures in
33:56
the metal just really really impressively good finally a portrait comparison so here on the left side we
34:02
have the lab lens on the right side we have the sammying and so if we punch into a pixel level you can see that just
34:09
the skin textures and the detail that are there the highlights of the skin
34:15
there's just more variation more consistency around the eyes the uh the you can see that the ey lashes are not
34:22
as clearly delineated on the samyang just the overall pop and micro contrast is just not as good and we can see even
34:29
if we look towards the background here that at the same time the lab is also delivering a creamy better def focused
34:36
background and so in just in so many ways it's just delivering a superior performance and obviously I'm very very
34:43
impressed by all of that now stopping down to F2 doesn't make much of a difference but if we stop down to f2.8
34:49
you will see even further uh contrast in the center of the frame it's not as
34:54
noticeable there mid-frame again these zones were already exceptional but if we pan down here to where we started to see
35:01
sharpness start to drop off we can see now that this lower right corner is crisper and you look at the $2 there
35:08
it's very significantly improved there at f2.8 and then down into the corners
35:13
we can see that the corners are looking sharper in the corners you see an even bigger Improvement at F4 and now the
35:20
corners are razor sharp on both sides you can see how exceptionally good they look moving on to f5.6 it's it's mostly
35:28
just more of the same maybe a very slight Improvement a few places in the frame but we've already got just amazing
35:35
sharpness and detail all across the frame again f8 continues mostly the Same by f11 however on the left side here you
35:42
can see that the image is softening some due to defraction and by F-16 which is
35:47
the smallest aperture it is softer still due to defraction though still it's
35:52
still quite sharp um it's just you can tell that the contrast doesn't pop the same way but overall although defraction
35:58
is hitting the image it's still very good now as noted previously those floating elements allow for really
36:05
really great up close performance and you can see we are achieving macro levels of contrast and detail here
36:12
looking really really good in the fibers of the paper you can also see again that um those floating elements allow you to
36:19
have a flatter plane of focus and so you can see we have nice detail right up over to the corners of the frame so a
36:25
really strong performance there so that's going to allow us to have really beautiful up close results the ability
36:31
to just strongly blur out of background and you can see how shallow the depth the field is here that's not in Focus
36:38
this is but you can see the little individual water droplets the sheen on the water surface just gorgeous there uh
36:45
likewise here depth of field is so tiny but in that little bit where there that blade of grass is just turned towards
36:51
here you can see that beautiful micro contrast and detail and also a strongly blurred out background
36:58
again here depth of field is so tiny near minimum Focus look at that just little tiny Zone there but again the
37:05
background just completely blurred out really nice and creamy and then of course if you put more in in focus and
37:12
here with all these water droplets you can just see the beautiful specular highlights and of course magnificent
37:18
detail even though it's strongly back lit and all this light is coming into the image really really gorgeous looking
37:25
bokeh here is at f1.8 you can can see if I toggle back and forth the geometry
37:30
along the edges you're getting a little more deformation by f2.8 you can see that we've got mostly circular
37:36
highlights everywhere really gorgeous looking specular highlights this image is just really gorgeous I was shooting
37:43
through the grass so you can see that there's already a kind of a masking of defocused uh Blades of grass beforehand
37:50
but autofocus nailed that little narrow depth of field on this you can see great
37:55
detail there and then just such a beautifully blurred out background this is cool too because it shows you two
38:01
different perspectives so here of course that detail and contrast is just amazingly good then I can pop to where I
38:08
I focus something differently the bench almost completely disappears other than just a little bit of a frame and then
38:14
the detail here of course on this Lighthouse it's just as equally fantastic flare resistance is also
38:20
really really strong and so here wide open suns in the frame I see maybe a little tiny of kind of veiling in this
38:27
corner but very little to see and then here is this is f11 you can see the
38:32
aperture blades there a little tiny bit of ghosting here but overall just really strong thus you know you just get
38:40
gorgeous looking results you can see a mosquito bugging my model but you can see just great detail skin textures
38:47
beautifully blurred out background and just kind of that cutout look that is just so exceptional and even if you're
38:53
working at long distance and here I was probably 60 to 70 feet away away you can see that we're able to get that crisp
39:00
cutout a great detail on the subject background is still blurred out fairly
39:06
nicely and you can see here that even though this is all kind of transition zone there's no really hard edges there
39:12
the Boke still looks nice even in this more challenging uh type of seam and
39:17
finally getting to the coma here you can see if we take a little bit closer look there's no fringing around the star
39:24
points and so they look very very good and even when we pan off towards the corners there's a tiny bit of deoration
39:31
but overall this is a really strong performance and of course the fact that there is no Venn yet means that you're
39:38
getting an even illumination all the way into the corners for your star points there's no correction on this image
39:44
allowing for a much more even night sky shot than what I typically can get when shooting for Astro so thanks for
39:51
sticking around to the very end and I hope that the Deep dive into the Optics has given you a clear picture as to
39:56
whether or not the vro 135mm f1.8 lab series lens is for you as always thanks
40:04
for watching have a great day and let the light in [Music]

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Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 Review | The Best Lens Under $1000 Ever?

Dustin Abbott