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Viltrox AIR 15mm F1.7 X Review

Dustin Abbott

July 30th, 2025

Viltrox’s AIR series has become a favorite of a lot of APS-C photographers for a very good reason. These lenses have all punched way above their weight optically, and while the build formula is simple, these have all been very lightweight, well built, inexpensive lenses. The early lenses in the series have covered standard focal lengths like 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm full frame equivalents, but things are about to get interesting for this series, as, for the first time, we are seeing an unconventional focal length. The most recent AIR lens is the Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 AIR, and this is a very interesting development as it gives photographers a potential lightweight wide angle prime to pack along for relatively little money ($239 USD or less, if you use the coupon code “DUSTINABBOTT” at Viltrox!). Is it worth checking out? Find out my thoughts by watching the video review below or reading on in the text review.

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Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode (26MP) of my Sony a7RV camera. You can visit the product page for the 15mm F1.7 AIR here.

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Viltrox AIR Series Reviews:

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15mm doesn’t correspond to a typical focal length and lands at a 22.5mm full frame equivalent after you account for the 1.5x crop factor of Fuji X (tested here), Sony E , or Nikon Z APS-C cameras. That’s a little narrower than a 20mm equivalent lens, though wider than the 24mm standard. Fuji doesn’t have a 15mm prime lens, though they do have a 14mm F2.8 along with 16mm F2.8 (my review here) and 16mm F1.4 options. Sony does have a 15mm lens, however, in the form of the 15mm F1.4 G (my review here). Most of these lenses cost $800+, so once again Viltrox is going to be in a position to really be a disruptor on the price front.

While the focal length might not be purely conventional, it is very useful. This is an effective wide angle look at the world without hitting the extremes that add a lot of distortion. The AIR 15mm can produce dynamic images that fits a lot in the frame.

Much like Samyang’s “Tiny series”, this lens is for those who don’t care about bells and whistles and just want a lightweight, high performing lens. This won’t be the series for those looking for aperture rings or other features, but if you want a light, tough, high performing lens at a great price, prepare to be delighted with the new AIR 15mm.

Sound interesting? I suspect so, so let’s dive in a little deeper into the details.

Viltrox AIR 15mm F1.7 Build and Handling

The first thing to note is the slightly unusual maximum aperture value. We’ve seen that there are lenses with F1.4 aperture in and around this focal length (including a Sigma 16mm F1.4 that I reviewed here) along with F2.8 lenses. F1.7 is 1/2 stop slower than F1.4, but is 1 1/2 stops brighter than F2.8. F1.7 is a very useful aperture brightness in a wide angle lens, particularly considering how compact the AIR 15mm is. I suspect a lot of people are willing to tolerate 1/2 stop less light gathering if an F1.4 alternative costs 3x as much.

The AIR series eschews the heavier metal casing typically used for the earlier Viltrox lenses and embraces a more conventional, lightweight design in polycarbonates (engineered plastics). I wouldn’t call the build high grade here, but what I can say is that nothing about the plastics feel flimsy. These lenses feel tough and durable, and thus far that’s just what they’ve been in my experience (I’ve owned some for a few years now).

The new AIR 15mm F1.7 is extremely compact, only 65mm in diameter (2.55″) and 56.7mm in length (2.23″), making it pretty much identical in size to previous APS-C lenses from the AIR series. It weighs only 180g (6.34oz), making it very slightly heavier than previous AIR lenses but still extremely light. That is definitely lighter than all of the alternate lenses I’ve tested, and, in the case of a lens like the Sigma 16mm F1.4 (405g), it is less than half the weight. You can see that the AIR 15mm is just a tiny bit bigger than the AIR 35mm that I happen to have in Fuji X-mount.

That makes for a very compact profile on your camera. My Fujifilm X-H2 is actually a fairly large camera, so the AIR 15mm looks small on the body.

Up front we have a 58mm filter thread, which is a nicely common filter size.  The front of the lens fascia has a variety of information imprinted on it and has a classic profile. I’m a fan of having some lens information on the front fascia, as I feel it adds character to the lens.

There is an included lens hood that is pretty shallow to prevent vignetting. It is much slimmer than those found on the 25mm and 35mm AIR lenses. I found that aligning the hood to mount it could be a little fussy, but the hood locked into place with good precision and didn’t move even when I walked around with the camera and lens on a strap.

A lens pouch is also included. The pouch doesn’t add a lot of protection value, but, like the hood, at least it is included. There are many more expensive lenses that include neither a pouch or a hood.

Fuji shooters in particular will be disappointed to find that there is no aperture ring, as is the case with all the AIR lenses. There are no switches, either. The only feature on the lens barrel is a wide manual focus ring. The manual focus ring has a nice amount of damping and moves smoothly. All manual focus aids (including automatic magnification of the focus area) will work with the Viltrox. The focus ring on the copy I tested on Fuji felt a little “gritty”, and I could detect a tiny bit of lag. I also had an E-mount version on hand as well, and I found that the focus ring on that one felt better and focus was more precise. The negatives are probably more of a Fuji thing.

The Viltrox AIR 15mm has 9 blades in its aperture iris. When stopped down far enough, an 18 bladed sunstar will emerge.

It is not the prettiest sunstar that I’ve ever seen, but it doesn’t look bad, either.

We have an important Viltrox standard in the form of a USB-C port on the metal lens mount that allows you to connect the lens to a computer and update the firmware directly.  The firmware update process is very simple; just unzip the upgrade folder, drag the firmware update file to the folder that shows up when the lens is attached to the computer, and the update is done in seconds.

You can focus only as closely as 23cm, which isn’t particularly close for a 15mm lens. The Sony 15mm G can focus as closely as 17cm, for example. The resulting magnification is low, hovering around 0.10x. Here’s what that looks like:

Don’t buy this lens to do macro type work, as you’ll definitely be disappointed. Close up image quality is not bad, but that’s not really this lens’ strength.

Viltrox’ more expensive lens series have weathersealing, but the budget AIR series does not. The AIR 15mm does have a HD Nano multilayer coating with water-resistant and antifouling coating on the front element.

Though the AIR series is short on bells and whistles, the Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7, like other lenses in the series, feels sturdy and well made. It is lightweight, will balance easily on a wide variety of camera bodies and sizes, and doesn’t really feel “cheap” in any way.

Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 STM Autofocus for Stills

The Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 STM, like other AIR lenses, utilizes a lead-screw type stepping focus motor (STM) that makes for fast and quiet focus changes.  Focus felt silent unless I put my ear up next to the barrel, and even then I could hear only a tiny little whine. On Fuji I could faintly hear the aperture iris blades click open and closed, too, though this isn’t loud.  Focus speed is pretty good, with most normal focus changes happening near instantly, though with a major focus change you’ll sense a split second of lag.

Fuji shooters are accustomed to hearing this, but since I have the Sony E-mount version, too, I tested AF side by side and there is no question that the lens is snappier on E-mount. Fuji’s hardware is due an upgrade.

That being said, the lens focuses well on Fuji, and, as you can see from this crop of the image above, focus is accurate as well.

I was able to snap a quick photo after some ladies asked my wife to take a photo of them on the street with their phone. Even though I had to very quickly grab the shot, it is accurately focused.

More ordinary photos requiring less speed or precision are obviously fine.

The only time I can recall ever getting any slowdown or focus issues was with this shot of my wife in the doorway of a church we explored while on vacation. It was very bright, while she was somewhat shadowed in the opening. At first I was getting a red box, but then realized that I was shooting at F9. Opening the aperture up a bit resolved the problem, and I got an accurately focused photo.

Sony shooters wouldn’t see a similar issue, as Sony cameras will typically open the aperture while focusing.

Still, in general I felt like focus was really solid. I’ve definitely tested Fuji branded lenses that didn’t focus nearly as well.

Focus for Video

Video AF is typically a mixed bag on Fujifilm, as this is the area where the camera’s AF system struggles the most (at present). Video AF on the Viltrox AIR 15mm was pretty much par for the course.

Focus pulls weren’t bad, as while they didn’t move quickly, they had a nice level of damping and I didn’t have issues where touching a focus point on the LCD produced no result (an unfortunately common issue on Fuji). There is some focus breathing, but it isn’t extreme.

My hand test (where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it) wasn’t great. There was a general lack of confidence, with focus racks sometimes in the wrong direction and moments when neither my hand nor my face was in focus.

Static shots were all good and stable. I had no issues with focus moving around and not staying solid.

Overall I would say that video AF was about average for Fuji. These AF tests were much more confident on Sony E-mount.

Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 Image Quality

The Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 has an optical design of 12 elements in ten groups, which is slightly more complex than the 35mm. A whopping 8 of these are exotic elements, including 3 ED (extra-low dispersion) elements, 3 HR (high refractive index) elements, and two aspherical element as a part of the design. The MTF looks mostly good, with an extremely sharp center, good midframe, but some drop-off near the corners.

The MTF also shows the F8 performance, which is not as sharp in the center, but about the same in the midframe and better in the corners.

It is always worth mentioning that Fuji’s 40MP APS-C sensor is the most demanding platform that I test lenses on. A full frame sensor with equivalent pixel density would be over 90MP. That means that any optical weaknesses become very obvious on this sensor, and I’ve found a lot of lenses a bit disappointing on it. This isn’t really one of them, fortunately.

I had a nice mix of shooting environments with this lens, from my typical nature based photography to street and some people-based photos. I got good sharpness for most subjects even at F1.7, like here:

Before we jump into an evaluation of the optical performance, let’s take a quick look at the full frame coverage of the lens. I can’t do that when I’m testing the AIR lenses on Fuji, but since I also have an E-mount version on hand, here’s a look at the full frame coverage.

It is very reminiscent of what I saw from the 25mm F1.7. You can see some “hard vignette” in the corners where light is completely blocked from the sensor. If I crop all of that area out on a Sony 61MP sensor, I end up with about 36MP of usable image compared to the 26MP crop.

This isn’t quite as useful as what I saw from the 25mm (I could get about 45MP of usable image out it), but there’s enough to be useful to some people in some situations. Corner resolution even at the APS-C crop isn’t great, however, so going wider will result in some very soft performance in the extreme corners. I would mostly treat this as the APS-C lens that it is.

We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette. 

There is very little distortion, though what is there is slightly complex. In the example above, I used a -2 to correct a tiny bit of pincushion distortion, but that actually caused a bit of barrel distion and never really corrected the corners. The lens profile will do a better job with correcting it. Vignette needed about a +59 to correct, which is a normal amount, though a manual correction leaves a bit of discoloration in those corners.

Both the distortion and vignette are mild enough to be left without corrections in many situations. Here’s an F1.7 shot without any corrections, and while you can see the sky is darkened a bit in the corners, the image largely looks natural.

When I shot this image from a hotel window, I was high enough to be able to level the sensor and avoid keystoning. You can see that distortion isn’t an issue, however, with lines looking straight.

Viltrox typically does quite well in controlling fringing in their lenses, and that’s largely true here. I do see a bit of fringing before and after the plane of focus (Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations, or LoCA), but the real world situations that you’ll see that with this focal length will be few and far between.

Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas (like bare branches framed at the edge of images). This is far more likely to be an issue on a wide angle lens like this, but fortunately there really isn’t anything to see here.

I also didn’t notice any issues around windows, which can be another challenge because there will often be fringing present there.

So how about resolution and contrast?  All chart tests done with the Fujfilm X-H2 and its 40MP sensor using a tripod and a two second timer. Here’s a look at my test chart:

And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner at F1.7:

This is pretty much exactly what the MTF suggested, with excellent center, good midframe, and much softer corners. Anything within the rule of thirds looks excellent even on this very demanding sensor. The corners are another story.

We can see that if we compare real-world F1.7 and F5.6 shots in the center, there isn’t much difference.

If we look over to the corner/edge instead, however, we see a significant difference not only in contrast but in the rendered details.

This lens has no problem with Sony’s 26MP resolution, and I would say that it is strong enough to handle Fuji’s 40MP APS-C sensor as well, as I’ve found both the 35mm and 56mm AIR lenses to be solid on that platform.

Stopping down F2 gives a very mild (and not meaningful) boost of contrast. There’s a bit more at F2.8. Noticeable corner improvements don’t really arrive until around F5.6:

Shooting between F5.6 and F8 will yield the best results for consistency across the frame, with real world shots largely being quite good everywhere.

This is definitely a strength for the Viltrox AIR series generally, as the ability to get sharp results on such a demanding sensor from such an inexpensive lens is impressive.

Diffraction isn’t quite as militant on the Sony 26MP sensor as it is on the Fuji 40MP sensor, but you will still definitely see a softening effect at F11, with it becoming more pronounced at F16.

I found this lens a joy to do walkaround photography with, as it delivered good looking images with nice detail and contrast.

I’ve been noting the improvement to Viltrox colors over the past two years since they switched suppliers for their optical glass. Once again I’m very happy with the color rendition from the lens, which feels neutral in color balance, nicely saturated, and with good contrast levels in the colors. It’s a good match for Fuji’s color science.

The one exception can be when flare disrupts things a bit. Colors look a little different in some backlit situations, like here.

Flare resistance isn’t bad shooting right into the sun, but it can be a little vulnerable (particularly at smaller apertures) if the sun is located in the corners or right out of frame.

This isn’t really a “bokeh” kind of lens, but if you are close to your subject and background is relatively far away, bokeh isn’t bad.

There is unfortunately some coma near the edges of the frame. You can see that the light points near the edge have become wedge shaped.

I wouldn’t consider this a high end astro lens, though there are worse options.

As per usual, this is another Viltrox AIR lens that is better optically than its price tag suggests. Here’s a gallery of images to enjoy.

I don’t feel like the AIR 15mm is quite as strong as the 25mm, but this is a much more challenging focal length, too, and I think that in general Viltrox pretty much nailed it once again.

Conclusion

I love the Viltrox AIR series. Lenses that are compact, lightweight, and yet deliver good image quality are near and dear to my heart because I know, practically, that they are far more likely to come along with me when I travel or backpack.

The Viltrox AIR 15mm F1.7 is the widest addition to their APS-C collection thus far, and I appreciate seeing a lens outside of the 23-56mm range where it feels like everyone has lenses now. It was a lot of fun to use for a wide variety of subjects.

The AIR 15mm is a little more expensive than other lenses in the series at $239 USD, but that stands to reason as it also the most expensive focal length to engineer and manufacture thus far. When we look at alternative lenses in this focal length and aperture, however, we find that once again the Viltrox is a huge bargain. If you’ve been looking for a travel ready wide angle prime for your APS-C camera, the Viltrox AIR 15mm F1.7 should definitely be on your short list.

Pros:

  • Lightweight, compact design
  • Lens feels tough and well made
  • USB-C port for firmware updates
  • Good focus accuracy
  • Pretty good video focus
  • Outstanding center and midframe sharpness from F1.7
  • Sharp across the frame at F5.6-F8
  • Fairly low distortion
  • Moderate vignette
  • Good color rendering
  • Much cheaper than alternate 14-16mm options
  • Fantastic price to performance ratio

Cons:

  • No weather sealing or features
  • Some minor flare issues
  • Some video AF quirks on Fuji

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Viltrox AF 15mm F1.7 @ Viltrox (use code DUSTINABBOTT for 5% off) | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Vitopal | Pergear

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Purchase the Viltrox AF 25mm F1.7 @ Viltrox (use code DUSTINABBOTT for 8% off) | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P Review

Dustin Abbott

July 29th, 2025

Samyang is back…but now they are LK Samyang. My first LK Samyang lens in over two years was of the Schneider-Kreuznach x LK Samyang 14-24mm F2.8 FE. Just two months later, however, LK Samyang reached out to me to look at two new prime lenses from their “Prima” series – the 16mm F2.8 P FE (my review here) and the lens we are reviewing today, the 85mm F1.8 P FE. Samyang had previously done an 85mm F1.4 lens (the Series II review can be found here) and a 75mm lens in both a standard photo F1.8 version (my review here), and, more recently, a video focused V-AF T1.9 version (my review here). What they had never done with a compact lens was an 85mm lens, so I like the idea of the LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 Prima lens. The Prima 85mm (as we’ll refer to it as in this review) is a compact prime lens with solid optics, good autofocus, and a reasonable price tag. It feels like a slightly larger, slightly more upscale lens in the spirit of Samyang’s earlier Tiny series. So is this new compact telephoto prime worth right under $400 USD? You can find my full thoughts in the video review linked below or by reading on.

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*This product provided by LK Samyang under license from Jos. Schneider Optische Werke GmbH. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product listing for the LK Samyang 85mm F1.8 P here.

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AI Summary: The LK Samyang Prima 85mm F1.8 FE is a compact, lightweight telephoto lens offering solid optical performance and a premium build at an attractive price point. It provides sharp images with pleasing bokeh and good autofocus both for stills and video, though it exhibits some flare and focus breathing issues during video use. Its main appeal lies in its portability and value, making it an excellent choice for photographers seeking a versatile 85mm lens that fits easily into a travel or street photography kit. Despite fierce competition from other brands, this lens stands out for those prioritizing size, weight, and affordability without sacrificing too much quality.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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The “P” in the lens name stands for “Prima”, which is a Latin word meaning “first” in the sense of importance. LK Samyang envisions the Prima series being potentially a person’s “first lens” or be the “first lens” that a person reaches for. The compact nature of the lenses (in theory) helps achieve this…though that leads us to a bit of an oddity in this marketing plan. The first Prima lens (which came during the time that I was out of touch with Samyang) was the 35mm F1.4 P FE, an F1.4 prime that seemed to be a slightly smaller and lighter than their earlier 35mm F1.4 AF lens (which I did review here), but was still 100mm long and weighed 470g (still slightly bigger than the Sony 35mm F1.4 GM, though a bit lighter). It felt like a new design direction for what had been their “Series II” lenses, including the 50mm F1.4 II, 85mm F1.4 II, and 135mm F1.8 lenses. I did a video about the Series II lenses as a series here.

The new 16mm F2.8 Prima and 85mm F1.8 Prime (both of which I’m reviewing at the same time) are very different types of lenses: smaller, lighter, and with smaller maximum apertures. The 16mm and 85mm lenses are nearly perfectly matched in size and are clearly part of a series. Both of these lenses put together weigh about as much as the 35mm F1.4. It’s just odd that these three lenses are being marketed together. It feels like LK Samyang switched direction during their design strategy for this series, and the Prima 85mm feels a lot like an update on the Tiny series with some influence from the V-AF series. Here’s a look at the 75mm T1.9 (left) and the 45mm F1.8 (an early Tiny Series lens) on the right bracketing the two new Prima lenses.  The 85mm is narrower (-2.5mm), shorter (-.6mm), and lighter (-8g) than the V-AF 75mm T1.9 shown on the left.  It is a bit wider, longer, and heavier than the standard 75mm F1.8 AF from the Tiny Series (not pictured).

The Prima series carries a nicer build than the Tiny series and feels more premium, though they aren’t priced much higher. Both of these first two lenses in this more compact Prima series are focal lengths never covered by the Tiny or V-AF series. The Prima 85mm weighs just 272g and provides serious portability for a full frame short telephoto prime. It is significantly lighter than the Sony 85mm F1.8 (371g), Yongnuo 85mm F1.8 (346g), or the Viltrox 85mm F1.8 II (484g).  The Prima 85mm may be the best direct alternative to the more expensive Sony lens ($598 USD) that we’ve seen thus far, being smaller, lighter, and considerably less expensive (about $200 USD less).

I’ve always loved the beautiful rendering from the Samyang AF 75mm F1.8, and the Prima 85mm F1.8 may even be a bit better, giving you shallower depth of field and really soft backgrounds despite having great detail and contrast.

It’s not a perfect lens, and I’ll highlight the flaws, but all in all this is a sweet little prime that is very easy to bring along and produces really stunning images.

Build and Handling

The Prima lenses seem to be somewhere between the Tiny and V-AF series in terms of quality, though skewed more towards the latter. The V-AF series have some uniquely video-centric features, but the Prima lenses also feel a little more upscale than the Tiny series. They have a few features, some weather sealing, and nicer build materials. In many ways they feel like premium versions of Viltrox’s AIR series, and I consider that a compliment.

You can see from their promotional materials that LK Samyang is touting a new engineered plastic for the housing of the Prima lenses, and the claim that it is tougher, more durable, and has a nice finish. That feels accurate to me, as the plastics feel very tough and I don’t see any visible seems anywhere in the way I sometimes do with cheaper lenses.  The finish is very lightly flocked and seems very resistant to fingerprints. It should be easy to keep looking clean.

I also want to give some love to the focus ring, which has a more premium feeling diamond texture pattern that looks good from a distance and even better up close.

That ring moves smoothly with roughly 170° of rotation. The damping is on the light side, but there is good precision and the focus motor is highly responsive, allowing for a good manual focus simulation (all mirrorless autofocus lenses have focus-by-wire manual focus).

An AF | MF switch on the side makes for easy on-the-fly switches between auto and manual focus.

There is no custom/Fn button on these lenses, unfortunately.

In a new feature for LK Samyang, the Prima lenses have a USB-C port on the lens mount (like Viltrox), which allows for easier firmware updates without needing the Samyang Lens Station.

This is a welcome change.

You might also notice the weather sealing gasket there, which is one of five seals in the lens. There’s also one at the switch, near the focus ring, and a couple to seal the front element.

LK Samyang claims internally to have tested up to an IP-5 rating for dust resistance.

Also included in the package is the lens hood, which bayonets on with very good precision. It’s made of similar plastics to the barrel and is a nice match to the lens.  The lens hood is quite deep and adds about 45mm of length to the lens, so some may prefer to use the lens without the hood.

That’s not an advanced feature set, by any stretch, but is definitely a notch above what we’ve seen from Viltrox’s AIR series (no switch or weather sealing) or Sigma’s Contemporary lenses (ditto).

The lens is nice and compact, with a diameter of 69.8mm (2.75″) and a length of 71.5mm (2.8″).

The front filter size is 62mm, which isn’t incredibly common but becoming more so. The 16mm Prima shares this filter size.

The weight, as mentioned is just 272g (9.59oz). It is heavier than the 16mm (bigger glass elements), but as we’ve seen, it is also lighter than competing lenses.  This will be a very easy lens to bring along.

The Prima 16mm sported a very high magnification level, but this is rarely a strength for 85mm lenses, and that’s certainly true here.  Minimum focus distance is 80cm, which is identical to all of the competing lenses I’ve mentioned.  The resulting 0.12x magnification is very average as well, and it looks like this:

Up close performance at F1.8 is only okay, with microcontrast being a bit lower at this distance than longer distances.  You can see from this image that global contrast (whole image contrast) still looks good.

Switch to APS-C and you can get even higher magnification…up to 0.50x, or 1:2 macro.

On area of deviation between the two Prima lenses is that the Prima 85mm has nine aperture blades with the 16mm had just seven.  I actually like this move, as it reflects that wide angle lenses have different priorities than telephoto lenses.  I would have liked the blade count to be just 5 blades on the 16mm, and would happily have taken 11 blades on this lens.  9 blades is the standard, however, and that’s true of the Sony and Viltrox lenses as well.  The priority for this lens isn’t sunstars but rather retaining a nice circular shape when the lens is stopped down.

Unfortunately geometry is only okay, with a normal amount of cat-eye shape towards the edges of the frame wide open.  More disappointing is the geometry as you stop the lens down, which never really achieves nice round specular highlights across the frame.  Here is F1.8, F2.8, and F4:

In summation, there is nothing groundbreaking about the build or design here, but I do think these are clean, attractive lenses that stand out as being nicely compact. The initial reaction on some forums to the announcement of this lens was largely a collective yawn, but I think that is underselling the value of a small, compact, lightweight lens with an 85mm focal length and a reasonable price.  This is a pretty sweet little lens.

Autofocus for Stills

LK Samyang utilizes a Linear STM motor in this lens, and my experience with this focus motor is positive.  It probably can’t quite match the dual Linear motors in the more expensive Sony 85mm F1.8, but seems better than most of the other third party competitors that tend to rely on just STM focus motors.  Focus is fast, quiet, and accurate. This quick snap shot of a rooster shows great focus accuracy.

Speed in my formal autofocus tests was not quite as instant at the Prima 16mm, but that stands to reason as the optical elements in that lens would be smaller.  Focus speed was still very quick, however, and while I always recommend buying first party Sony lenses if your priority is shooting sports, everyone else will certainly be happy with the focus performance here. 

I used the lens in a church setting and got accurate autofocus results and quick focus acquisition.

I also got great focus from a quick shot of some wild turkeys in my yard.  I had to shoot fast, as they were watching me approach and started to spook as I got closer.

Shooting fine subjects also went well, with very good focus precision on things like wildflowers.

It is worth noting that recent LK Samyang lenses work extremely well on Nikon Z as well using an adapter like the Megadap ETZ21 Pro.  The Prima 85mm feels very close to a native lens on Nikon, making it an attractive option for those who own both platforms.  Here’s a few shots taken on my Nikon Z8 with the lens.

Focus for stills is competitively good.  This is definitely better than what we saw with lenses like the Tiny series.

Video AF

Video AF is mostly good.  Big focus pulls are damped rather than just jumping from one subject to another, and there are not any visible steps, no pulsing, and focus locked accurately on my subjects.  On the negative side, however, focus breathing is strongly pronounced, with objects obviously changing size depending on where focus is located.

My hand test (where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face and then remove it) was only okay.  The obvious focus breathing does negatively impact the cinematic feel of the pulls, and reactiveness is slow enough that I would have to speed it up in camera to get the result I was looking.

Static shots were nice and stable.  I shot on clip of tall, blowing grasses, and focus didn’t move from the initial target even as the grasses swayed.  Here’s a screen shot of that clip:

Natural focus changes while moving are smoothly damped, though the focus motor isn’t always as reactive Natural focus changes while moving are mostly smooth and cinematic, though the focus breathing will become obvious if the focus change is significant.  I would also recommend increasing the reactiveness in camera if you have it set near the default settings.

This lens is obviously small and light enough to use on APS-C/Super35 as well, where it will give a roughly 128mm angle of view if you want tighter framing.

In general, video focus is good, though the focus breathing could be an issue for some.

Image Quality Breakdown

While this is not one the lenses to come out of the partnership with Schneider-Kreuznach, the LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P has largely beautiful optics.

The Prima 85mm has a similar optical design to the Sony, with 9 elements in 8 groups.  This includes 1 HR (High Refractive) and 3 ED (Extra Low Dispersion) elements.

The MTF charts shows both F1.8 (top) and F8 (bottom).  At F1.8, the lens exhibits good sharpness and contrast in the center of the frame, a midframe that is just as good, and a fairly steep drop in the corners.  The F8 version shows extreme sharpness all across the frame on the sagittal plane, but a linear drop on the meridional plane.  Expect a bit of astigmatism stopped down.

The sharpness profile of this lens is optimized at the right place, as typical compositions using the rule of thirds are treated to intensely good sharpness and contrast.  Take a look at this close crop of a shot of a rooster – that detail at F1.8 is impressive!

85mm lenses tend to be quite good optically, so the Prima 85mm needs to be strong to be competitive in this market.  Let’s dive into the details.

Neither distortion or vignette are big deals here.

There is some minimal pincushion distortion that required a -4 to correct.  It is very linear and corrects easily.  I’ve seen much worse on 85mm lenses.  Vignette is only moderate, requiring a +48 to correct (less than two stops).  Again, not a big deal.  When shooting portraits, you would actually get nicer results using no corrections, as a bit of pincushion distortion is flattering, as is a bit of vignette.

There are in-camera corrections for JPEGs and Video and a correction profile is available for RAW corrections in Lightroom/ACR.

In most situations I did not see an issue with longitudinal style chromatic aberrations (LoCA) which exhibit before and after the plane of focus at large apertures.  My test chart presents cleanly:

Likewise I saw minimal fringing when shooting my Dad’s old SLR that I use for a test.

What I did see, however, was some fringing around high contrast areas like a window frame in out of focus areas.

This can be fixed with “defringe” sliders in Lightroom or ACR, though it is an extra step.

That was the only situation where I saw the fringing, however.  There is no evidence of lateral style CA near the edge of the frame.

How about sharpness?

I’m using the 61MP Sony a7RV for these tests, which represents the highest resolution currently available on any full frame platform. I show the results at 200% magnification to really highlight any flaws.

Here’s a look at the F1.8 crops from the center, midframe, and lower right corner.

The center and midframe look excellent.  I’ve seen higher contrast, but there is plenty there for pretty much any situation.  What’s more, LK Samyang reports that this lens is optimized for portrait distances (2-3 meters), and at that distance detail and contrast are exceptional.  Take a look at this F1.8 casual portrait shot using just available light.

I doubt any subject would want higher detail than that, and this is on a 61MP sensor.

Even shooting a longer landscape shot at F1.8 shows great detail and contrast on the distant subject.

I think there is plenty of sharpness and contrast in the rule of thirds zone for all work.  You can see that the wide open resolution and contrast doesn’t look much worse than F5.6 in the center of this real world shot.

There’s a little more noticeable difference when you get out towards the edge of the frame.

I didn’t really notice any significant improvement when stopping down on my chart tests.  There is some contrast improvement, but I think a bit of focus shift must occur, as I didn’t perceive sharpness improvements when stopping down.  I use the original focus and then stop down without refocusing.  This exposes when focus shift occurs.

That’s not a problem in real world situations, as you are focusing for the shot, not repeating the same shot over and over at different apertures.  This image at F6.3, for example, shows excellent (and consistent) sharpness all across the frame.

My takeaway from real world shots was to be generally impressed by excellent detail and contrast.  I don’t want a “review specific” kind of scenario to give a false impression of the performance of this lens.  I thought I could see some focus shift in Christopher Frost’s video review during his LoCA test portion.  This may not a good lens for focus stacking, but it will be fine for ordinary photography and videography.

You’ll start to see softening from diffraction by F11. F22 is minimum aperture, and it looks fairly soft.

Flare resistance is interesting, as there are some flare related artifacts, though my opinion (particularly at large apertures) that they tend to very artistic and flattering.  The final two images in the series show first F1.8 and then F11.  I strongly prefer the look of the flare pattern at F1.8!

If you are looking for a completely flare resistant lens, then look elsewhere.  If you feel like you could get some artistic value out of these flares, then this lens might be for you.

We have already seen the worst aspect of the bokeh performance, which is a less than desirable geometry with specular highlights.  If we go back and take a closer look at those specular highlights, we’ll find a fairly clean interior, low fringing, and just a bit of inner outlining.

The best part of the bokeh rendering is found in how soft real-world backgrounds are.  You see a very creamy background here:

This shot looks gorgeous to me, as while the background can be faintly discerned (you know what you’re looking at with the distant grasses, trees, and farmhouse), but it is rendered like an watercolor painting.  That is helped by a bit of haze that day, but I love the wonderful contrast between the crisp foreground and the soft background.

This shot of picking blackberries also looks great. 

Even less advantageous shots where the background is fairly close look good to me.

I find Samyang colors often slightly warm, which looks great in many shots but can mean that they are less of a perfect match for lenses from other brands.

I generally found the colors to be pleasing in my shots.  Here’s a final mini gallery for you to enjoy.

Conclusion

There are a TON of 85mm options on Sony FE at this point, and that remains the greatest challenge for the LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P FE.  Why should you choose it over the dozens of other options?  The single biggest reason to choose Prima 85mm is the compact size and weight.  I can’t think of a better 85mm optically that comes in this small of a package.  I love big 85mm F1.2/F1.4 lenses, but they are often big, heavy, and expensive (particularly the F1.2 variants).  And, to be blunt, many (most?) photographers don’t need that kind of lens.  An 85mm F1.8 would work just fine for them, and still produce gorgeous images.

And that’s where the Prima 85mm makes sense.  It is far more likely to go into your bag than a bigger, heavier lens.  I can see myself throwing this lens into my bag for a trip on the off chance I do some portraits where I might leave a bigger F1.4 lens at home.  That’s a true benefit, as the best camera (or lens) is the one you have with you.

There are cheaper 85mm lenses, but I don’t think there are cheaper 85mm lenses that outperform this one, particularly if size and weight matter to you at all.  The price of $399 USD feels like solid value for money when compared to the performance.  I really liked the LK Samyang 85mm F1.8 Prima, and I hope they can carve out a little market share with it.  It might help if they can bring it to Nikon Z mount, where it would provide a very interesting counterpoint to the bigger, heavier, and much more expensive 85mm F1.8 S.  Make it happen, LK Samyang!

Pros:

  • Lighter and small than competing lenses
  • Nice build quality complete with weather sealing
  • Fast, quiet autofocus
  • Good focus precision
  • Very sharp across rule of thirds
  • Excellent portrait distance sharpness even wide open
  • Beautiful bokeh
  • Minimal fringing
  • Creative flares
  • Good price to performance ratio

Cons:

  • Some focus shift
  • Flare at small apertures gets ugly
  • Geometry of specular highlights isn’t great

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Keywords: #LKSamyang1885Prima, LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P FE, LK Samyang AF 85mm F1.8 P FE Review, #Samyang, #LKSamyang, #85mmF1.8, #FE, #Prima, #compact, #wideangle, #autofocus, #photography, #video, #review, #optics, #sharpness, #distortion, #vignetting, #MTF, #buildquality, #weathers sealing, #macro, #focusdistance, #magnification, #vamp, #distortioncorrection, #fringe, #chromaticaberration, #flare resistance, #handling, #buildmaterials, #Viltrox, #ViltroxAIRseries, #focusmotor, #autofocusspeed, #pros, #cons, #market, #competition, #pricing, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA

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LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 Prima Review

Dustin Abbott

July 24th, 2025

It was just a few months ago that I happily gave the Schneider-Kreuznach x LK Samyang 14-24mm F2.8 FE a positive review. It had been two full years since I had done a Samyang review. That was long enough that Samyang was no longer Samyang but now LK Samyang. I’ve always had a soft spot for Samyang, as they were in many ways the first newer lens maker during my career to break into doing serious autofocus lenses that were competitive with both the first party brands and established third party experts like Sigma and Tamron. The last five years have seen newer Chinese lensmakers really elbow into that space (led by Viltrox), but I’m still rooting for the South Korean LK Samyang to continue to carve out a space in the market. The collaboration with Schneider-Kreuznach was a big deal, resulting in a more upscale lens at a higher price, but the lens being reviewed today falls into more familiar Samyang territory. The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P FE is a compact prime lens with solid optics, good autofocus, and a reasonable price tag. It doesn’t have any German collaboration but rather feels like a slightly larger, slightly more upscale lens in the spirit of Samyang’s Tiny series. And that’s okay, as I found the Tiny series a sweet spot for Samyang’s lenses. In many ways the Viltrox AIR series (which has been even more successful) follows a similar blueprint. So is this new wide angle compact prime worth right under $400 USD? You can find my full thoughts in the video review linked below or by reading on.

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*This product provided by LK Samyang under license from Jos. Schneider Optische Werke GmbH. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product listing for the LK Samyang 16mm F2.8 P here.

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AI Summary: The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P FE offers an attractive combination of compact size, solid build quality, and excellent optical performance, making it a compelling choice for travel and wide-angle photography on Sony FE cameras. Its high sharpness, minimal fringing, and reliable autofocus enhance its appeal, especially considering its high magnification capabilities for close-up work. However, significant distortion and vignette corrections are necessary, and some focus warping can occur during video use, which may require additional post-processing or adjustments. At approximately $475 USD, it faces stiff competition from similarly priced or slightly cheaper 16mm primes like Viltrox, though its lightweight and weather-sealed design provide a notable edge for portable, versatile shooting; thus, its price remains fairly competitive within the market segment.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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The “P” in the lens name stands for “Prima”, which is a Latin word meaning “first” in the sense of importance. LK Samyang envisions the Prima series being potentially a person’s “first lens” or be the “first lens” that a person reaches for. The compact nature of the lenses (in theory) helps achieve this…though that leads us to a bit of an oddity in this marketing plan. The first Prima lens (which came during the time that I was out of touch with Samyang) was the 35mm F1.4 P FE, an F1.4 prime that seemed to be a slightly smaller and lighter than their earlier 35mm F1.4 AF lens (which I did review here), but was still 100mm long and weighed 470g (still slightly bigger than the Sony 35mm F1.4 GM, though a bit lighter). It felt like a new design direction for what had been their “Series II” lenses, including the 50mm F1.4 II, 85mm F1.4 II, and 135mm F1.8 lenses. I did a video about the Series II lenses as a series here.

The new 16mm F2.8 Prima and 85mm F1.8 Prime (both of which I’m reviewing at the same time) are very different types of lenses: smaller, lighter, and with smaller maximum apertures. The 16mm and 85mm lenses are nearly perfectly matched in size and are clearly part of a series. Both of these lenses put together weigh about as much as the 35mm F1.4. It’s just odd that these three lenses are being marketed together. It feels like LK Samyang switched direction during their design strategy for this series, and the the Prima 16mm feels a lot like an update on the Tiny series with some influence from the V-AF series. Here’s a look at the 75mm T1.9 (left) and the 45mm F1.8 (an early Tiny Series lens) on the right bracketing the two new Prima lenses.

You can see that the Prima lenses are similar in size (but not design) to the V-AF lenses (which were all mostly the same size). Both of these first two lenses in this more compact Prima series are focal lengths never covered by the Tiny or V-AF series. The Prima 16mm weighs just 207g and provides serious portability for a full frame wide angle prime. No, it isn’t as compact as a lens like the Canon 16mm F2.8 (my review here), but it is a better made, optically superior lens. No, it isn’t as bright as lenses like the Sony 16mm F1.8 G or the Viltrox 16mm F1.8, but it is significantly lighter and cheaper than either of those lenses. I would say that the Prima is the choice for those who want the focal length but don’t want to spend a lot of money or carry around a lot of weight…but still want serious performance.

The Prima 16mm has one other trick up its tiny sleeve – the ability to produce up to 0.33x magnification and all the way up to 0.50x if used on an APS-C camera. You can get very, very close to subjects and get high magnification (higher still than the image below).

I love when lenses have that kind of versatility, as it makes them even more useful as walkaround lenses. There are both strengths and weaknesses in these Prima lenses, and we’ll break it down in greater detail here in the review.

Build and Handling

The Prima lenses seem to be somewhere between the Tiny and V-AF series in terms of quality, though skewed more towards the latter. The V-AF series have some uniquely video-centric features, but the Prima lenses also feel a little more upscale than the Tiny series. They have a few features, some weather sealing, and nicer build materials. In many ways they feel like premium versions of Viltrox’s AIR series, and I consider that a compliment.

You can see from their promotional materials that LK Samyang is touting a new engineered plastic for the housing of the Prima lenses, and the claim that it is tougher, more durable, and has a nice finish. That feels accurate to me, as the plastics feel very tough and I don’t see any visible seems anywhere in the way I sometimes do with cheaper lenses (like the aforementioned Canon RF 16mm F2.8). The finish is very lightly flocked and seems very resistant to fingerprints. It should be easy to keep looking clean.

I also want to give some love to the focus ring, which has a more premium feeling diamond texture pattern that looks good from a distance and even better up close.

That ring moves smoothly with roughly 135° of rotation. The damping is on the light side, but there is good precision and the focus motor is highly responsive, allowing for a good manual focus simulation (all mirrorless autofocus lenses have focus-by-wire manual focus).

An AF | MF switch on the side makes for easy on-the-fly switches between auto and manual focus.

There is no custom/Fn button on these lenses, unfortunately.

In a new feature for LK Samyang, the Prima lenses have a USB-C port on the lens mount (like Viltrox), which allows for easier firmware updates without needing the Samyang Lens Station.

This is a welcome change.

You might also notice the weather sealing gasket there, which is one of four seals in the lens. There’s also one at the switch, near the focus ring, and to seal the front element.

LK Samyang claims internally to have tested up to an IP-5 rating for dust resistance.

Also included in the package is the lens hood, which bayonets on with very good precision. It’s made of similar plastics to the barrel and is a nice match to the lens.

That’s not an advanced feature set, by any stretch, but is definitely a notch above what we’ve seen from Viltrox’s AIR series (no switch or weather sealing) or Sigma’s Contemporary lenses (ditto).

The lens is nice and compact, with a diameter of 69.8mm (2.75″) and a length of 70.5mm (2.77″).

The front filter size is 62mm, which isn’t incredibly common but becoming more so. The 85mm Prima shares this filter size.

The weight, as mentioned is just 207g (7.3oz). This will be a very easy lens to bring along.

As noted, the Prima 16mm has a very high magnification level, though as is commonly the case with wide angle lenses, accessing that magnification comes with some challenges. You can focus as closely as 12cm, which sounds great until you realize that the measurement from the sensor to the front of the lens hood is 11cm. If you leave that hood on, you basically have to move up until hood is nearly touching the subject. That means in many cases you will need to remove the hood to get at least 3-4cm of working distance and not block all the light from your subject. Assuming you can do all of that, here’s the magnification you can get on full frame (0.33x)

You’ll see that there is some field curvature this close, so there’s definitely a fairly small sweet spot of focus. On the plus side, however, contrast and detail are good, though there is some fringing that is evident at this distance.

Switch to APS-C and you can get even higher magnification…up to 0.50x, or 1:2 macro.

That’s useful, though not quite as useful as having a bit more working distance would provide!

There are seven aperture blades in the aperture iris, though no manual aperture ring is provided. The resulting 14 bladed sunstar looks nice enough but not exceptional.

In summation, there is nothing groundbreaking about the build or design here, but I do think these are clean, attractive lenses that stand out as being nicely compact. There aren’t really a ton of 16mm lenses on Sony FE, so the Prima 16mm is welcome.

Autofocus for Stills

LK Samyang utilizes a Linear STM motor in this lens, and my experience with this focus motor in a few applications has been very positive. Focus is fast, quiet, and accurate. I shot facing up on the ivy growing on an old barn, and the crisp focus (and amazing detail and contrast) is pretty amazing.

Precision proved good, too, with good focus results in a wide variety of situations…including up close.

I had just a split second to pull up the camera and catch the shot below, and the shutter speed was too low for the lighting conditions. Still, autofocus was great, and grabbed the right target.

My formal autofocus test showed near instant focus transitions from close to distant. I could feel a bit of thrust through my hands during those quick focus changes, but no sound. It isn’t perfectly damped, but the focus motor has plenty of thrust.

Focus for stills seems pretty excellent to me. I have zero complaints.

Video AF

Great news on the video AF front, too. Focus pulls are smooth and confident, with no visible steps, no pulsing, and confident focus lock. Focus breathing is very low as well, so focus changes are nice and subtle.

As we will see in the next section, there is a fair bit of distortion and vignette, but fortunately on Sony the lens does seem to have in camera corrections available, and those seem to do a good job of cleaning things up. Those corrections aren’t always perfectly seamless when focusing in and out, however. I noticed a bit of warping if I manually focused back and forth.

My hand test went fine, with smooth transitions from my hand to my face.

Natural focus changes while moving are smoothly damped, though the focus motor isn’t always as reactive as what I would like. There are moments where nothing is really in focus because focus hasn’t adjusted to the next natural subject yet.

I’ll also note that this focal length is a very compelling option to shoot on APS-C or Super35 as well, giving a 24mm angle of view. That’s very useful for a lot of things.

In general, video focus is good, but there are a few quirks.

Image Quality Breakdown

While this is not one the lenses to come out of the partnership with Schneider-Kreuznach, the LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 P is still a serious performer.

The optical design of the Prima 16mm is fairly simple, with just 8 elements in 7 groups. This includes 1 HR (High Refractive), 3 ED (Extra Low Dispersion), and 1 Aspherical element, leaving just 3 ordinary elements in the design.

The MTF charts shows both F2.8 (top) and F8 (bottom), and it’s a bit of an odd MTF. At F2.8 the center and mid-frame are extremely sharp, but there is a strong slide to the corners, which should be considerably softer than the center. What’s interesting is that wide open the sagittal plane drops hard in the corners, while at F8 the sagittal plane is super sharp in the corners, but the meridional plane is pretty much the same on both charts. Bottom line is that this lens should be ridiculously sharp at small apertures.

And it’s true that at F5.6 in this shot the detail and contrast is amazing all over the frame even shot on a 61MP Sony a7RV.

This is a very, very sharp lens. It reminds me of the Sigma 17mm F4 (my review here). Like that lens, the Prima 16mm doesn’t have any amazingly bright maximum aperture (though F2.8 is more useful than F4), but both lenses have very high magnification, great contrast, heavy vignette, and a lot of detail wide open.

Let’s dive into the details.

The biggest optical liabilities are the distortion and vignette.

There is both a lot of distortion (a +33 to correct) and it also fairly complex with a mustache type pattern that doesn’t allow for a simple, linear correction. Vignette is also fairly heavy, requiring a +76 to correct. This is disappointing, but frankly it is almost identical to what I saw on the recent Sony 16mm F1.8 G. The Canon RF 16mm F2.8 is almost a fisheye lens before correcting the barrel distortion, requiring a +70 to correct (perhaps the worst that I’ve seen on a rectilinear lens).

While I haven’t gotten my hands on a RAW correction profile yet, there is in-camera corrections for JPEGs and Video, and you can see that the correction profile does a nice job with the distortion (I’m not sure the vignette is being addressed, however).

This isn’t great, obviously, but unfortunately the competition isn’t really any better. The Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 isn’t bad, but it is a considerably bigger and heavier lens.

While you can focus closely enough to create a shallow depth of field at 24mm, F2.8, I didn’t see any issue with longitudinal style chromatic aberrations (LoCA). Everything looked nice and clean.

A far more common problem for wide angle lenses is lateral style chromatic aberrations (LaCA) which show up along the edges of the frame in the transitions from black to white. Fortunately the LK Samyang 16mm Prima is well corrected for LaCA.

The distortion and vignette isn’t great, but the corrections for fringing are.

How about sharpness?

I’m using the 61MP Sony a7RV for these tests, which represents the highest resolution currently available on any full frame platform. I show the results at 200% magnification to really highlight any flaws.

At 14mm, there aren’t many to see.

The center is fantastically sharp at F2.8, as is the midframe. There is definitely a drop in the corners, particularly the last 5-8% of the frame. Centering seems solid on the copy I tested, with roughly equal performance in all four corners.

At F4 there is a bit more contrast, but the biggest improvement is some vignette lift that allows for brighter results.

Peak corner results are found at F8, where they are starting to look very good.

Real world landscapes at F5.6 to F8 are perfectly sharp all across the frame.

Contrast is intensely good, giving images a lot of pop.

You’ll start to see softening from diffraction by F11. F22 is minimum aperture, and it looks fairly soft.

Flare resistance is excellent. I could pan around bright sources and get relatively little ghosting and no issues with loss of contrast.

No issue there, which is great in a wide angle lens.

You don’t buy a wide angle lens for the bokeh performance, but overall the Prima 16mm isn’t bad. There’s some outlining around some defocused areas (the lens has intense contrast), but backgrounds still look reasonable nice.

Here’s another sample.

I certainly wouldn’t use this as a deciding factor for a lens like this, but it’s not really a negative, either.

Outside of the distortion and vignette, the optical performance of this compact lens is nothing short of excellent.

Conclusion

It’s great to see some new products from LK Samyang, and I’m rooting for their ongoing success. There are a lot of new players on the market, but Samyang was one of the original disruptors, and I want to see them continue to compete in this space. The Prima series is interesting, as I think there is a real sweet spot for compact, high performing lenses on Sony FE…particularly because cameras like the a7C series exist. While there are a few very good 16mm F1.8 options available now, there are few compact wide angle primes this wide available on Sony FE, so I certainly think there is a place for the Prima 16mm.

I remain confused by the connection between the 35mm F1.8 Prima and these newer, more compact options, but that’s up to LK Samyang to sort. I welcome the fact that both the 16mm and 85mm focal lengths have not been done in the Tiny or V-AF series before, and this takes their compact lineup wider than ever before.

LK Samyang has one final challenge, and that is over the past few years brands like Viltrox, TTArtisan, and 7Artisans have really increased their profile. Their products are very aggressively priced, and the roughly $400 USD does sit in a higher price range than lenses like that. It’s also a nicer lens, however, so the price point is probably warranted. LK Samyang does to invest in some improvements to marketing and distribution if they want to increase their market share, but their recent products have shown some continued maturation. The LK Samyang AF 16mm F2.8 Prima is an interesting option if you want to go wide and still travel light…which I suspect a lot of people will be interested in.

Pros:

  • Nicely compact and lightweight
  • Nice build quality complete with weather sealing
  • Fast, silent autofocus
  • Good focus precision
  • Low focus breathing
  • Extremely sharp lens with high contrast
  • Very high magnification levels
  • Next to no fringing
  • Excellent flare resistance

Cons:

  • Heavy vignette and distortion
  • There can be some warping and focus adjustments during video capture
  • Is the price competitive?

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the LK Samyang 16mm F2.8 P @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | LK Samyang

Purchase the LK Samyang 85mm F1.8 P @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | LK Samyang

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Tamron 16-30mm F2.8 Di III VXD G2 Review

Dustin Abbott

July 21st, 2025

Tamron has proven to be one of the most successful designers of zoom lenses in the modern era. They are the largest third party lensmaker in the world (in 2025), and part of that is because there are actually a number of lenses sold by first party brands (Nikon in particular) that are actually Tamron lenses. Tamron’s first generation of Sony E-mount zooms included the trinity of the 17-28mm F2.8, 28-75mm F2.8, and 70-180mm F2.8 lenses, all of which were great successes. Tamron has been released G2 (second generation) replacements over the past few years, and while previous G2 lenses have had the same focal range/aperture combinations as the first generation lens, Tamron has decided to expand the zoom range of their newest G2 zoom on both ends. Rather than a 17-28mm lens (which I reviewed here), we now have a 16-30mm lens, which dramatically expands the usefulness of this zoom range. What’s more, we’ve got an improved build, faster autofocus, more features, and a price tag that has only increased by $30 to $929 USD. Does that make the 16-30 G2 a winner? Find my full thoughts in my video review shared below or by reading on in the text review.

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Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can visit the product page for the 16-30mm F2.8 here.

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Sony E-mount wide angle zoom competitors

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AI Summary:
Tamron’s 16-30mm G2 lens represents a significant upgrade over its predecessor, offering an expanded zoom range, improved build quality, and faster autofocus, all at a competitive price point. The lens features excellent weather sealing, customizable controls, and impressive optical performance, especially in controlling distortion and chromatic aberrations. While it lacks built-in stabilization and has some distortion complexity, it maintains sharpness across the frame and is highly suitable for professional wide-angle photography. Overall, the lens offers strong value, delivering high-quality images in a compact, lightweight package, making it a compelling alternative to more expensive options like the Sony GM series.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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I’m doing this review on Sony E-mount, as mentioned, but Tamron is also releasing the 16-30 G2 simultaneously on Nikon Z-mount, where it will also be extremely welcome.

Tamron’s initial 17-28mm F2.8 was a prized lens because it was competent, compact, and reasonably priced. But a lot has changed since 2019, and in the ensuing 6 years the market has become much, much more competitive. The top competitor that emerged was Sigma’s 16-28mm F2.8, which I reviewed here. The biggest advantage for the Sigma was that it went wider than the original Tamron, though Tamron has solved that problem by going as wide as the Sigma while also having a bit more telephoto reach.

Here’s a look at my shoes from 16mm:

…and here’s the same view at 30mm:

That’s a 107° 2′ to 71° 35′ angle of view. If you want a more extreme angle of view, I definitely recommend that you check out my review of the LK Samyang 14-24mm F2.8, another zoom I really liked.

The top lens in this class is the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which I reviewed here. That lens is amazing, but it is also a whopping $2300 USD. There’s a lot of ways you could spend that additional $1360! And, at the end of the day, the Tamron 16-30 G2 is very capable of taking beautiful images.

We will see if Tamron can recreate their success with the 17-28mm with this new offering.

Tamron 16-30 G2 Build and Handling

Let’s parse out the “Tamron speak” in the 16-30 G2mm lens.

  • Di III = Designed for Mirrorless
  • VXD = Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive (the Linear autofocus motor)
  • G2 = second generation design

I think the Di-III designation is becoming increasingly meaningless for the simple reason that essentially all current lens design is on mirrorless, with DSLRs seeming to be done at this point.

New design efficiencies have allowed Tamron to increase the build quality, features, and zoom range of the new 16-30 G2 while largely preserving the dimensions of the former lens. The 17-28mm was 73mm in diameter and 99mm in length and weighed 420g. The new 16-30 G2 is 74.8 x 101.8mm (2.9 x 4″) and weighs 440g (15.5oz). That’s less than 2mm greater in diameter and length, and just 20g more. Tamron is managing to undercut the Sigma’s 450g weight even though the Tamron has a bigger zoom range, more features, and more thorough weather sealing. Not bad!

The Tamron employs a 67mm front filter thread that is a match for the vast majority of its lenses over the past five years. They have very intentionally tried to standardize filter size where at all possible to allow filters to be shared across their lenses.

The design language is similar to a number of recent Tamron lenses, which is clean and modern but not necessarily a standout in any way. The lens shell is primarily engineered plastics with a rubberized focus ring. The lens has a satin finish with some sculpting here and there to give it more shape than the previous lens.

The 16-30mm is a nice aesthetic match for the trio of G2 zooms.

You can also see that it remains easily the most compact of this trio, all of which are amongst the smallest and lightest lenses in their class.

This is a typical modern Tamron lens, which means a global product. It has various badging proclaiming that it is “Designed in Japan”, but a closer look reveals that the lens itself is manufactured in Vietnam and the hood is manufactured in the Philippines.

There isn’t much here in terms of features, though we do have a Fn (custom) button on the side whose value can be assigned through the camera body.

There’s also a weather sealed USB-C port to allow you to connect the lens and run firmware updates or customize the behavior.

Tamron’s Lens Utility software is available from the Android app store or you can visit this page to download the software and/or get more information:

There are a variety of functions that can be set in the software itself, everything from a preset focus position to switching between AF/MF to even establishing a proper Astro/infinity focus point. The nice thing about being able to use the Lens Utility function to assign this value is that you can program a function specific to this particular lens rather than using the default value from the camera. This lens has no AF/MF switch, for example, and that happens to be one of the choices that I could set the button to accomplish.

You also have a lot of specific control over how the manual focus ring functions. You can choose which direction it moves, whether it is linear or non-linear, how long you want the focus throw/rotation to be, etc…

You can also do direct firmware updates through the software, ensuring that your lens stays future proof. I’m not sure that anyone is quite matching the degree of customization available from Tamron at this point. You really can optimize the lens’ behavior to your preference.

The first ring you encounter is the zoom ring, which has a raised, rubberized texture to it. This is an internally zooming lens, so the zoom action is very smooth and definite. There’s about 75° of rotation between 16 and 30mm, and the overall length of the lens stays constant. This is a definite positive for gimbal use as the balance point stays constant.

The focus ring is located near the front of the lens and occupies a section of the lens barrel where it flares out. Manual focus emulation is quite good, and the damping, though a bit light, gives the impression of being a real manual focus experience. 

Tamron has included a fairly shallow, petal shaped hood with the 16-30mm. It reverses easily for storage, and doesn’t seem to be as complicated to reverse as some of the earlier hood designs.

Tamron has really been nailing weather sealing, and that’s definitely the case here.  There’s a rubber gasket at the lens mount that suggests at the weather sealing inside, and Tamron also shows a total of 7 other internal seal points along with a fluorine coating on the front element to give further protection.  A fluorine coating not only helps protect the front element from scratches but also makes it water and fingerprint resistant and thus easier to clean.  This is a professional grade lens ready for professional use.

Tamron has elected to not include their VC (Vibration Compensation) in the 16-30 G2. That’s very standard for this class, as none of the competing lenses have any kind of lens based stabilization either.

The aperture iris has 9 rounded blades. I actually like a lower blade count with straight blades on wide angle lenses, as you have a better chance of producing sunstars than round specular highlights. The 18 bladed sunstar from the Tamron is okay but not exceptional.

As is frequently the case with Tamron zooms, the minimum focus distance varies according the focal length. You can focus as closely as 19cm (7.5″) on the 16mm end or 30cm (11.8″) on the 30mm end, with the higher magnification level coming on the wide end. You can get up to 0.19x on the wide end but just 0.14x on the telephoto end. That’s a little better than the Sigma 16-28mm but considerably worse than the Sony 16-35 GM II. Here’s what the highest level of magnification looks like:

I don’t love when the highest magnification is on the wide end, as that means you have to get very close to your subject to get the magnification.

All in all, this is a very nice package. Tamron’s G2 lenses aren’t quite at the level of Sigma’s ART series lenses in terms of features or build, but the competing lenses from Sigma is actually part of their Contemporary series, and it actually has lower build quality, less features, and less thorough weather sealing. And, at $929 USD, the Tamron is still the value option in the class.

Autofocus for Stills

Tamron has utilized their premium focus system here, which they call the Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive (VXD). This is a quiet focus motor with a lot of thrust.

Autofocus speed is near instant, able to snap from one subject to another without sound, hesitation, or drama. I was able to snap this photo in extremely low light conditions and got perfectly focused results.

Wide angle lenses put less stress on focus systems because the depth of field is much deeper than longer focal lengths, but that doesn’t change the fact that it was easy to grab fast moving subjects with a quick snap up of the camera.

Taking “people pictures” was effortless, too, with effective eye tracking and accurate focus.

There is nothing to complain about for stills, as focus is fast, quiet, and accurate.

Video AF

Video AF is likewise excellent. When I tested focus pulls, they were snappy and confident. No settling or pulsing. Focus breathing exists but not strongly.

My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view with my hand and then remove the obstruction of my hand also went well. The camera moved easily from my face to my hand and vice versa.

The bottom line is that AF was pretty effortless. Tamron’s VXD is a very good focus motor, and a wide angle lens like this doesn’t stress it very much.

Image Quality Breakdown

This is a new optical design, with 16 elements in 12 groups compared to the simpler 13 elements in 11 groups for the 17-28mm. This includes three molded glass aspherical elements, one XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion element), and 2 LD (Low Dispersion) elements. The MTF Chart reveals a good center and mid-frame performance at 16mm but with a sharp drop in the corners, while the 30mm end shows slightly less sharpness generally but with a more linear fade towards the corners.

I was curious to see how this compared to the older 17-28mm lens, as part of what enabled Tamron’s optical success with that lens was working with a more constrained zoom range. I’ve put both MTF charts on a single page and put a line through the 80% threshold, as I find everything above that generally looks excellent even on a high resolution camera like the 61MP Sony a7RV I’m using for testing here.

I wasn’t overly surprised to find that the 17-28mm is very slightly the better lens optically. It’s within a few percentage points, but while both lenses have a similar optical profile, the older lens has a bit more of its performance in the excellent range.

We’ll dive into the technical side of things first with a look at vignette and distortion on the wide end.

Tamron was able to have less distortion than competing lenses by only going to 17mm previously, but they’ve gone further here and it does come at the cost of more barrel distortion. The amount of distortion isn’t significant (+7 to correct), but the pattern is a little complex with some obvious mustache pattern left after correction. Still, this pales in comparison to the Sigma 16-28mm, which required a whopping +21 to correct the barrel distortion and similarly left a mustache pattern behind. Even more surprising is the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which required a +24 to correct the distortion and also had some mustache style distortion Vignette isn’t bad at 16mm, requiring a +55 to correct. The Sigma essentially required maxing out the slider (+100) to correct it. The GM lens had a bit less vignette. Clearly these compact 16-XX zooms suffer from barrel distortion, but the Tamron is better than the competition.

Moving on to 30mm we find that the distortion pattern has flipped to a pincushion style distortion.

This distortion is more linear and corrects better (though not perfectly), requiring a -10 to correct for the distortion. Vignette was negligible, requiring just a +32 to correct. This is similar to the distortion on the Sigma, though that lens has a bit more vignette (+50 to correct). The GM lens shows both less distortion (-4) and vignette (+23). The bottom line is that the Tamron is very competitive when it comes to distortion and vignette with competing lenses.

The distortion will be similar on Nikon Z, though my experience suggests that you will see at least a stop of additional vignette on the Nikon Z mount version. This is probably due to the larger diameter of the Z-mount.

Tamron also receives good profile support in either Sony or Nikon bodies, and that does a more effective job of correcting the distortion pattern than what I have manually shown. Here’s an example at 16mm:

LoCA (Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations) present as a color fringing before and after the plane of focus.

There is a minor amount of fringing after the plane of focus, but we can also see that there is some spherical aberrations that are reducing contrast a bit.

More important for wide angle lenses is how well they handle lateral chromatic aberrations (LaCA) near the edges of the frame. LaCA exhibits as fringing on either side of dark lines, but you can see from the image below that there isn’t much to be found. There is the faintest hint of fringing at the nearly 200% magnification shown here, but nothing that could be seen in real world shots.

The bottom line is that the area of weakness here (distortion) could actually be considered a strength relative to the competition.

Here’s my test chart that the crops will be taken from. Tests are done on a 61MP Sony a7RV and crops and comparisons are shown at 200% magnification.

Here’s a look at F2.8 crops from the center, mid-frame, and bottom right corner:

That’s a very strong performance across the frame, and the corners look a bit better than I expected. That’s great detail in the corners for being examined at 200% on a 61MP camera. It’s definitely sharp enough across the frame to get perfectly credible images even at F2.8:

I noted that centering was very good in the copy of the lens I tested, with consistent performance in all four corners.

By F4 the corners are already impressively sharp for a 61MP camera at 200%. No problems there!

F5.6 and F8 (typical landscape apertures) look fantastic, though I would say that F5.6 is slightly better than F8. You can see from the crops of this real world F5.6 image (at 16mm) that detail is good right off the edge of the frame, with just a bit of a drop in contrast there.

As per usual you can expect a significant dropoff in sharpness after F11 due to diffraction. Minimum aperture is F16 here, and it is considerably softer than larger apertures.

Moving to the middle of the zoom range (21mm), I found that the sharpness and contrast pattern were roughly the same. As before, contrast takes a nice step forward even with a mild stop down to F4:

Performance is close to the 16mm result, though I would say that 16mm is probably 1-2% sharper (not enough to appreciate at any magnification but 200% or greater). Real world images in this range look nice and crisp.

Moving on to 30mm, we find a familiar pattern. Wide open contrast is a little softer at 30mm, but, as before, it quickly improves when stopped down.

Bokeh at slightly further distances was also nice. This difference is really obvious if you look at the midframe. There’s a very obvious uptick in contrast if you stop down to F4.

The corners never quite get to the sharpness level that we’ve seen at other focal lengths. Contrast improves when stopped down, but the detail level doesn’t really come up to great levels.

I noticed a big difference between F2.8 and F5.6 in real world shooting. This 100% is near the edge of the frame, and you can see a vast difference in contrast and detail at F5.6:

The good news is that at F5.6 images looked nice and crisp across the frame even with the very high resolution body. Expect results to look even comparatively sharper on the lower resolution Nikon 45MP sensors.

You don’t buy lenses like this for the bokeh, but the bokeh is decent for this type of lens. The nature of the wider focal lengths and only somewhat large aperture means that backgrounds are often in that “in between” stage where they aren’t strongly blurred but aren’t really in focus either.

This image is pretty good because the ratio of the distance to the subject and then subject to the background is favorable.

But in a more difficult environment, like this, the results are still quite good.

The quality of the bokeh isn’t much behind the GM lens, but I did find the GM lens to be much sharper at close focus distances.

Tamron’s BBAR 2 coatings are doing a nice job here, and I found flare resistance to be really solid.

My review period did not come with any favorable “shoot the stars” conditions. I did shoot a fireworks display and didn’t see any strong coma issues. There was some stretching towards the edges of the frame, but part of that comes down to the acceleration of particles out of the frame with fireworks. No wings or other odd shapes, however.

I got good (not exceptional) results with the 17-28mm (which I owned for several years), and I see no reason why this lens would deliver much different results.

My expectations for wide angle zooms has increased since the release of the 17-28mm as this is an area where many mirrorless zooms are much, much better than the options available for DSLRs (which was still largely the standard in 2018/2019), but I would say that the Tamron holds up very nicely to 2025 scrutiny. It doesn’t blow my mind in any one area, but the sum total is an extremely competent performance for such a compact zoom.

I can safely say that I would choose this lens over the Sigma 16-28mm, which is its most logical competition. It will also be very welcome on Nikon Z mount as it is a clear upgrade over the Nikkor Z 17-28mm F2.8, which is, as you might have guessed, a rebranded Gen 1 Tamron 17-28mm with a few cosmetic and functional tweaks. The fact that you can get the Tamron 16-30mm for about $300 less is a bonus. Check out the image gallery link here for more photos.

Conclusion

The Tamron 16-30mm F2.8 Di III VXD G2 is both an expected and unexpected lens. I certainly expected a G2 version of the 17-28mm that would look and handle much like this lens, but I didn’t expect the expanded zoom range. That’s a welcome surprise, as this becomes a bit more of a compelling alternative to the Sony 16-35mm F2.8 GM II, which is a more expensive lens than what many can afford.

The Tamron 16-30 G2 has a nice compact build and remains the lightest lens in the class. It has great autofocus, good weather sealing, and delivers very competent image quality. It is easily filtered due to the very common 67mm filter threads shared across not only a few dozen Tamron lenses but many other lenses as well.

The price tag of $929 USD is probably only higher than the $899 USD launch price of the 17-28mm due to tariffs (a theme in 2025 as the US President attempts to balance trade relations), but it still manages to undercut the competitors by either large or small amounts. It’s probably enough lens for most potential GM customers, though the GM remains the best in class for those with deeper pockets. I see no reason why Tamron shouldn’t have good sales success with this lens, particularly on Nikon where there are fewer alternatives.

Pros:

  • Slightly smaller and lighter than competing lenses
  • Nicely built
  • Useful features
  • Thorough weather sealing
  • Ability to customize controls
  • Extremely fast autofocus
  • Good focus accuracy
  • Video AF works well
  • Lower distortion than competitors
  • Chromatic aberrations nearly perfectly controlled
  • Good center and midframe sharpness
  • Corners sharp when stopped down
  • Low coma
  • Good flare resistance

Cons:

  • No AF | MF switch
  • Distortion a little complicated
  • Corners at 30mm don’t get super sharp

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GEAR USED:

Purchase the Tamron 16-30mm F2.8 G2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | AdoramaAmazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Sony Canada | Amazon CanadaAmazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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Kase AF 85mm F1.4 Review

Dustin Abbott

July 1st, 2025

The company Kase has long been known as a filter maker, with a wide variety of filters and filter systems. But they have just released their first lens, and it is a surprisingly ambitious one. The Kase AF 85mm F1.4 is a full frame 85mm F1.4 lens complete with a wide variety of unique features, a surprisingly compact size, and a nicely strong performance. Is Kase going to be the most recent Chinese company to really disrupt the lens market? Is this $738 USD lens now the 85mm to buy on Sony? Find out more in either the video review below or by reading on in the text review.

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Thanks to Kase for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV and the Sony Alpha 1. You can find the listing for the AF 85mm F1.4 FE here.

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AI SUMMARY: The Kase AF 85mm F1.4 lens is an impressive first effort from a company primarily known for filter design, offering unique filter compatibility and compactness while delivering strong performance. It features innovative magnetic filter integration, a well-built metal body, and versatile functions like customizable focus points and firmware updates via USB-C, adding to its appeal. Although its autofocus may be slightly slower than some competitors, it remains accurate, quiet, and suitable for portrait and general photography, with excellent optical qualities such as balanced sharpness, contrast, and creamy bokeh. Priced competitively at around $738 USD, the lens stands out for its rendering, build quality, and filter-friendly design, making it a compelling option among high-end 85mm F1.4 lenses.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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Kase’s background in filter design is shown in some of the unique features of this lens, which should prove to be the most filter friendly lens that I’ve ever tested. It’s been nearly six years ago that I reviewed my first magnetic filter system, and at that point you needed to screw in a magnetic filter adapter onto the front threads of the lens, after which you could quickly hot swap filters magnetically. Kase has incorporated a magnetic rotating ring right into the lens design, allowing you to skip the adapter and just drop magnetic filters right onto the lens. And, while they included a standard UV/Protection magnetic filter in my package, it just so happened that the Freewell CPL (circular polarizing) filter that I reviewed years ago was in a 72mm filter size, so I dropped it on there and found that it worked perfectly as well. Sweet!

What’s more, they are also including their “Magic Clip In Filter” for Sony buyers as a free gift. This appears to be an ND4 filter, and is designed to drop in right in front of the sensor. They even include a little “guitar pick” designed to allow you to easily lift the filter out.

All of this is a great, as it allows potential buyers more control over the light, potentially allowing for more effective flash sync, proper shutter speeds for video, etc…

There have been a number of new 85mm F1.4 lenses released for Sony, most recently including the Viltrox PRO 85mm F1.4 and the Sirui Aurora 85mm F1.4. In many ways this new Kase 85mm most reminds me of the Aurora, though Kase has managed to bring a more compelling package with both better features and better performance. Let’s explore why that is…

Kase 85mm F1.4 Build and Handling

I really like Viltrox’s recent PRO 85mm F1.4, but there’s no question that its a bigger lens. Kase has done a really great job with managing the size of the 85mm F1.4, as it is both feature rich while also being nice and compact.

What’s more, the Kase 85mm F1.4 manages to stay compact even when the lens hood is used, something that diminishes the compact nature of the Sigma 85mm F1.4:

The diameter is 82mm (3.24″) and the length is 99mm (3.89″). That makes it very similar in size to the Samyang AF 85mm F1.4 II. It weighs in at 580g (20.45oz), making it a little lighter than the Sigma 85mm F1.4 but heavier than than the Samyang (509g) or the Sirui Aurora (540g).

Overall my impression is that the lens is compact but very well made. It has a reassuring density and a premium feel. I think the design language is nice and clean, though it doesn’t break any new ground.

There is a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount, though I haven’t yet seen a cutout diagram showing the position of other seals. I suspect there are other seals as that has become the standard for this class of lens, and Kase does claim that it is sealed against dust and moisture.

The body of the lens is molded and made of metal alloys. There is a lightly flocked finish on the barrel that is offset by glossier sections on areas like the aperture ring and near the lens mount. The ribbed textures of the aperture ring is reminiscent of a Sigma ART lens, and I would say that Sigma ART lenses represent a fair standard for the level of build quality.

The hood is more compact than competing lenses. The quality feels good, with thicker plastics, a flocked finish that matches the lens barrel, and good precision in the bayonet mount. It clicks into place nicely, though there is no lock.

As mentioned previously, the front filter thread is 72mm, which matches the Samyang and is a bit smaller than the 77mm on lenses like the Viltrox, Sigma, or Sony GM lenses.

The headline here is the very clever implementation of the magnetic filter mount. A closer look reveals that the “magnetic inlaid ring” not only allows for a nice attachment of filters but also has the ability to rotate, allowing you to rotate Vari-ND or CP-L filters without worrying about disrupting the magnetic connection.

The only downside of this will be for those of you with a bit of OCD – this means that the text on the facade of the lens will not always look nicely straight up and down as shown here. It could be rotated to any position.

As noted, I was able to use both the included filter from Kase along with an older Freewell filter that I already owned. The magnetic connection on the Kase filter was definitely stronger, though I was still able to use the Freewell filter without issue.

If you want other Kase magnetic filter options (I’m not a fan of using UV/Protection filters, myself), you can check out their full lineup of Revolution Plus magnetic filters.

Kase includes two choice for a front cap. One is a traditional pinch cap while the second is a magnetic cap that smartly snaps into place.

If you are a hood user, the pinch cap is easier to use because it is center pinch. The magnetic cap requires you to free it from the sides, which is harder to do with the lens hood in place.

There is a full set of features outside of the filter options. Here’s a look at everything on this lens:

The Kase 85mm F1.4 has a few features that alternative lenses do not, and only lacks one feature that some others have. The missing feature is an iris lock (Sigma and Sony GM), which allows you to lock into or out of the aperture ring. It would have been useful, too, as there isn’t a particularly firm detent between F16 (minimum aperture) and the A (Automatic) option. In fact, when declicked, there is no resistance here…which could potentially disrupt aperture racks.

What you might notice that we do have from the photo above is a second Fn (Function) button. The Fn1 button works in typical fashion with whatever function you have assigned from the camera. The Fn2 button is interesting, though, as it serves two purposes. The default function is that it will automatically shift to the minimum focus distance (short press). A long press, however, will lock it to your current focus point, allowing you to set a custom focus point that you can instantly return to with a click. That custom point seemed to last if I power cycled the camera on and off, but reset to the minimum focus distance function if I took the lens off the camera.

This is a cool function that is genuinely useful in both settings. I like being able to instantly go to MFD in order to shoot closeups with maximum magnification. It isn’t always obvious where that closest focus distance is.

Speaking of that minimum focus distance. It is a bit closer than the typical 85cm that you typically see on 85mm lenses. You can focus as closely as 70cm, which allows for a higher than usual magnification of nearly 0.14x.

Most of the competing lenses are in the 0.11x range. You can clearly see the Kase advantage in magnification, though this is offset somewhat by the fact that contrast suffers at close distances compared to some competing lenses.

So, while you get higher magnification, it comes at a penalty…at least at F1.4. Stop down a bit and you’ll get higher contrast.

Stopping down isn’t a bad idea anyway; depth of field at 70cm and F1.4 is ridiculously small.

There is an AF | MF switch on the left side, giving you quick control over that function.

There is also a Click | Declick switch on the right side of the lens. In click mode there are definite detents in one-third stop increments, and when the clicks are turned off, you can smoothly move through the aperture range.

I could do reasonably good aperture racks, though I could faintly see some stepping as the aperture changes were made.

The aperture iris has a high 13 blade count, though the aperture iris on my copy wasn’t perfectly centered (as you can see above).

The geometry is a bit odd. In some ways the roundest shapes are achieved wide open, with more deformation coming as the aperture is stopped down. This is opposite of what is typical, and I wonder if the slightly decentered aperture blades are contributing to that. Here’s F1.4, F2, F2.8, and then F4.

The manual focus ring is very nicely executed. It has deep ribs and feels very Sigma. The focus action has nice damping and it focus smoothly. The focus throw is speed dependent and not linear, so doing repeatable focus pulls can be challenging.

Kase has a USB-C port in the lens mount that allows you to do firmware updates right to the lens.  I’m a fan of this approach, as it eliminates the need for a separate dock or lens station for firmware updates, and I find the process a little more intuitive than even doing firmware updates through the camera.  

Kase is new to the lensmaking business, so there is no track record to point to yet in terms of how consistent they will be in supporting their lenses with firmware.

There is no lens based stabilization, so you will need to rely upon the in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped, but that’s true of every other lens in the class.

The Kase 85mm F1.4 in no way feels like a first effort. This feels like a mature, well executed package that manages to bring some innovation to a crowded space. And, at a price of around $738 USD, this lens competes well with lenses like the Sigma for considerably less, and bests the similarly priced Samyang. The fly in the ointment will be the Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4, which is a very strong performer at considerably less money (under $600 USD), though it is a lot bigger and heavier. Kase is standing behind their product, too, offering a 3 year warranty, which is longer than what a lot of other inexpensive brands offer.

Autofocus for Stills

One area where there is a lot of parity amongst the 85mm lenses is when it comes to autofocus. At the top of the heap we have the Sony FE 85mm F1.4 GM II, which is powered by multiple high thrust XD Linear Motors. The next tier is occupied by the Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4, as it has a more powerful HyperVCM focus motor, which uses newer technology but only has a single focus motor. Pretty much everyone else (including Kase) is relying on an STM focus motor. STM, or Stepping Motor, is a fairly ubiquitous technology among low to mid-tier lenses.

Autofocus speed is on the lower side of these competitors, though fortunately that’s still fast enough for most things. Average is very good in 2025! In my formal tests you can actually see autofocus taking place rather than an instant transition from one subject to another, though focus happens smoothly and linearly without any pulses or hesitations.

Accuracy is very good, however, with all tested subjects. I got consistent and accurate lock on subjects, and focus is fast enough that I didn’t really notice it in normal situations.

Focus speed is fast enough for moderate movement but don’t expect this to be a sports lens. I really liked this moving shot of Ferrari because of his pose and also the extremely shallow depth of field.

Focus will work fine for portrait work, which is arguably the most important application for this lens.

Although is is a first lens for Kase, it certainly matches the more similarly priced competition from Sirui and Samyang. The Viltrox Pro AF is a little faster, but it is also bigger and heavier.

Video AF

Video autofocus follows a similar pattern to what I saw with stills focus, though I would argue that the slower focus speed is less of a negative here. Autofocus pulls are generally confident and without visible steps. Speed is fine, and nothing feels too abrupt.

The biggest challenge is that focus breathing is fairly strong, so you get that “zooming” effect from perspective changes.

My “hand test” where I alternatively block and unblock the camera’s view of my face with my hand went well, with smooth and confident transitions from my hand to my face and back, though that focus breathing makes the transitions less cinematic. Sony’s focus breathing compensation does not support any third party lenses, so don’t expect any software assistance.

Typical clips with either static or moving subjects were all fine. I had no issues with video focus.

Kase AF 85mm F1.4 Image Quality

The Kase 85mm F1.4 sports an optical design of 13 elements in 10 groups. This includes 5 ED (extra low dispersion) elements and 2 HR (high refractive index) elements. The result MTF shows a strong center and midframe and a mild dip in the corners at F1.4.

So, on paper, how does this compare with the recent Viltrox Pro AF 85mm F1.4? I like putting the MTF charts onto a grid and putting a line through 80% to show what lands above and below that threshold. My experience is that anything at 30 lp/mm that falls above 80% looks pretty fantastic. On paper, the Viltrox is a bit sharper in the center, about equal, and slightly softer in the corners. We’ll see if that holds up in real world results.

The Viltrox is slightly higher contrast in the center of the frame, both lenses are similar in the mid-frame, but my copy of the Kase underperforms the MTF in the corner, producing noticeably softer results than the Viltrox.

This can’t quite match the Viltrox (or Sigma) in raw sharpness, but is capable of easily besting what I recently saw from from the Sirui Aurora in December 2024.

The Kase is sharper and has much higher contrast. I would definitely choose its performance in general over the Sirui. I would say that it also compares favorably to the slightly more expensive ($699) Samyang lens.

And, as we’ll see in a moment, I think the overall rendering and bokeh from the lens is pretty fantastic.

The Kase 85mm F1.4 has a minor amount of pincushion distortion, which in one area where it definitely bests the Sigma ART lens. The Sigma suffers from a really significant amount of pincushion distortion.

The Sigma needs a -9 to correct all that distortion, while the Kase needs only a -4 (and you could easily leave that uncorrected, as a little pincushion distortion can be flattering). The Kase also has lower vignette (+31 to correct) than either the Viltrox (+48 to correct) or the Sigma (+56 to correct). This is the lowest vignette of the current crop of 85mm lenses on Sony despite having a smaller diameter than some competitors. Here’s a look at the before and after with manual correction.

There is very little of longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA) visible on my test chart before and after the plane of focus.

I didn’t really see fringing on shiny textures, either.

There are only minimal issues with lateral style chromatic aberrations found in the contrast transitions near the edge of the frame.

I saw little issues with LaCA in real world images. Overall we have gotten through this section with minimal damage.

So let’s return to focus on resolution. These results are shot on a 61MP Sony a7RV and the crops are shown at roughly 200% magnification level. Here’s a look at the test chart that the crops are taken from.

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

A real world shot with a reasonably flat plane of focus shows less of a drop off near the edge of the frame.

It seems like the drop off is more reserved for the far corners, which means that in most images this probably won’t be a factor.

I did feel like contrast was a little lower at closer focus distances and improved at medium distances. Here at close distances contrast at F1.4 looks decent but not exceptional.

Step back a bit and contrast looks a little stronger (also at F1.4)

We are not going to see Sony GM levels of contrast at F1.4, but there’s enough for most people for doing portrait work.

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

So what happens when you stop the lens down? Even by F1.8 I see an uptick in contrast, and by F2 the center and midframe look great.

Corners are sharp by F5.6, though not to the levels we see elsewhere in the frame.

That’s on my chart, though. Real world landscapes at F5.6 look great to me even near the edges of the frame.

Diffraction is an unfortunate reality on higher resolution cameras, so you will see a faint softening by F11 and a more obvious softening by the minimum aperture of F16, though frankly results at 100% will still look fine.

Sharpness is very good. I would call it middle of the pack in terms of the current options on Sony in absolute sharpness, but where the Kase 85mm F1.4 really excels is in the balance of sharpness, contrast, and bokeh rendering. The Sony GM II lens is amazing in the sharpness and contrast departments, but produces rather flat rendering to my eye. The Sigma and Viltrox are a little better balanced, but none of them have nicer bokeh than the Kase.

We’ve already seen the worse of the Kase 85mm, namely that the specular highlights aren’t consistently very round, but the overall rendering and handling of the transition zone is excellent. This early morning dew shows a bit of what I’m talking about.

Backgrounds are typically very soft and creamy.

The lens transitions to defocus quickly, so at close focus distances the background melts away almost immediately.

I stopped down to F5.6 and focused about halfway towards the scene, and the bokeh still looks nice and soft.

This shot has a lot of transition zone in it, and I still didn’t find anything to criticize.

Shooting normal shots inside a house shows a nice handling of defocus, even with hard edged items that aren’t really out of focus.

I also liked the color rendering fine overall. Skin tones look nice in the shot above. All of the bright spring colors during my review period looked nice, too.

And, while contrast isn’t necessarily top notch, I did think that there is very nice 3D subject pop at medium distances.

The biggest flare issue that I saw was a bit of light leak problem in the corner. There is only minimal flare related issues otherwise.

There’s a lot to celebrate here, really. Kase has come onto the scene with a lens that is fairly competitive in all areas. Welcome to the club!

You can see more images by checking out the image gallery page here.

Conclusion

The last six months has been a great one for new 85mm F1.4 options on Sony FE. This lens from Kase is perhaps the most unexpected, however, as I’m not sure anyone knew that they were developing this lens. It’s a surprisingly mature effort for a first lens release, and manages to tick all the right boxes. I’m particularly impressed with the clever ways they’ve implemented their filter expertise into this design, making it perhaps the most desirable of the options for those who like to use filters as a part of shaping light and color.

Autofocus is probably the weakest link, but not because it is bad. Focus is quiet and accurate but not as swift as a few competitors. It is perfectly adequate for most people in most focus situations, however, so I’m not concerned.

The optical standout quality to me is the lovely rendering, with soft creamy bokeh. I think the Kase AF 85mm F1.4 FE is a great alternative for those that want a reasonably sharp lens but a less sterile rendering than the 85mm F1.4 GM II. The price of $738 USD is competitive, though less expensive options do exist. I’m not sure if there is a niche for Kase with so many alternatives on the market, but the lens really should carve out some spaced based on its merit…particularly if you want to use filters.

Pros:

  • Beautiful built lens
  • Feature rich
  • Very good weather sealing
  • Compact and reasonably light
  • Love the clever filter integrations
  • USB port for firmware updates
  • Clean and elegant design
  • STM focus motor is quiet and accurate
  • Good sharpness at F1.4 in center and midframe
  • Great contrast by F2
  • Higher magnification than competitors
  • Little distortion
  • Low vignette
  • Solid control of fringing
  • Colors look great
  • Gorgeous bokeh
  • Good price to performance ratio
  • 3 year warranty gives some peace of mind

Cons:

  • Bokeh geometry isn’t amazing
  • Focus speed isn’t as good as some competitors
  • Corner sharpness lags a bit
  • Obvious focus breathing

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Purchase the Kase AF 85mm F1.4 @ Amazon for Sony or Nikon: (use code DABBOTT7 for 7% off either mount)

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Keywords: Kase AF 85mm F1.4 FE, Kase AF, Kase, #KASE, Kase 85mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.4, f/1.4, STM, Kase AF 85mm F1.4 FE Review, Magnetic, Magnetic Ring, Sony a7IV, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA, #KaseAF85mmF14, #Best85mmF14, #FilterFriendlyLens, #CompactPortraitLens, #AffordablePrimeLens, #MagneticFilterSystem, #KaseLensReview, #SonyFEComparison, #OpticalPerformance, #BokehReview, #FirstKaseLens, #SonyAutoFocus, #CameraGear2025, #PhotographyGear, #Budget85mmLens

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Fujifilm X-Half Review

Dustin Abbott

June 30th, 2025

No modern camera company does “vibes” quite like Fuji (well, maybe Leica, but that’s a whole other level of customer). It’s not unusual for a new Fuji camera (particularly X100 series) to be sold out not just for months but sometimes even years. It’s unclear whether some of that is intentional (do they not make quite enough of them intentionally?), but there’s no question that they manage to effectively design and market cameras that have a certain “it” factor. But I would argue that no camera in modern history has tested the “vibes” waters more than the Fujifilm X-Half. The X-Half fully embraces the retro craze, going back about as close to film as you can while still being purely digital. This is a tough review for me, since the X-Half does not excel in most of the metrics I typically evaluate. I’m not really a “vibes” kind of guy, but I’ll do my best to evaluate this camera by its actual intended criteria rather than the typical criteria I would apply to other cameras. You’ll be able to find my full thoughts in the video review or this text review.

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Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review loaner of this camera. As always, this is a completely independent review, and the thoughts and opinions expressed here are my own. Visit the product page for the camera here.

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AI SUMMARY:

The Fujifilm X-Half is a retro-inspired, ultra-compact camera designed primarily for lifestyle and nostalgic shooters rather than technical perfection. It features an 18MP 1″ sensor, fixed FUJINON 10.8mm F2.8 lens, and a unique vertical orientation with small LCD screens and a basic optical viewfinder. While its build, style, and film simulation modes evoke a vintage vibe, its autofocus, sensor performance, and lack of RAW support are notable limitations. Overall, it appeals most to users seeking a fun, stylish, and emotionally resonant camera rather than a high-performance imaging tool.

Strengths:

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The Fujifilm X-Half is inspired by the classic “half-frame” cameras of yesteryear from Ricoh or Agfa (Auto Half or Paramat). It utilizes a rotated 18 MP 1″ sensor in a 3:4 vertical format. It has a fixed FUJINON 10.8mm F2.8 lens that has a full frame equivalent focal length of 32mm. Here’s a look at some the basic specs.

Spec List

  • 18MP 1″ Vertical 3:4 CMOS Sensor
  • FUJINON 10.8mm f/2.8 Lens (32mm Equiv.)
  • Rear Vertical LCD & Sub LCD Screens
  • Optical Window Viewfinder
  • Film Camera Mode & 2-in-1 Mode
  • 13 Film Simulation Modes and 26 Filters
  • Frame Advance Lever & Exposure Comp Dial
  • 1080 x 1440 Vertical Video Recording
  • X half App for Image Development

Obviously there is little on the spec list that is going to jump out at you, as this is not the typical camera release that attempts to push the envelope of resolution, autofocus, or video specs. This is a camera for someone like my daughter, who purchased an old used point and shoot camera because she likes the “look” of the flawed images it produces: images that are washed out, overflashed, and lower resolution. I asked her why she likes it, and what I heard it that there is a nostalgic, emotional connection to those images that she doesn’t get from her electronically enhanced iPhone.

Gen Z has been born into the peak of technological advance. They have grown up with technologies that someone like me (Gen X) finds amazing because they are so much more advanced than what I grew up with. But many of them are experiencing some technology fatigue, and increasingly they are embracing “retro” technologies and experiences that are less technically perfect. That’s clearly the audience that Fujifilm is trying to tap into. Have they done it?

Build and Features

The Fujifilm X-Half first stands out for its compact size. It has a similar aesthetic to the bestselling X100 series (intentional, I’m sure), though it is half the size. It’s also much more plasticky feeling. The body alone (including the lens, but not the battery or memory card), is just 191g (6.7oz). It feels almost weightless. Add the memory card and battery and the weight only rises to 240g (8.5oz).

The dimensions are 4.2 (W) x 2.5 (H) x 1.8″ (D), or 105.8 x 64.3 x 45.8 mm. The depth is not the grip; it is the lens. There isn’t really any grip to speak of, this is the kind of camera you pinch rather than hold.

If you look a the camera from the front, it is instantly identifiable as a Fuji camera, with a classic camera grip texture, an opening for the optical viewfinder, and a flash that looks a bit like a tiny LED panel.

I’m reviewing the “Charcoal Silver” finish version, and there is also a Silver and Black option as well. The Charcoal Silver is a graphite color that looks very smart.

That front aesthetic is definitely classic Fuji but just on a smaller scale. The flash is small and not super bright. No real specifications are given for it. Here’s a look at a show without flash on the left, with the flashed result on the right.

Shooting against a backlit scene produced a pretty typical “flashed” look (and focus couldn’t handle even this minor amount of backlighting.

Far less conventional is the rear view, where we find a small vertical rather than horizontal LCD screen along with a small sub LCD to the left of it. It is a 2’4″ display with 920,000 dots of resolution.

This reflects the fact that the X-Half is completely built around the idea of vertical photos. The goal is to give you a unique camera where you can shoot and compose in the more comfortable horizontal position while getting vertical photos. Rotating the camera still produces vertical images that would need to be manually rotated.

I didn’t find the quality of the display particularly impressive, and I also found it very difficult to see in bright sunlight. I missed an EVF as an alternate place to compose or to review images.

The optical viewfinder has a very low magnification of 0.38x and has roughly 90% coverage. It basically feels like looking through a very small window, and there are no electronic overlays.

There is one switch and on button on the back. The switch allows you to move between Stills and Movie, while the button allows playback for reviewing images or videos. All other controls are handled via touch on either the main or sub screens.

There are surprisingly few physical controls for a Fuji camera, as this is an area that Fuji is typically known for.

Touch control is pretty straightforward, however, with swipes up, down, and to each side opening a different sub-menu, often with some additional control or options in the sub-screen. Touch is reasonably responsive. I feel like the average user will be able to get up to speed with the menu system fairly quickly, though I personally prefer more physical controls.

On top you’ll find a cold-shoe (not TTL flashing or similar) and the single main physical control – an exposure compensation wheel.

I would say that the control scheme definitely favors something like Aperture Priority (AE) mode, as Manual mode requires you to touch the shutter speed square on the LCD screen and then scroll in the pop up menu to get to your preferred shutter speed value. It’s pretty clunky. Aperture Priority, by contrast, allows you to use the Exposure Compensation dial along with the physical lever on the lens to change aperture. It allowed me to use the camera in the most conventional way possible. You can also the the Program (Auto) mode if you don’t want to think about the controls at all.

The shutter button is located in the center of the Exposure Compensation wheel. There is only a single shot option for the shutter; no burst rates are available.

At the rear of that wheel is an old-school lever that works in a few different ways. It will pop out when you turn the camera on. One application is for the “2-in-1” image feature, which allows you to combine two vertical images into a single 33MP diptych style frame.

This can be used for story-telling, friend shots, or other artistic styles. You can tweak the size and style of the frame in between the images in the settings. Both original images will be saved to the memory card along with the combined image.

The second application of the lever is in “Film Camera Mode”. You start by selecting a Film Simulation of your choice on the sub-LCD, then swipe down on the main screen to access the quick menu and select Film Camera mode. This mode emulates the old film camera process, starting with selecting how many images you want in your “roll” (36, 54, or 72). You can choose whether or not you want the date stamp on your images (another old school touch), and then you start the process. Once you enter the mode the LCD screen transforms into a retro digital display that shows number of photos taken on your “roll” along with a few other options (AF | MF, whether or not you want the date stamp, and a distance scale if you really want to go old school and just manually focus. The lever is now used to “advance your film”.

During this time your images will not show up for review on your LCD, and composition is only done through the analog viewfinder. You are also locked into this particular “film” for that roll (Reala ACE in our example). The roll must be “developed” by using the dedicated X-Half App available for iOS and Android. Alternately you can pair the X-Half with an Instax Link printer to just print images and have a truly non-digital experience.

Once the roll is finished you can wirelessly transfer it to the X-Half app for “development”. You can develop partial rolls as well, though that will end your ability to use that “roll” in camera. While in “Film” mode images won’t show up on your SD card, either. After development they will show up, however, along with a single image showing your “negatives”.

To me this is a gimmicky feature, but for those fully embracing a film type experience, this might feel like a blast to you.

The left side of the camera has a switch to turn the flash on or off, and under that a compartment housing the USB-C port, which is the only connection port on the camera. Charging can also be done through this port.

The bottom of the camera has the standard 1/4″ tripod mount along with a compartment that houses the battery and SD card. The battery is the NP-W126S and is rated up to 880 frames per charge in this application when using the OVF. You shouldn’t have to charge the X-Half very often!

The lens itself has a lever for accessing the aperture. The aperture range is from F2.8 to F11, with the ability to also select Automatic mode.

There is also a small manual focus ring on the front of the tiny lens. It moves nicely, though the optical viewfinder doesn’t give you any indication of focus at all. You’ll have to rely on the LCD screen in normal mode or the on-screen distance scale during film mode.

It takes a lot of rotations to move in close focus area, and focus speeds up in other zones. Unfortunately I didn’t find the distance scale very accurate. I was about about 3 meters away from this barn, for example, so I focused to that zone according to the screen. It isn’t accurate at all, and it looks like focus was more like 1.5 meters ahead of the camera.

The camera definitely has a retro charm to it, and the small size will certainly be a compelling selling point to potential buyers. The price will vary from market to market, but in the US it comes to market at a fairly steep $849 USD. The price here in Canada is basically $999, making it expensive but a relative value compared to the US price. This is a camera that is priced on desirability rather than performance, but people will probably buy it in droves.

Autofocus Performance for Stills

Autofocus performance is very basic for a modern camera. It has just 9 Contrast AF points, though it does have Eye Detection. You can select between AF-S, AF-C, and Manual focus.

Eye detect works okay but not great. I’ve definitely seen instances where focus locks on the background rather than an obvious subject even with a face in obvious view. Focus in general seems to prefer background focus to foreground focus.

Expect some hunting at times, and focus at its best is never fast. Low light shooting will definitely induce some hunting.

Autofocus during film simulation mode is tough because you literally have zero feedback other than a confirmation beep. It truly is a guessing game whether focus landed on the right subject or not. Part of the charm, I guess. For me, however, it meant that about 2/3rds of the roll I shot were throwaways because focus really, really didn’t want to land on foreground objects, and I had no idea that focus was missing.

You have a single box to work with on screen, and it doesn’t seem like you can move that around at all.

Focus, in my opinion, is pretty frustrating if you have any kind of expectation of getting consistently focused results. AF-S seemed to be more accurate than AF-C in my opinion.

Video Performance

Video specs are pretty basic. You record in either .MP4 or .MOV codecs at “Full HD” specs. This isn’t a convention resolution, however, at 1080 x 1440 pixels. Frame rate is largely at a 24FPS setting, though you can shoot a high speed option up to 48FPS. You can use film simulations and different picture effects.

Footage is pretty basic, as you might expect. This is not a high end sensor and this mode is designed for casual fun rather than serious video recording. It gets noisy very quickly if the lighting isn’t optimal. you can see that in the screenshot above.

Full video specs can be found here.

Sensor Performance

This is a small 1″ sensor with all the accompanying limitations of a small sensor. Resolution is 3648 x 4864, or 17.74MP. I’m not going to do a deep dive into the sensor, but rather give you my impressions.

First of all, this is a JPEG only camera. There is no RAW recording, so choosing the right film simulation really matters, as that is going to impact your image. Here’s the same scene taken with a few different film simulations.

At its best, detail looks decent.

There is far less latitude for processing JPEG images, and the sensor is not going to match the typical Fuji APS-C sensor for dynamic range or even ISO performance. Here’s a beach scene that arrived from the camera blown out because I didn’t realize that the the maximum shutter speed is only 1/2000 sec. I was able to reasonably recover the image, though there are still a few blown out hotspots remaining.

High ISO situations cause image quality to deteriorate quickly. There is color noise, a lot of detail, and images generally look a little rough. This shot is at ISO 12,800.

Fuji colors are typically very good, and that’s true here if you can shoot in optimal conditions.

I also really like Fuji’s Acros monochrome options, which have a great general look to them.

You can dial in a number of other looks as well, including light leaks, grain, halation, and more. Finding a combination you like will help you get the images in camera that you want.

The attached lens struggles with flare resistance. Contrast reduces and there are a few flare artifacts.

I was able to get some images that I liked out of the camera, but frankly image quality isn’t competing with my iPhone on a technical level. This is a vibes camera, period, and the people who will love it are those who aren’t looking for technical perfection anyway.

Conclusion

The Fujifilm X-Half is the kind of camera that I don’t think we would have seen released even five years ago. So much of the industry is focused on ever better specs, and while Fuji has done some of that themselves, it seems like the past few years have seen them focused on more lifestyle products that appeal to photographers (and non-photographers) more based on the joy of use and the style of the products rather than their technical advancement.

That’s not my cup of tea, necessarily, but I can’t argue with the success that Fuji has had with this approach. The X-Half is another Fuji camera that may appeal to those who don’t traditionally like cameras, or who even might think that their phone camera is too technically perfect. It’s definitely NOT a camera for pixel peepers, but might really appeal to those for whom photography is part of a lifestyle – the joy of the moment rather than the pursuit of perfection.

If that’s you, maybe the Fujifilm X-Half is just the camera you’ve been looking for.

Pros:

  • Very stylish
  • Extremely compact and lightweight
  • Touchscreen responsiveness is decent
  • Some innovative ideas at work
  • Delivers a fairly authentic film shooting simulation
  • Fuji’s film simulations are always great
  • Will probably have the “it” factor
  • Delivers a more comfortable way to shoot vertical images

Cons:

  • Small sensor isn’t particularly good
  • Autofocus is rough
  • No RAW
  • Optical viewfinder isn’t particularly useful
  • LCD can be hard to see in bright light
  • Lens prone to flare
  • Low light performance isn’t good

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Purchase the Fujifilm X-Half @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: Fujifilm, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, IBIS, Stabilization, Eye AF, XF, 40MP, 40 MP, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 26MP, 26 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA #letthelightin, #DA, #Fujifilm, #FujifilmX-Half, #RetroCamera, #VintageInspiredCamera, #CompactMirrorless, #VerticalPhotography, #FilmSimulationModes, #1InchSensor, #FixedLens, #Fujinon10.8mmF2.8, #LifestyleCamera, #StyleOverPerformance, #DigitalFilmCamera, #SmallLightweightCamera, #AutofocusLimitations, #NoRAWSupport, #PhotographyGadget, #JoyOfShooting, #NostalgicPhotography, #StylishCameraDesign, #UserFriendlyInterface, #CreativePhotography, #VisualStorytelling, #UniqueCameraConcept, #CameraReview, #PhotographyGear

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Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART Gallery

Dustin Abbott

June 17th, 2025

Sigma’s 18-35mm F1.8 that was released ten years ago became a cult favorite, particularly with the video crowd. Even full frame users often used it to help mitigate crop factors and because of the flexibility of having a zoom range AND a fast maximum aperture. Last year Sigma launched the 28-45mm F1.8 DG DN | ART lens, a lens I gave a fairly glowing review to because I felt it captured some of that “specialness” that is rare. That was a full frame lens, however, and as such was bigger, heavier, and more expensive than what APS-C shooters need. But Sigma is back with a true successor to the 16-35mm in the form of the 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART. This is the first of the APS-C lenses in the current mirrorless era that has received the ART identifier (excepting a few very early primes that were definitely not ART worthy back in 2012 and 2013 when mirrorless was still an experimental oddity!) Has Sigma managed to recreate the magic that made people love the 18-35mm F1.8 so much “back in the day”? Is this lens a bargain at $829 USD ($1249 CDN)? We’ll explore that question in either my video review and text reviews. Or, just enjoy the photos below.

Follow Me @ YouTube | Patreon |  Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500px | X

Thanks to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode of my Sony a7RV.

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Some of the key selling features of the 17-40 ART include:

  • Prime-like optical performance
  • Full range of video features
  • Custom (Fn) button
  • Aperture ring with declick and iris lock options
  • Internally zooming design
  • Thorough weather sealing.

This is a slight deviation of the original zoom range, going a little wider (17mm vs 18mm) and a little longer on the telephoto end (40mm vs 35mm).

The APS-C crop factor of either Sony E, Fuji X, or L-mount is 1.5x (Sony is tested here, but I suspect we’ll see this lens on all these and perhaps Canon RF as well), meaning that 17mm has an effective full frame focal length equivalent of 25.5mm, which looks like this:

Meanwhile the 40mm end has a full frame equivalency of 60mm, which looks like this:

*Canon’s RF-S has a crop factor of 1.6x, so the effective focal range shifts to 27.2-64mm.

The advantage of an APS-C specific lens is that Sigma could produce a bigger zoom range (25.5-60mm) than what we saw on the 28-45mm full frame lens from last year. That could obviously be very useful for a lot of reasons.

The 28-45mm was a very large lens – over 153mm in length and weighing 950g – which leads us to the second big advantage of developing for the smaller sensor – the 17-40 ART, which still large, is considerably smaller and lighter than its full frame big brother…and even the DSLR era lens that it is the spiritual successor to.

The idea of a lens like this is that it is a “bag of primes” of focal lengths and optical performance while retaining a maximum aperture that is competitive with many prime lenses. You’ve got 24mm (ish), 35mm, 50mm, and even a slightly more telephoto 60mm equivalency. That’s very useful. And, in what we’ve come to expect from Sigma, the 17-40 ART does really deliver optically, be it from a distance or close up.

This is a not a perfect lens (it has some fringing and isn’t parfocal), but it is a very, very sweet lens.

Build and Handling

Photos taken with the Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 ART

_________________________________________________________________________

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Keywords: Sigma 17-40mm, DC, ART, Sigma 17-40mm F1.8, Sigma 17-40, F1.8, Sigma 17-40 Review, #SIGMAEmount, #SIGMA #SIGMA1740mmF18Art, #SIGMAArt, #SIGMADC, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART Review

Dustin Abbott

June 17th, 2025

Sigma’s 18-35mm F1.8 that was released ten years ago became a cult favorite, particularly with the video crowd. Even full frame users often used it to help mitigate crop factors and because of the flexibility of having a zoom range AND a fast maximum aperture. Last year Sigma launched the 28-45mm F1.8 DG DN | ART lens, a lens I gave a fairly glowing review to because I felt it captured some of that “specialness” that is rare. That was a full frame lens, however, and as such was bigger, heavier, and more expensive than what APS-C shooters need. But Sigma is back with a true successor to the 16-35mm in the form of the 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART. This is the first of the APS-C lenses in the current mirrorless era that has received the ART identifier (excepting a few very early primes that were definitely not ART worthy back in 2012 and 2013 when mirrorless was still an experimental oddity!) Has Sigma managed to recreate the magic that made people love the 18-35mm F1.8 so much “back in the day”? Is this lens a bargain at $829 USD ($1249 CDN)? We’ll explore that question in either my video review below or in the text review that follows.

Follow Me @ YouTube | Patreon |  Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500px | X

Thanks to Sigma Canada (Gentec) for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode of my Sony a7RV.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________

AI SUMMARY: The Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART lens is a well-crafted update to the popular 18-35mm F1.8, tailored for APS-C mirrorless cameras, offering a broader zoom range and modern features. It delivers prime-like optical performance with excellent sharpness in the center and mid-frame, though it shows some softness and fringing at the edges, especially in full-frame mode. The lens boasts professional build quality with weather sealing, a smooth focus mechanism, and versatile video features, making it suitable for both photography and videography. Overall, it provides a compelling combination of optical excellence, enhanced functionality, and portability, despite some compromises in extreme corners and aberrations.

Strengths:

Weaknesses:

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This is a slight deviation of the original zoom range, going a little wider (17mm vs 18mm) and a little longer on the telephoto end (40mm vs 35mm).

The APS-C crop factor of either Sony E, Fuji X, or L-mount is 1.5x (Sony is tested here, but I suspect we’ll see this lens on all these and perhaps Canon RF as well), meaning that 17mm has an effective full frame focal length equivalent of 25.5mm, which looks like this:

Meanwhile the 40mm end has a full frame equivalency of 60mm, which looks like this:

*Canon’s RF-S has a crop factor of 1.6x, so the effective focal range shifts to 27.2-64mm.

The advantage of an APS-C specific lens is that Sigma could produce a bigger zoom range (25.5-60mm) than what we saw on the 28-45mm full frame lens from last year. That could obviously be very useful for a lot of reasons.

The 28-45mm was a very large lens – over 153mm in length and weighing 950g – which leads us to the second big advantage of developing for the smaller sensor – the 17-40 ART, which still large, is considerably smaller and lighter than its full frame big brother…and even the DSLR era lens that it is the spiritual successor to.

The idea of a lens like this is that it is a “bag of primes” of focal lengths and optical performance while retaining a maximum aperture that is competitive with many prime lenses. You’ve got 24mm (ish), 35mm, 50mm, and even a slightly more telephoto 60mm equivalency. That’s very useful. And, in what we’ve come to expect from Sigma, the 17-40 ART does really deliver optically, be it from a distance or close up.

This is a not a perfect lens (it has some fringing and isn’t parfocal), but it is a very, very sweet lens.

Build and Handling

Thus far in the modern Sigma mirrorless era (starting in 2018), we’ve seen a large divide between most of the full frame lenses (ART and Sport) and the APS-C lenses, which have almost exclusively fallen under the Contemporary brand. That has typically meant relatively few features, a cheaper build, and minimal weather sealing (typically just a gasket at the mount), but that’s all different here. This is an ART lens, and, as such, it looks, handles, and feels like many of the full frame lenses from Sigma in recent years. The 17-40 ART has basically all of the features currently available on modern lenses.

That starts with the aperture ring. The aperture ring works great, giving you precise control at 1/3rd stops when in clicked mode, and gliding smoothly through the whole aperture range when declicked.

I understand that the Canon RF version will have a control ring rather than a traditional aperture ring, though the Sony E-mount version I tested had the traditional aperture ring.

By the way, I think that Sigma’s new fonts and logos look great. Very modern and upscale, and it is nice to see that ART badge on this lens.

On the lower left side of the lens is the Click/Declick switch which allows you to choose between those two options.

In declicked mode I could do smooth aperture racks without any visible steps, making this lens more attractive to video shooters.

On the right side of the lens is the iris lock. The iris lock will allow you to either lock into or out of the aperture ring. For those that want to use the aperture ring and not inadvertently switch into camera based aperture control, the lock can be engaged while you are in the aperture ring and keep you there. If you’re not an aperture ring person you can switch the lens into the A position and control it from within the camera. Engaging the iris lock while in A assures that you won’t inadvertently bump into manual aperture control.

The left side of the lens also has an AF/MF switch (always appreciated!) and two custom (Fn) buttons (one of the left side, one on the top so that they are accessible in either portrait or vertical shooting modes). You can assign the function of that button from within the camera.

This is an internally zooming lens, so there is no need for a zoom lock. Internally zooming lenses tend to be larger than externally zooming lenses for obvious reasons, but there are a number of key tradeoffs for that extra size.

  • The lens length remains constant, making it easier to use on a gimbal (the weight balance doesn’t change)
  • There is no risk of zoom creep, as there is nothing external to be affected by gravity.
  • The zoom action is smoother and more precise
  • There is less risk of getting dust or moisture in the lens because nothing is going in and out.
  • The handling is better

I really think Sigma’s new fonts and logos have updated an already elegant design. This is a very classy looking lens, with glossier sections broken up by the ribbed textures of the rings. If you view from the back or sides, you’ll actually see an extra ribbed section in the middle that is purely aesthetic. It allows the glossier sections to be more uniform between the rings.3

The zoom ring is the closer of the two rings, with the manual focus ring further out. The manual focus ring is well executed, with wide ribbing and good damping. It makes for a good focus emulation, though as with all mirrorless autofocusing lenses this is focus by wire. Input to the focus ring is routed through the focus motor, and there are no hard stops at minimum focus or infinity.

This flows into the lens hood, which has a lock, a rubberized section for soft touch and a ribbed section for more grip when mounting or removing. Sigma’s lens hoods are nicer than just about any other brand. A padded nylon case is also included.

While I haven’t seen a cutout diagram of the weather sealing points, I do know that Sigma touts a professional grade of weather sealing on it. There is a gasket at the lens mount, a coating on the front element, and internal seals throughout the lens. Having internal zoom and focus doesn’t hurt, either.

The basic dimensions of the lens are 72.9mm (2.87″) in diameter and 115.9mm (4.56″) in length. It weighs in at 528g (18.62oz) on my scale and has an 67mm front filter thread. It’s not quite half the weight of the 28-45mm, but not far off. Sigma also notes that this lens is 30% lighter than the older 16-35mm F1.8.

The aperture iris has 11 blades, which helps keep the aperture iris shape circular even with the lens stopped down. That doesn’t automatically mean round specular highlights all across the frame, but rather than the aperture blades’ shape won’t be easily seen. Here’s a look at F2.8, for example.

The minimum focus distance of the lens is 28cm (11.1″), and the maximum magnification figure is achieved at 40mm and is a useful (nearly) 0.21x (1:4.8).

This combined with that F1.8 aperture allows for very nicely blurred backgrounds, and up close performance is quite good, though a little softer than if you back up another foot.

I love seeing a genuinely upscale APS-C zoom, a category that we’ve seen relatively few of. I can see this lens being a disrupter on all four platforms. I’d be very interested in seeing how it holds up on a 40MP Fuji sensor for example (an alternative to the 16-55mm F2.8 II?). How about on Canon RF, where there are relatively few premium APS-C lenses? There’s enough zoom range to be genuinely useful, and having a constant maximum aperture of F1.8 is genuinely intriguing.

Autofocus for Stills

This is another area where Sigma has made some key strides. Their initial offerings on Sony (and L-mount) featured STM focus motors, but Sigma has since released their more powerful, smoother HLA focus motor (High speed Linear Actuator). The HLA motor has much more torque/thrust than lenses equipped with the stepping motor, and I’ve found every lens equipped with the HLA motor to have excellent autofocus thus far.

The quick thrust of speed makes it effortless to stop action or snap shots on the fly. For example, one of my golfing buddies was walking through some dappled light up a trail between holes, but my camera was in a bag attached to my golf pull cart. I grabbed the camera quickly and snapped up to grab the shot before he walked out of the light.

Just in time!

The 18-35mm F1.8 actually didn’t have great AF back in the day (particularly for focus accuracy), but the 17-40 ART has fantastic accuracy.

Focus sound is basically nonexistent. The HLA motor is essentially silent even if I put my ear next to the lens. It is quiet enough that I literally looked up at the screen to make sure the lens was actually focusing. Focus speed is near instantaneous in most shooting situations, whether indoor or out.

Focus accuracy is good, too. I don’t really recall any shots during my review having been missed due to poor focus, and that was true even when I shot with smaller apertures.

Video AF

I also saw mostly good results for video work. Autofocus pulls were very fast and confident. No hunting or settling. Focus is fast and smooth, with nice damping. You can always slow it down in camera if you want a slower, more cinematic pull. Focus breathing seems well controlled, with only minimal subject size changes.

I had hoped that this lens would be parfocal, as back in the day the 18-35mm seemed to be everyone’s favorite video lens. Unfortunately that doesn’t appear to be in the case. If I focused at 17mm (F5.6) and then zoomed in to 40mm the focus has clearly shifted and focus is no longer accurate.

Faster autofocus from the HLA focus motor can help to mask that a bit, but there will be moments when everything is just slightly out of focus if you zoom while video recording.

My hand test where I alternately blocked the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went quite well, with nice damped transitions from my eye to the hand and back. The low focus breathing helps make this feel more cinematic.

I also found that in real world shots that focus changes tended to be more abrupt than what I would prefer. There’s a lot of thrust in this focus motor, but it probably would have been better to detune it a bit in video mode…particularly in a lens that will probably be highly desired for video work.

I found the 17-40 ART to be a great lens for filming my YouTube video episodes, as focus was rock solid during those episodes and the great zoom range allowed me some flexibility on framing.

Sigma’s HLA focus motors are great, though they are slightly limited on Sony by the fact that Sony limits bursts to 15FPS with third party lenses, so this one area where the 17-40 ART is less competitive on Sony. No such restriction applies on the other platforms, however.

Image Quality Breakdown

This remains a huge engineering feat, as Sigma has managed to broaden the zoom range from what was previously possible with a maximum aperture of F1.8. And, as per usual, they’ve done it in a fairly impressive fashion. The optical formula is is expectedly complex (17 elements in 11 groups), and that includes 4 SLD elements along with 4 aspherical elements. The MTF at 17mm is interesting; nearly flat through the midframe (and at an extremely high level) but with a surprisingly deep dive from there to the extreme corners. The 40mm MTF is a more typical “Sigma” look, with a fairly consistent performance all across the frame.

How does this compare to the older 18-35mm F1.8 lens? Sigma was kind enough to share.

Interestingly the two lenses have a fairly similar profile, though the new lens is just a little better everywhere.

I felt like the 28-45 DN had the “special sauce” where the colors, contrast, sharpness, and bokeh come together to produce a lens that makes very special images. I feel like the 17-40 ART isn’t quite as special, though that is mostly due to the difference in the sensors. APS-C just doesn’t produce the same kinds of shots at F1.8. At its best, though, this lens can produce pretty special images.

So how about full frame coverage? There’s no secret FF lens hidden here. Coverage is (expectedly) lowest at 17mm.

Coverage is somewhat better at 40mm, but there’s still some mechanical vignette that blocks the edges. Now obviously you can shoot in Super35 on a full frame camera, and a lens like this can be a good way to help mitigate a crop factor, but don’t plan on shooting the lens in full frame mode (particularly for stills).

The 28-45mm had next to no fringing, but that’s not true here. I was surprised by how much fringing I saw in the viewfinder when I shot my chart test.

When I moved over to my real world SLR test, I found the same picture with some fairly obvious blue fringing on shiny bits.

I also saw zero issues with LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations), which shows up along the edges of the frame. All of the transitions here are very neutral.

Sigma went a little wider, and unsurprisingly that means a fair bit of distortion.

There is strong barrel distortion that required a +22 to correct. The good news is that the distortion is very linear, allowing for a very clean correction without any mustache pattern. I consider that alone a win. Vignette isn’t bad at all, requiring just a +38 to correct.

In the middle of the zoom range (28mm) the distortion has swapped to a pincushion style distortion, though fortunately it corrects in a linear fashion once again.

I needed to use a -6 to correct the distortion and a very mild +29 to correct about a stop of vignette. No big deal.

Unsurprisingly the pincushion distortion intensifies at the 40mm end, requiring a bit more correction (-11) but still correcting easily. Vignette remains impressively low, requiring just a +23 to correct.

I don’t love the longitudinal fringing, but nothing else stands out as being particularly off-putting.

So how about resolution and contrast? My formal tests are done on the APS-C mode of the 61MP Sony a7RV, which, at 26MP, matches the highest resolution currently available for APS-C on Sony. Fuji’s 40MP sensor will be a little more demanding.

The MTF suggests that this is a very sharp lens in the center and mid-frame areas at 17mm, F1.8, with a fairly steep drop-off in the corners. Is that what we see? Here’s a look at the test chart from which the crops come.

My findings are pretty consistent with what the MTF suggests, with a very crisp center and mid-frame, but definitely less sharpness in the corners (though contrast still looks pretty good). These crops are shown at 200%.

Real world shots follow a similar pattern, looking extremely good in the center and mid-frame, but noticeably softer near the edges.

Contrast creeps up a bit at F2, though it largely reinforces where the lens is already good. There’s a bit of improvement at F2.8 in the corners (where it is really needed), but corners never really get pin sharp. By F5.6 they are pretty good, but not on the level of the other areas of the frame.

Here’s a real world image at 17mm, F5.6 that shows amazing detail in the middle and good detail near the edge of the frame.

As per usual, sharpness peaks at F5.6-F8, and at F11 and then F16 (minimum aperture), you will get a bit less detail and contrast due to diffraction.

Moving on to 24mm shows a performance fairly consistent with what we saw at 17mm, though I think the corners show a bit more potential for sharpening. Here’s the center at F1.8 and F2.8:

And here is the upper left corner, which is still soft right at the edge, but you can see at F2.8 it’s looking quite sharp by the middle of the bill.

That last few percentage points never gets pin sharp, but I doubt that will matter much in the real world. This 24mm shot looks fantastic everywhere but that extreme corner, and I doubt anyone is going to be looking critically at that.

35mm seems to be very slightly less sharp than either of the previous positions, at least in the center and mid-frame.

Remember that this is relative, however. This is still a very sharp lens in real world shots at 35mm, F1.8.

This image looks nice and sharp, and has nice looking bokeh.

This second image at 35mm, F2.2, shows good detail and contrast along with a nicely soft background.

40mm looks fairly similar, with good sharpness and contrast which improves when stopped down a bit.

The corners look fairly good, though not exceptional. I would say that far corner sharpness is generally not a strength of this lens.

I found that I was generally very pleased with real world shots at 40mm.

I felt like global contrast even at 40mm, F1.8, looks great.

Shooting at 45mm is also going to give you the most dramatic combination of sharpness and bokeh. This is a lens capable of a very nice ratio between sharpness and softness.

In general I think the bokeh is very nice. There’s a very nice falloff from the plane of focus to defocus, and images have a nice pop to them. This image shows a nice dimensional quality.

Get close to your subject and you can really blur out the background, though up close contrast and detail isn’t fantastic.

Flare resistance also seems very solid. This morning shot has the sun right out of frame, and you can see that contrast has held up well.

In this shot the sun is right out of the frame but you can see there is no glaring into the frame.

There’s a lot to love here optically. It’s not flawless, but it consistently produced images I thought had a great “sparkle” to them.

Sigma has proven to be very successful at pushing the boundary of what’s possible at a particular aperture/focal length. Their engineering remains impressive. If you want to see more images, check out the image gallery for the lens here.

Conclusion

Sigma has done a brilliant job of updating a cult classic for the mirrorless era. The Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 DC | ART is improved in basically every fact over the 18-35mm F1.8 that I reviewed on Canon EF more than a decade ago. It’s smaller, lighter, has a bigger zoom range, has more features, better autofocus, and better optics. Not much to complain about there.

It’s ironic that this demonstrably better lens will very likely be somewhat less of a commercial success (though I’d love to be proven wrong). The market has shrunk and there are vastly more quality options available for different platforms these days. Sigma has shrunk the lens dramatically, and yet there will still be some who complain that it is too big. They’ve grown the zoom range, but invariably I’ll hear complaints that it doesn’t go to 16mm, or to 50mm. In an era where we are spoiled for choice, people tend to be a little less easily wowed than what they once were.

But if you stop and appreciate this lens, you’ll recognize that, while imperfect, this is a completely unique lens that is going to make a lot of sense for a lot of people. It has a big enough zoom range to be useful, and having that F1.8 aperture does dramatically change the look of images relative to a more pedestrian F2.8 aperture (which is 1 1/3rd stop slower). It will allow you to keep the ISO down, and if you happen to be an APS-C wedding or event shooter, the 17-40 ART needs to immediately go on your short list. It really is like having a bag of primes in one lens. And, at a price tag of $829 USD, this is a lot of lens for the money.

Pros:

  • Improved over the 18-35mm F1.8 in every way
  • Extremely useful zoom range
  • Beautifully made
  • Feature rich
  • Internal zoom and focus makes for great handling
  • Thorough weather sealing
  • Ability to declick aperture
  • HLA focus motor is extremely quiet and has a lot of thrust
  • Aperture racking works well
  • Excellent focus accuracy
  • Very low vignette throughout
  • Extremely sharp lens
  • Beautiful bokeh
  • Good flare resistance

Cons:

  • Not parfocal
  • More fringing than what I would like
  • Strong barrel distortion at 17mm
  • Extreme corners are rarely pin sharp

_________________________________________________________________________

GEAR USED:

Purchase the Sigma 17-40mm F1.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Sigma 28-45mm F1.8 ART @ B&H Photo | Nuzira | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

___________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a7RV @ B&H Photo | AdoramaAmazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

__________________________________________________________________

Purchase the Sony a7IV @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Sony Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany 

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Purchase the Sony Alpha 1 @ Camera Canada | B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Sony Canada | Amazon CanadaAmazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay 

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Keywords: Sigma 17-40mm, DC, ART, Sigma 17-40mm F1.8, Sigma 17-40, F1.8, Sigma 17-40 Review, #SIGMAEmount, #SIGMA #SIGMA1740mmF18Art, #SIGMAArt, #SIGMADC, Full Frame, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA, #Sigma17-40mmF1.8, #APSCLensReview, #ProfessionalZoomLens, #SigmaMirrorlessLens, #OpticalPerformance, #SigmaARTLens, #VideoAutofocus, #WeatherSealedLens, #Sigma17-40mmVs1835mm, #SonyFujiCanonLens, #CameraGearReview, #FlagshipAPSCLens, #ImageQuality, #BestAPSCLens, #SigmaPerformance

DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.