We’ve known that Viltrox’s LAB series was coming for about two years, and I, for one, was very excited for the series. Viltrox has proved to be capable of doing very serious optical engineering, and, put simply, the LAB series was proposed as being Viltrox’s “G Master”, “L Series”, or “S-Line” equivalent lineup of premium lenses. Of those, the LAB lenses are probably most like Nikon’s S-Line lenses where the engineers have clearly been told not to worry about size, weight, or cost, and just deliver the best optics at that particular focal length possible. The LAB lenses may not be expensive (they are actually tremendous value!), but they are among the largest and heaviest lenses in their class, and are definitely optically superior. I was very impressed by the optics of the first LAB lens – the AF 135mm F1.8 LAB FE – that I reviewed here. It was optically amazing (besting great lenses like the Sony 135mm F1.8 GM and the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8), had great autofocus, and struck an amazing balance between sharpness and rendering. But I also knew that Viltrox had a trio of F1.2 LAB lenses on their roadmap, including 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm F1.2 options, and I was very excited about those as Sony has relatively few high end F1.2 options available. The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB is here, and it is another landmark lens. And, at a price tag of $999 USD, it is a pretty huge value (and if you use code DA3512LAB5 at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 5% off!). Find out more in either the video review, the text review, or just check out the photos in the gallery.
Thanks to Viltrox 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 35mm F1.2 LAB FE here.
I love 35mm lenses. I love the focal length for general purpose shooting, and, more importantly for this particular application, for environmental portraiture. The advantage of a wider focal length is the ability to add context to a shot. To include the room, or the setting, or the environment along with the subject. But the downside is that the depth of field increases, and you often lose the ability of really isolating your subject from the background. A 35mm F1.2 lens restores that ability, however. At a distance of the 3 meters (close to ten feet), a 35mm F1.2 lens has a depth of field of about 50cm (20 inches). With an F2 aperture, that depth of field nearly doubles, at F2.8, it nearly triples. In other words, a fast maximum aperture is very necessary to create a shallow depth of field with a wider focal length. By contrast, an 85mm F2.8 lens has a depth of 21cm. You could stop down to F6.7 and still have the same depth of field at that distance as a 35mm lens at F1.2. For portraiture I might argue that a fast maximum aperture is more important on a wide angle lens than it is on a telephoto. Bottom line is that you couldn’t get shots like this on a slower 35mm lens:
And, despite being at F1.2, you can see from the deep crop that the image is sharp and crisp on the subject (despite the intense backlighting), and there is a nice separation of the subject from the background.
Nice, indeed. There are going to be a lot of people interested in this 35mm LAB on both Sony and eventually Nikon when it arrives there. Check out the photos from this lovely lens below.
Keywords: Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB FE, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB35, #explorebeyond, Viltrox 35mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.2, f/1.2, Hyper VCM, Viltrox LAB 35mm F1.2 FE, Viltrox LAB 35mm Review, Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 FE Review, 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
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We’ve known that Viltrox’s LAB series was coming for about two years, and I, for one, was very excited for the series. Viltrox has proved to be capable of doing very serious optical engineering, and, put simply, the LAB series was proposed as being Viltrox’s “G Master”, “L Series”, or “S-Line” equivalent lineup of premium lenses. Of those, the LAB lenses are probably most like Nikon’s S-Line lenses where the engineers have clearly been told not to worry about size, weight, or cost, and just deliver the best optics at that particular focal length possible. The LAB lenses may not be expensive (they are actually tremendous value!), but they are among the largest and heaviest lenses in their class, and are definitely optically superior. I was very impressed by the optics of the first LAB lens – the AF 135mm F1.8 LAB FE – that I reviewed here. It was optically amazing (besting great lenses like the Sony 135mm F1.8 GM and the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8), had great autofocus, and struck an amazing balance between sharpness and rendering. But I also knew that Viltrox had a trio of F1.2 LAB lenses on their roadmap, including 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm F1.2 options, and I was very excited about those as Sony has relatively few high end F1.2 options available. The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB is here, and it is another landmark lens. And, at a price tag of $999 USD, it is a pretty huge value (and if you use code DA3512LAB5 at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 5% off!). Find out more in either the video review below or by reading on in the text review.
Thanks to Viltrox 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 35mm F1.2 LAB FE here.
Sigma was actually the first to bring an F1.2 autofocusing lens to the Sony FE platform back in 2019. I reviewed that lens here. It was optically impressive (extremely sharp!), but was also very large and quite expensive. It weighed a whopping 1090g (2.4lbs) and cost about $1500 USD. A lot of its thunder was stolen when Sony released their FE 35mm F1.4 GM lens (my review here) in 2021. It was (and is) an amazing lens, and while it isn’t quite as bright (F1.4 vs F1.2), it is amazingly compact, weighing only 525g. It was the 35mm lens that I added to my own kit, and I’ve not regretted that decision. The 35mm LAB is more like the Sigma than the GM in size, however, though fortunately they have managed to trim the size a bit. The 35mm LAB weighs 920g (-170g vs the Sigma) and is about 15mm shorter. Still a big lens, but it will have a couple of sales advantages vs the Sigma. One is the fact that it is smaller and lighter, but also the Sigma actually ended up being MORE expensive than the premium Sony lens (since Sony doesn’t have a 35mm F1.2 GM lens), whereas the LAB lens will be significantly cheaper. And, unlike Nikon’s new 35mm F1.2 S Line lens, the LAB 35 is actually significantly smaller than the LAB 135mm!
I love 35mm lenses. I love the focal length for general purpose shooting, and, more importantly for this particular application, for environmental portraiture. The advantage of a wider focal length is the ability to add context to a shot. To include the room, or the setting, or the environment along with the subject. But the downside is that the depth of field increases, and you often lose the ability of really isolating your subject from the background. A 35mm F1.2 lens restores that ability, however. At a distance of the 3 meters (close to ten feet), a 35mm F1.2 lens has a depth of field of about 50cm (20 inches). With an F2 aperture, that depth of field nearly doubles, at F2.8, it nearly triples. In other words, a fast maximum aperture is very necessary to create a shallow depth of field with a wider focal length. By contrast, an 85mm F2.8 lens has a depth of 21cm. You could stop down to F6.7 and still have the same depth of field at that distance as a 35mm lens at F1.2. For portraiture I might argue that a fast maximum aperture is more important on a wide angle lens than it is on a telephoto. Bottom line is that you couldn’t get shots like this on a slower 35mm lens:
And, despite being at F1.2, you can see from the deep crop that the image is sharp and crisp on the subject (despite the intense backlighting), and there is a nice separation of the subject from the background.
Nice, indeed. There are going to be a lot of people interested in this 35mm LAB on both Sony and eventually Nikon when it arrives there. Let’s dive a little deeper into the build…
Viltrox LAB 35mm Build and Handling
As noted, this time Viltrox has the advantage that the 35mm LAB isn’t the largest and heaviest lens in the class…but that doesn’t mean it is small or light. It is 89.2mm (3.5″) in diameter and 121.8mm (4.79″) in length. It has a common 77mm front filter thread up front and weighs in at 920g (32.45 oz). It has a great aspect when viewed from the front.
The compact size of the 35mm F1.4 GM while still being high performing is going to continue to be one of the most compelling arguments for the Sony lens (particularly for those who feel that F1.4 is bright enough for them). It is only 96mm in length (-25mm) and weighs just 524g (-396g!) However, a more apples to apples comparison might be the new NIKKOR Z 35mm f/1.2 S, which is 150mm in length (+29mm – wow!) and weighs 1060g (+140g). It also costs $2800! So there is at least one lens that will make the 35mm LAB feel at least a bit svelte…though it isn’t the compact little Sony below.
Viltrox has demonstrated that they are capable of producing small, lightweight lenses with good optics, but that’s not the point of the LAB series. I feel like they are probably most similar to those Nikon S-Line F1.2 lenses, which eschew trying to keep the lenses small and light (and optically compromising to achieve that) and instead focus on just making as good of optical instruments as they can. The downside of this philosophy is that it results in some beefy lenses.
Viltrox has persisted in a few of their LAB design cues from the LAB 135mm, and I don’t love all of them. The most notable of those is the approach to aperture control.
Some of Viltrox’s other lenses have (and will have) a more traditional approach to aperture similar to either Sony’s GM series or Sigma’s better DN prime lenses. This is a marked aperture ring that can either be clicked or declicked. For some reason Viltrox left that tried and true approach for a new approach more dependent on the LCD screen. The first ring on the lens is for aperture, but it is an unmarked ring that relies on the LCD screen to show you the selected aperture.
That being said, I’ve recently spent time with the Nikon Z-mount version of the LAB 135mm, and then also Nikon’s own 135mm 1.8 S Plena. I realized that my perceptions of Viltrox’s design strategies with the LAB series were being influenced by first reviewing these lenses on FE. Some of the design philosophy around the “aperture ring” makes more sense on Z-mount, as the standard there is that the customizable control ring can be used for aperture but can also be used to control other things, like exposure compensation, ISO, etc… On Sony we don’t have the options to change the function of the control ring, so it has to function like an aperture ring, so on Sony (at least), I would prefer a more traditional aperture ring.
You still have the option to have the ring either clicked or declicked, but in the clicked mode it has clicks at every 1/9th aperture stop rather than the typical one third aperture stops. I assume the logic is to provide more precision, but frankly it is wasted when A) Sony cameras only register one third stops and B) the LCD screen shows only one third stops between the full stops like F2 and F2.8. In real life it just feels like too many clicks, and I don’t enjoy it. It also makes the amount of rotation needed to go from F1.2 to F16 just too long. A more traditional aperture control setup would have been preferable all around. You can still rotate all the way to the left and move into automatic mode, and I suspect some people will probably prefer to just control aperture from within the camera. You do have the option to turn the clicks off as well via a switch on the left side of the barrel.
In theory, when you turn the clicks off you can smoothly move through the whole aperture range without defined stops. This (in theory) allows for smooth video aperture racking and has become an expected pro-grade feature on modern lenses. I find two problems with this on the 35mm LAB. The first is that the weight is still a little heavy on the aperture ring even when it is declicked (clicks are very definite in clicked mode). This makes moving smoothly (and slowly) when racking through the aperture (to allow the exposure to change in a non-obvious way) challenging. The second issue is that even when declicked, the aperture does not move in a completely linear fashion. I can still see a bit of visible steps when racking. The best lenses do a pretty good job of simulating a true manual aperture ring, but the 35mm LAB falls a bit short of that lofty goal. It’s far from the worse that I’ve seen, but also far from the best.
The iris itself has 11 aperture blades, and these make for a reasonably well rounded aperture iris when stopped down. It’s not until fairly small (F4-5.6) that I start to see the shape of the blades.
Now to that LCD screen. The LCD functions in many ways like those found on the Zeiss Batis lenses, though with some improvements. The screen itself is nice and bright, allowing for good visibility even in bright conditions. It solves the problem of a distance scale (something missing on most mirrorless lenses), as it gives you a large font telling you the precise focus distance along with a distance scale above that. The bottom part of the screen gives you a readout of the current aperture. It also gives you some information related to the function buttons however, with the Fn icon lighting up when the first Function Button is depressed, and then the A or B function lights up when you are presetting focus distances.
I’ve even noticed that this time they are showing you a depth of field scale if you are in manual focus mode that increases as you change the aperture by extending a yellow bar along the distance scale.
There’s actually a lot of useful information on the LCD screen once you get familiar with how it is all being displayed, though I’m sure a lot of people will still find it somewhat of a gimmick.
On the left side of the screen you will find an AF | MF switch along with two FN (function) buttons. The top one functions like the typical function button, performing whatever function you have that button programmed to in camera. The second button works by default as the main control for A-B focus. When in manual focus mode you can preset the focus position(s) by long pressing the FN 2 button, and then access the focus changes by short pressing it. You also have the ability to change the function of both function buttons through the Viltrox app.
Viltrox continues with a trend that other lens makers are now imitating by including 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 doing firmware updates through the camera. This allows Viltrox to future proof their lenses and continue to improve them through firmware. You also have the option to connect to the Viltrox app for IOS or Android via Bluetooth where you can also update firmware wirelessly…or even make a direct correction via USB-C from your phone to the lens. In the app you can go beyond firmware updates to tweaking the behavior of the custom buttons.
You can even customize the splash screen on the LCD at power-up to show your name or logo.
The one thing I wish was there but isn’t (at least yet) is some control over the function of the manual focus ring. I’d like to be able to choose between linear/non-linear focus and the amount of focus throw rotation similar to what Tamron allows on some of their lenses. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Viltrox get there; they are pretty ambitious.
The manual focus ring is slightly raised and has a rubberized, ribbed texture. It moves smoothly and with nice damping. It isn’t linear, so the amount of focus covered will depend on the speed in which you rotate the ring. I found the focus throw to be a little long when trying to do smooth pull for video…at least at close distances. It needed more rotation than I could do with a single wrist rotation. Using the A/B focus is a much more precise way to set up repeatable focus pulls.
We also have weather sealing on this lens that starts with a unique maroon-colored gasket at the lens mount along with other seal points through the lens (a total of 12 of them, by my count).
This is an internally focusing lens, so there is nothing that moves where dust might intrude. There’s also an HD-Nano multilayer coating on the front element to help with water and fingerprint resistance, making the front element easier to clean. This is a professional grade lens with professional sealing. As always, however, “moisture-proof” does not mean “water-proof”, so don’t go crazy!
There is no lens based stabilization, so you will need to rely upon the in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped. Handholding a 35mm F1.2 lens is rarely difficult.
Like the 135mm LAB (and the upcoming 85mm F1.4 Pro), the 35mm LAB employs floating elements. You might notice that when the lens is powered off, there will be some movement/clunking if you rotate the lens up and down. This can be very disturbing if you are not familiar with modern lens design. Many high end modern lenses employ floating elements that allow for better up close performance. The lens groups are not fixed, but float in a certain area, so when they are not energized they will move around a bit. This is by design, however, and when the camera is powered on, those elements will be energized and become fixed. You can rotate the lens up and down without anything moving around. This allows for superior up close performance. You can focus as closely as 34cm, giving a maximum magnification figure of 0.17x.
That’s a useful but not exceptional figure. The Sony GM can focus closer (25cm) and gives a 0.26x magnification level. The Nikkor 35mm F1.2 S can focus as closely as 30cm and gives a 0.20x magnification. But what the LAB does extremely well is give you amazing up close performance even at F1.2. Look at how exceptional that detail is in the crop.
The lens also comes with a nicer-than-usual leather pouch (similar to Canon L-series lenses). There is some cushion on the bottom, but I don’t find these pouches nearly as useful as a good padded nylon case like what Sigma provides.
The LAB 35mm includes a lens hood that isn’t quite as premium feeling as the one on the 135mm, but it still feels like good quality. The plastics are thick and it has internal ribs. It doesn’t have a lock, but it does bayonet into place firmly and with a definite “click”.
The lens is constructed with a aviation-grade magnesium-aluminum alloy, making it extremely tough. The finish of the lens feels every bit of premium as the more expensive Sony GM lens, and the LAB badges manages to fall in the same spot and be the same color as the “G” badge on the Sony lens…though I’m sure that’s a coincidence (wink, wink).
As with the 135mm LAB, the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB E is a premium lens with a robust set of features. I don’t necessarily agree with all the design decisions, but it is a very, very nice lens. It’s also pretty big and heavy, so that will be a serious factor for some.
Autofocus and Video
Like the LAB 135mm, the LAB 35mm utilizes four(!!!) of Viltrox’s new “Hyper VCM” (Voice Coil Motor) motors working in tandem to drive autofocus. Viltrox states, “Its double floating magnetic suspension system ensures precision focusing, whether you’re tracking a fast-moving subject or shooting videos.” Focus is extremely quiet and fast. I had no problem keeping up with fast squash action on the court…even at F1.2.
Grabbing quick, reactive shots at F1.2 was very easy to execute.
Focus on thin objects with shallow depth of field was effortless, and the lens yielded excellent precision.
Focus sound is near silent, with a very light whirring sound as focus moves back and forth that I can only hear if I put my ear right next to the lens barrel.
I was very impressed when testing for focus speed. It is essentially instant when moving from a foreground to a background subject. I tested with the Sony GM back to back, and actually felt like the Viltrox had a split second advantage. Both are extremely fast, so it feels a bit like splitting hairs, but that helps put the Viltrox’s performance in context.
As mentioned in the intro, I was able to get accurate focus on the eye even when shooting portraits with strong backlighting.
I had no problems nailing focus at F1.2 during a teaching session at a church.
You can also see great precision in this shot of a horse. The lashes were covering the iris, but the precision and detail (at F1.2) is great.
I had no problem snapping focus to a bird on the wing.
If we look at a crop where I’ve raised exposure, you can see that the shot is perfectly focused.
And, of course, here is the obligatory shot of Nala.
This is definitely in the upper tier of autofocus performance for third party lenses. It’s amazing how far Viltrox has come in just a few short years.
I will add one caveat, however. While the Viltrox is fast enough to keep up with a quick moving action, burst speed is limited by Sony to 15FPS. If you are using one of their sports bodies, like my Alpha 1, that means that you can only achieve half the maximum burst rate that you can with a native Sony lens. That difference will be even more pronounced on a camera like the a9III. One of the nice things about the LAB lenses on Nikon is that no such limitation exists.
Video AF
The focus excellence carries over the video side of things. Video focus pulls are smooth, quick, and confident. The advantage of not having a STM (stepping motor) is that there are no visible steps, allowing focus to move consistently and smoothly from one subject to another without any visible pauses. There is some focus breathing, but it is fairly well controlled, with only a slight change of subject size depending on focus (I’ve put some lines here so that you can see the amount of size change).
The Sony 35mm F1.4 GM has a bit of a reputation for breathing quite badly, and you can definitely see that the GM has more obvious breathing…however…Sony has a focus breathing compensation correction on their cameras that utilizes a crop to mathematically eliminate focus breathing. It only works for first party Sony lenses, however, and it’s a pretty significant crop for the 35GM because there is so much breathing.
So, the Viltrox has less breathing, but that breathing will not be corrected in Sony cameras, either.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went exceptionally well. Focus confidently moved from my hand to my eye and back without any pulsing or lack of confidence. The focus breathing means that you will see the pull from my hand to my face, however.
Focus stayed stable in static shots at various apertures and didn’t pulse or move around.
I would say that autofocus for both stills and video is generally excellent. Viltrox’s new Hyper VCM focus motors are pretty great.
Image Quality Breakdown
The 35mm LAB continues in the tradition of being, well, exceptional. The optical design is 15 elements in 10 groups, with five of those being ED (low dispersion) elements, three of them being HD (high refractive index) lenses, and two being extreme aspherical lens (so two-thirds of the elements here are exotics). The MTF at F1.2 looks very good, with an absolutely stunning center and midframe performance and then a fade into the corners. At F8 the MTF is pretty much a straight line across the top, i.e. perfect.
Not everyone understands MTF charts, so I won’t do a deep dive into them here, but what I do find helps people visually is if I line up the MTF charts from alternatives, put a line through 80% (anything above that is looking great), and allow people to see what falls above and below that threshold for each lens. In this case, I’ve grabbed the premium Sony FE 35mm F1.4 and the new and exceptionally expensive Nikkor Z 35mm F1.2 S. The results are illuminating.
By this metric, the LAB lens will have the sharpest center and midframe with only the GM having sharper corners. I haven’t yet tested the Nikkor, but, on paper, the LAB will be the sharper lens essentially across the frame.
And yes, in the real world, this is a lens perfectly capable of producing stunning results even at F1.2:
Look the precision in the fine details after an ice storm. The contrast is pretty much perfect…even at F1.2.
More on this in a moment. Let’s look at the technical side of things.
I was expecting a lens well corrected for LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations), and that is the case here. I see mostly neutral results on either side of the plane of focus without any fringing.
I don’t really see any fringing in this shot of water droplets…one that I’ve often found plays havoc on lenses with lesser control.
I did find a bit of fringing at F1.2 when shooting a camera/lens combo, which is my favorite subject for finding fringing (and I like taking pictures of cameras!) The amount of LoCA here is mild, but visible.
We’ve also got near-perfect corrections for LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) that typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. I see only the tiniest amount of fringing here.
I see no evidence of fringing in the transition areas near the edges of real world images, either.
I have seen some VERY unfortunate results in the past year when it comes to fast 35mm lenses and their quantity of vignette and distortion (hello Canon 35mm F1.4L VCM!). There’s much less of that here, though not the perfect levels we saw with the 135mm LAB.
There is a very minor amount of distortion, though unfortunately what’s there is complex. It is neither a true barrel or pincushion distortion, but a non-linear mix of the two. You can see that the corners have a pincushion look while the center is pretty neutral. Trying to correct the pincushion distortion creates barrel distortion elsewhere. I found that dialing in a minimal -2 was the best compromise I could achieve. When the actual correction profile arrives it will certainly do a better job. At the moment there is no correction for JPEGs, either, which will almost certainly change down the road. Fortunately the quantity of distortion is low enough that I couldn’t see it in real world shots.
This horizon looks pretty straight even without any corrections.
However, in this shot, with the horizon right up near the top of the frame, you can see a bit of that “mustache” pattern.
You would probably want to correct that…which will be much easier once this lens has gone to retail and we get RAW correction profiles for Adobe and other editing software. I did find that doing a miniscule -1 in Lightroom’s distortion slider did help enough that I wouldn’t probably notice after correction.
Vignette is moderately heavy at F1.2, requiring a +70 (between 2 and 3 stops). A lot of that clears naturally by F2.8, as you can see here.
At wide apertures, this is often a visible amount of vignette but not necessarily a negative amount. In this portrait shot (uncorrected) you can see that there really isn’t any destructive about the vignette even at F1.2.
There are going to be situations where a bit of vignette is flattering or productive. Bottom line is that while the 35mm LAB has a bit of distortion and a moderate amount of vignette, neither is extreme.
We’ll move on to inspecting our test chart. This test has been done on a 61MP Sony a7RV sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. *I ran into an issue that I sometimes encounter with third party lenses in that metering for my test chart didn’t work properly at smaller aperture if the aperture was declicked. I would get overexposed results at F11 and F16. This isn’t the case when testing with the aperture clicked. Firmware should be able to fix this issue.
Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine at high magnification:
If we take a look at crops (at 200%) at F1.2 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center and mid-frame performance is exceptionally good, and the corners are good but a bit softer.
So let’s put that in perspective. The premium lens in the class is the Sony 35mm F1.4 GM, which I have owned for years and consider to be exceptionally good. The LAB 35mm is sharper everywhere save in the corners, where the GM has a bit of the edge (as the MTF chart suggested).
But that was with both lenses wide open. If I stop the LAB down to F1.4 and sample the upper left corner, I would give the win to the LAB with both lenses at F1.4.
So this is definitely a very sharp lens at F1.2. I didn’t hesitate to shoot with it wide open at all.
Even landscape images at F1.2 look great:
By F2 the sharpness has increased to the level where my a7RV is struggling with moiré (false color). That only tends to happen when lenses are very, very sharp.
Even the corners are now extremely sharp.
Landscape images shot anywhere between F2 and F8 will look fantastic. Here’s one shot from a car window at F2.8:
This shot of a pier at F2.8 looks great everywhere that is in focus.
If I check back in with a comparison at F2.8 with the GM, I find that while both lenses are ridiculously sharp, the LAB is just a bit sharper everywhere. Take a look at the smaller text in this comparison.
Also interesting is the fact that the LAB consistently required less exposure (faster shutter speed) even when I shot both lenses with the same settings in a controlled environment. Clearly the LAB lens has a bit better light transmission (perhaps not surprising considering its more robust size).
Landscape images in the middle apertures show plenty of punch and detail. Colors are rich, contrast is strong, and detail is great even on a 61MP camera.
As is typical on a high resolution body, diffraction will start to soften the image by F11 and more obviously by F16, which is minimum aperture (though this lens is still sharper than many lenses at its weakest!)
Clearly this is a very sharp lens. But we aren’t just looking for sharpness; can this lens also deliver soft bokeh? It is a rare lens at any focal length that is good at both. 35mm lenses aren’t necessarily the biggest “bokeh makers”, but I’ve seen a few that could deliver lovely bokeh.
Here’s a look comparing the LAB and GM. We would expect the specular highlights to be larger on the LAB due to the faster maximum aperture, and that is the case. Both lenses experience some “cat-eye” geometric deformation near the corner of the frame, though the LAB experiences less of it.
What’s interesting here is that I actually think that the rendering from the LAB is nicer. By that I mean the mix of color, defocus, and general look to the image.
What many people don’t know is that due to some quirk of physics the specular highlights of a brighter lens remain a bit larger and softer than a lens with a dimmer maximum aperture even when you equalize the settings. If I stop the 35mm LAB to F1.4, for example, it still has bigger, softer “bokeh balls” than the GM at F1.4:
We see a little busyness in those specular highlights, but nothing too bad.
This next shot has a lot going on in the frame. It’s a gift shop that is full of various items and knick-knacks. There are also a number of bright lights and small objects that make for a complex bokeh rendering in both the foreground and background.
What we see is excellent subject isolation and fairly smooth rendering on all of those various textures…even the ones likely to induce “nervousness” in the rendering.
A gentler scene produces a more creamy background.
Obviously at closer distances and F1.2 the background will be strongly defocused and will look nicely creamy.
I think that most people are going to be very happy with the rendering from the 35mm LAB, and will love that extra bit of subject isolation that you can get from an F1.2 lens. I’m not sure it’s bokeh is as nice as my favorite 35mm bokeh maker (the Zeiss Milvus 35mm F1.4), but it is pretty close.
I also felt like colors are very nice and rich from the 35mm LAB. It’s a little ugly at home right now as we (very slowly) transition from winter to spring (mostly still winter!). That wasn’t a problem in Myrtle Beach in March, however, particularly when I was up early to catch the predawn light.
I felt like my real world images had very rich color to them.
Flare resistance was also very strong, which is hard to do in a lens with such a huge maximum aperture. I’ve tested a lot of cheap F1.2 and F1.4 lenses that have massive flare issues, but I saw (at most) the tiniest amount of ghosting in all of my testing period.
Contrast remained strong even in strongly backlit situations. This adds a lot of additional versatility for portrait photographers, as they can shoot backlit subjects without fear of their images falling apart.
I did manage to test coma. A 35mm lens with an extremely bright F1.2 aperture is going to be a potential favorite for those wanting to shoot the night sky. How did it do?
As you might expect by this point, this is a lens that is pretty much good at everything. Astro is no problem, even at F1.2, with no issues with fringing around bright points of light, crisp star points in the center frame crop, and very little coma near the edges of the frame in the second crop.
I’ll be honest; I actually didn’t expect this lens to rival the 35mm F1.4 GM, which is perhaps my favorite 35mm lens to date. Now, to be fair, the GM is working within much tighter size constraints, but the fact that the Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB FE is so good and so comparatively inexpensive ($500 less!) makes for a pretty compelling option. If you’d like to see more images in my extensive image gallery, just click here.
Conclusion
I was excited by the idea of the Viltrox LAB series lenses from the moment that they were announced, but the reality of them has been, if anything, even better. These LAB lenses have been so good that I’ve scaled up my expectations (and critiques) of them to the level that I would hold lenses that cost 2-3x as much to. That’s mostly because Viltrox has proven that they are pretty much capable of anything.
While Kazuto Yamaki (CEO of Sigma) did announce a MK II version of Sigma’s own 35mm F1.2 for Sony FE, at the moment of this review the Viltrox LAB 35mm F1.2 is the only autofocusing 35mm F1.2 lens on FE since Sigma had previously discontinued the existing 35mm F1.2 DN. I’m not sure what level of sales success that the first generation Sigma had on Sony FE, but that fact that the Viltrox is the superior lens in both optics and autofocus, is smaller and lighter, and costs nearly half as much will probably give it a sales advantage. Add to that that this lens will also eventually come to Nikon Z, and I suspect that the 35mm LAB will do just fine.
The Sony 35mm F1.4 GM is a still a lovely choice if you want both high performing and compact, but the LAB 35mm is the new champ if you want that next level F1.2 goodness. It can produce brilliant images at all apertures, nail autofocus in those critical moments, and won’t break the bank. It may break your back, however, though no more so than a lot of the Sigma ART series primes from back in the day. And if you want a lot of this magic in a slightly smaller, lighter, and cheaper package…their 35mm F1.4 Pro lens is coming somewhere in the near future. I’ve already been testing the 85mm F1.4 Pro, and it is pretty sweet. It’s a good day for Viltrox…which means that a lot of other lens makers may be having a bit of a bad day.
Pros:
Not as massive and heavy as the 135mm (or the 35mm F1.2 S-Line)
Beautiful built lens
Feature rich
Very good weather sealing
USB port for firmware updates along with Bluetooth for wireless access
Quad HyperVCM motors means focus is near instant
Focus pulls are nicely damped
Exceptionally sharp lens that matches or bests the very best in the center and mid-frame
Keywords: Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 LAB FE, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB35, #explorebeyond, Viltrox 35mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.2, f/1.2, Hyper VCM, Viltrox LAB 35mm F1.2 FE, Viltrox LAB 35mm Review, Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 FE Review, 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
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.
In the fall of the 2024 I had the opportunity to review the long awaited first entry in Viltrox’s Premium LAB series – the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB FE. I loved the lens on Sony despite it being large and heavy and gave it a pretty glowing review. One regret I had was that my Megadap ETZ221 Pro adapter didn’t play well with the LAB 135mm, so I didn’t have a chance to use the Sony FE version on my Nikon Z8. As an aside, I’m interested in seeing if Viltrox’s own new E to Z adapter solves that problem. But fortunately we have a better solution, because a new Nikon Z mount version of this amazing lenses has officially arrived, and frankly the big LAB is going to be a better match for my large Nikon Z8 body anyway! One thing hasn’t changed; this is still a big, heavy lens, but it also a very serious challenger to the premium Nikkor Z 135mm F1.8 S Plena…particularly considering that lens’ hefty $2500 USD price tag. The Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z is an optical juggernaut, and the bargain price tag of $899 USD makes it a huge value (and if you use code DUSTINABBOTT at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 5% off!). Find out if this should be the 135mm in your own kit by watching the video review, reading the text review, or by just enjoying the photos from the lens in the galleries below.
Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.You can visit the product listing page of the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z.
Keywords: Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z, Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Viltrox 135mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.8, f/1.8, VCM, Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 FE, Viltrox 135mm Review, Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 FE Review, VCM, Pancake, Chip, 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
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.
In the fall of the 2024 I had the opportunity to review the long awaited first entry in Viltrox’s Premium LAB series – the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB FE. I loved the lens on Sony despite it being large and heavy and gave it a pretty glowing review. One regret I had was that my Megadap ETZ221 Pro adapter didn’t play well with the LAB 135mm, so I didn’t have a chance to use the Sony FE version on my Nikon Z8. As an aside, I’m interested in seeing if Viltrox’s own new E to Z adapter solves that problem. But fortunately we have a better solution, because a new Nikon Z mount version of this amazing lenses has officially arrived, and frankly the big LAB is going to be a better match for my large Nikon Z8 body anyway! One thing hasn’t changed; this is still a big, heavy lens, but it also a very serious challenger to the premium Nikkor Z 135mm F1.8 S Plena…particularly considering that lens’ hefty $2500 USD price tag. The Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z is an optical juggernaut, and the bargain price tag of $899 USD makes it a huge value (and if you use code DUSTINABBOTT at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 5% off!). Find out if this should be the 135mm in your own kit by watching the video review below or by reading on in the text review.
Thanks to Viltrox for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Nikon Z8, which I reviewed here.You can visit the product listing page of the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z.
I’ve had a long-term love affair with 135mm lenses. I still own some classic 135mm options from the film era (SMC Takumars and the like) and have been privileged to own some of the modern premium 135mm options, from the Canon 135mm F2L to the Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2 to the Sony FE 135mm F1.8 G Master. In short, I have owned a premium quality 135mm for just about as long as I have been a professional photographer. I value the focal length above all for the utterly unique portrait shots you can get; shots the feature extreme isolation and wonderfully creamy bokeh. There are many lenses where you can get a blurred out background if you get very close to your subject, but a lens like the LAB 135Z allows you to completely isolate your subject even when you are a much further distance away, like this:
And look at what happens if you take a tighter crop of that shot:
You can perhaps get a sense of just how exquisite the combination of bokeh and sharpness is…even at F1.8.
I love the look of images shot with a fast 135mm lens…but I don’t end up shooting with the focal length as often as I might like. My least favorite part of owning premium 135mm lenses is how comparatively rarely that I reach for the lens (just too long for a lot of situations). For me that has made me question the amount of money I have sitting on the shelf far too often, and has caused me to (at times) sell such a lens to help fund a more practical purpose. The size and weight of the LAB 135Z might still be such a deterrent, but the price won’t be. I would feel far less qualms over a $900 (or less!) lens sitting on the shelf a bit too much than having a $2500 lens like the Plena sitting on the shelf.
The Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z is a fiercely good lens, and I suspect is going to be somewhat disruptive here on Nikon because of just how good it is at such an inexpensive price.
*There will be some redundancy with my Sony FE review of the lens as this is in essence the same lens mechanically, cosmetically, and optically. I have updated the imagery and also any area of unique performance to the Nikon platform.
Viltrox LAB 135mm Build and Handling
There is basically one variance from the E-mount version of the lens to the Z-mount version of the lens, and that is that the barrel of the lens near the mount is much wider on the Z-mount version to accommodate the significantly wider diameter of Z-mount (on the right).
You might also notice that the rear weather sealing gasket is a little more obvious on the E-mount version, but that is only because the gasket is seated a little differently to accommodate the different mounting position on Nikon. Other than that the E-mount and Z-mount versions are essentially identical, with similar size, length, and features.
In many ways the new LAB 135mm feels like a blend between a Canon L series and a Zeiss Batis lens. The overall feel of the lens and its textures reminds me of a Canon L series, while the top mounted LCD screen reminds me of a Batis lens.
Nikkor 135mm Plena is a big lens, as have been all of Nikkor’s premium fast primes. It is 98mm (3.9″) in diameter and 139.5mm (5.5″) in length. It weighs 995g (35oz). But the LAB 135Z manages to top that. It is 93mm in diameter (3.66″), a little narrower, but is a bit longer at 147.6mm (5.74″) in length. That’s not bigger (the Plena has an internal volume about 1% higher), but the LAB 135Z is a hefty lens, weighing in at a whopping 1268g (44.72oz), or about 270g more than the Plena (I weigh the FE version of the LAB at 1236g, a little lighter due to that smaller diameter near the lens mount). Do not buy this lens if you are adverse to some weight. Why is it so heavy? Above all, it has a LOT of glass inside.
Up front we get a large 82mm front filter thread, though that is pretty common for any 135mm lens with an F1.8 aperture. You can’t beat physics!
Viltrox has demonstrated that they are capable of producing small, lightweight lenses with good optics (the AIR series is a perfect example of that), but that’s not the point of the LAB series. The LAB series seems to following a similar design philosophy to Nikon’s F1.2 S line lenses: build the best optical instrument at the focal length that you can, and don’t worry about the size and weight. These types of lenses are not for everyone, but some photographers simply want the best. Those types of photographers are going to be delighted with the LAB lenses.
It looks like Viltrox’s Pro Series will take a more traditional approach to aperture similar to either Sony’s GM series or Sigma’s better DN prime lenses, namely a marked aperture ring that could either be clicked or declicked. Their approach with the LAB series is a little more similar to Nikon’s approach with the S-line lenses. The aperture ring is a bit more like a command dial that interacts with the LCD screen than a traditional aperture ring with hard stops at either end. You still have the option to have the ring either clicked or declicked, but the aperture rings seems to move in a speed dependent, non-linear way. A quick rotation will speed you through the aperture options, while a very slow rotation doesn’t even move a one-third stop with each click. The LCD screen shows only one third stops between the full stops like F2 and F2.8, so I’m not sure what the point of this is. A more traditional aperture control setup would have been preferable all around, though, like Nikon Z mount lenses in general, you can use this ring for other things than aperture (exposure compensation, ISO, etc…).
Unlike native Nikon lenses, however, you do have the option to have the aperture clicked or declicked via a switch on the left side of the barrel.
When you turn the clicks off you can smoothly move through the whole aperture range without defined slots. This allows for smooth video aperture racking and has become an expected pro-grade feature on modern lenses. There does seem to be less lag in the aperture iris than many lenses, however, making smooth aperture racks more possible. This is the rarely lens that I prefer the aperture clickless rather than clicked even for stills.
Unlike Sony (at least at the present), some of Nikon’s cameras have a top mounted LCD screen, and while you can see the selected aperture on both screens, you can see that it is larger and more easily seen on the camera rather than the lens LED.
The iris itself has 11 aperture blades, and these make for a nicely rounded aperture even when stopped down a fair bit.
Beneath the declick button there is a three position focus limiter that allows you to select the full range, up close (0.7-2m), and to eliminate the close focus range (1.5m to infinity). The LCD screen also functions as a distance scale, showing you the focus distance in large letters while showing a scale above in smaller letters.
Further up the barrel is an AF | MF switch along with two FN (function) buttons. The top one functions like the typical function button, performing whatever function you have that button programmed to in camera. The second button is going to be used more commonly for video functions, however, as when in manual focus mode it allows you to preset two focus positions and automatically switch between the two at the press of the button (A-B focus). This works in conjunction with the LCD screen on the top of the lens (more on that in a moment). You can preset the focus position(s) by long pressing the FN 2 button, and then access the focus changes by short pressing it.
Now to that LCD screen. The LCD functions in many ways like those found on the Zeiss Batis lenses, though with some improvements. The screen itself is nice and bright, allowing for good visibility even in bright conditions. It solves the problem of a distance scale (something missing on most mirrorless lenses), as it gives you a large font telling you the precise focus distance along with a distance scale above that. The bottom part of the screen gives you a readout of the current aperture. It also gives you some information related to the function buttons however, with the Fn icon lighting up when the first Function Button is depressed, and then the A or B function lights up when you are presetting focus distances. There’s actually a lot of useful information on the LCD screen once you get familiar with how it is all being displayed, though I’m sure a lot of people will still find it somewhat of a gimmick.
The manual focus ring is slightly raised and has a rubberized, ribbed texture. It moves fairly smoothly, I feel like there is a little more feeling of steps or pulses from the focus motor while manually focusing than on Sony. There’s obviously a bit of a difference with the way that input on the focus ring is routed through the Nikon body, as on Sony the focus process feels smooth and linear. Like the aperture ring, input on the focus ring seems to be speed specific and not quite linear. Using the A/B focus is a much more precise way to set up repeatable focus pulls.
We also have weather sealing on this lens that starts with a unique maroon-colored gasket at the lens mount along with other seal points through the lens (a total of 12 of them, by my count).
This is an internally focusing lens, so there is nothing that moves where dust might intrude. There’s also an HD-Nano multilayer coating on the front element to help with water and fingerprint resistance, making the front element easier to clean. As always, however, “moisture-proof” does not mean “water-proof”, so don’t go crazy! This is, however, a professional grade lens with professional sealing.
Viltrox continues with a trend that other lens makers are now imitating by including 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. This allows Viltrox to future proof their lenses and continue to improve them through firmware.
As with other recent Viltrox lenses, the lens is Bluetooth equipped, which means that you can use the Viltrox app for IOS or Android and update firmware wirelessly. You can also program a custom splash animation to the powerup cycle on the lens (I’ve got mine showing my business logo during startup).
There is no lens based stabilization, so you will need to rely upon the in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped.
One thing worth noting is that when the lens is powered off, there will be some movement/clunking if you rotate the lens up and down. This can be very disturbing if you are not familiar with modern lens design. Many high end modern lenses employ floating elements that allow for better up close performance. The lens groups are not fixed, but float in a certain area, so when they are not energized they will move around a bit. This is by design, however, and when the camera is powered on, those elements will be energized and become fixed. You can rotate the lens up and down without anything moving around. It feels like the Viltrox has finetuned this process with the LAB 135Z, however, and it seems a bit less obvious than on the Sony version.
The benefit of this design is that you get a much better up close performance that you typically see on Viltrox lenses. You can focus as closely as 72cm, giving a maximum magnification figure of 1:4, or 0.25x, which bests the 0.20x (1:5) available on the Plena. Up close performance is fantastic even at F1.8, with excellent sharpness and contrast and a nicely flat plane of focus.
I used the LAB 135Z for some product shots for another review, and it delivered excellent results.
That’s macro lens levels of performance there!
Viltrox has redesigned the front lens cap with a bevel along the front that makes it feel slimmer (good, as this is their biggest front lens cap so far). The lens also comes with the hood and a nicer than usual leather pouch (similar to Canon L-series lenses). There is some cushion on the bottom, but I don’t find these pouches nearly as useful as a good padded nylon case like what Sigma provides.
The LAB 135Z comes with the nicest lens hood that I’ve seen on a Viltrox lens. The plastics are extra thick and sturdy. There is a felt lining inside to keep light from bouncing around, and there is a rubberized transition section that helps to protect the lens from bumps and also makes a nice option for placing the lens facing down. The lens doesn’t have a lock, but does have a firm bayonet into place that sits securely. I had no issues with it coming loose. I will note that it can reversed for storage but fits very tightly, so it can be a little work to get off sometimes as the rubber of the hood grips the rubber of the focus ring.
As noted, the lens barrel construction reminds me a lot of Canon’s better L- series lenses, with an magnesium alloy body, which is the same material used in expensive camera bodies. The new LAB badge on the side of the barrel reminds you that this is from this new premium series of lenses.
While I don’t agree with all of the ergonomic choices Viltrox made with the LAB 135mm, I do think that this is a very nicely executed package. The lens feels high quality in the hands, and it handles like a premium lens. In many ways this feels like a much more expensive lens than the $899 USD price tag. The finish feels durable and I would expect the lens to hold up well for the long haul. This is a big, heavy lens, so that will obviously be a deterrent for some buyers, though frankly the Plena is actually a bit bigger (though the LAB is heavier). Sony does have the slightly smaller, lighter option in the form of the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8, but at the moment, Nikon has no such option. I will say this as a final word on the matter: the LAB 135mm feels like a much more natural fit on a beefy body like my Z8 than it does on any of my smaller, lighter Sony bodies. I’m not sure that “two wrongs make a right” applies here, but perhaps we could say that a heavy lens makes more sense on a big, robust camera.
Autofocus (Stills)
I was excited to see that Viltrox was pioneering a new autofocus system with the launch of the LAB series, as I felt like A) they had gotten about as much out of their STM motors as they were going to get and B) a premium lens like this with big, heavy glass elements needs as much thrust in the focus motor as possible. Like the Sony FE version, the LAB 135Z is equipped with not one VCM (voice-coil motor), but dual “Hyper VCM” motors that work in harmony to drive autofocus. This is a similar approach to what Nikon has done with the 135mm Plena, and the dual high performance focus motors allow you to broaden the scope of what can be done with a fast prime lens like this, up to and including sports.
As with the FE version, I have been reviewing a prerelease copy of the LAB 135Z, so the lens arrived without the final “retail firmware” update. But you could also tell that they’ve had that extra six months to refine focus, as the Z-mount version just felt more confident out of the box (the Sony version got there after a firmware update). Fortunately firmware updates are pretty simple, and can be done via a drag and drop on a computer, or via Bluetooth through the Viltrox app.
Autofocus speed is very good. Not quite instant, but near to it. In my formal tests I saw quick and mostly confident focus changes from close to distant. If I go back and compare my results to the Sony FE version, I find that focus is a little slower and perhaps a little less confident. On Sony the progressions from close to distant and back were nearly instant and with complete confidence, but I find a few more little pulses and an occasional quick rack in the wrong direction. In real world shots, however, focus changes tend to be smaller and I didn’t really notice the same things.
That included shooting in lower light conditions. You can shoot with precision even in situations with a tiny depth of field, like this:
I’ve been playing a lot of squash recently, and I was curious to see if the AF speed was sufficient to keep up with the rapid fire action on the squash court. I tested the Sony FE version with basketball, and it did fine, so this was something different. The good news is that focus had no problem keeping up with the action and acquiring subjects.
This is too long a focal length for this application, really, and you have to contend with shooting through glass (I would NOT want to be in there with a camera!), so I wouldn’t choose this combination for serious tracking of the sport. But that wasn’t really the point; I wanted to know if the lens could keep up on my Z8, and the easy answer was yes.
I actually feel like Viltrox has done a really solid job of porting over to Nikon’s focus algorithms here, as the lens feels very natural and at home on the platform. I’ve consistently been impressed with how well third party lenses that I’ve reviewed on other platforms first behave on Nikon. Often the VR (In Body Image Stabilization) works better, focus is very similar to what I find on Sony, and when testing on Sony, I ran into the typical limitation for all third party lenses: burst rates are capped at 15FPS for non-Sony lenses. Fortunately no such limitation exists on Nikon, so I was able to shoot as quickly as 30FPS and got consistent focus in those very quick bursts.
Someone next to me while I was shooting asked, “How many photos did you just take?” after one such burst. I told them I had no idea; all I knew is that I was getting 30 of them every second!
Focus precision was also exceptionally good. I had no problem nailing quick shots of Nala as she rolled around in a shaft of sunlight. Look at just how gorgeous the focus (and the detail!) is in this shot:
Focus sound is near silent, with a very light whirring sound as focus moves back and forth. There’s no drama associated with focus, just quick, accurate results.
Things were mostly fantastic when shooting portraits. I was literally shooting in the middle of a blizzard, and the sheer number of keepers despite the persistent distractions was actually pretty impressive.
A few times, however, the focus system got distracted by the snowflakes and it was like it couldn’t see past them to the subject, like here:
I ended up saving this shot anyway because I kind of liked the effect. The potential for these focus issues seemed to go away when I got closer, and the contrast of the subject become more obvious. My keeper rate for the portrait session was very high despite the conditions.
This is definitely in the upper tier of autofocus performance for third party lenses. It’s amazing how far Viltrox has come in just a few short years.
Autofocus (Video)
Video autofocus was largely an extension of what I saw from my stills tests, though the flaws were a little more obvious. The hint of little focus racks in the wrong direction were more obvious with video autofocus pulls, and everything didn’t seem quite as confident as I saw on Sony…though there is some hopes that the retail firmware could improve that.
Movement towards the camera was fairly good if the movement was consistent and linear, but if I stepped in and out of frame, the reactiveness of picking me back up had some lag.
Video focus on real subjects seemed to be fine. Here’s a screenshot from some 4K60 footage during the portrait shoot.
Video footage looks noticeably very detailed and crisp, and the beautiful color, contrast, and rendering of the lens makes for some gorgeous footage.
Viltrox clearly wanted the LAB series to be a statement in every area, and fortunately that includes autofocus. While autofocus isn’t quite as exceptional on Nikon as it was on Sony, it’s also true that Sony’s focus is a little more sophisticated in general. I was very happy overall with focus performance here.
Image Quality Breakdown
Ahhh, and now to my favorite part, because the LAB 135Z is just a special, special lens. I fell in love with the Zeiss Otus lenses because, despite their being ridiculously big and expensive, they were just so good optically. It might be heresy to say, but the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB is just that kind of lens. The optical design is 14 elements in 9 groups, with four of those being ED (low dispersion) elements and two of them being HD (high refractive index) lenses. The MTF is fantastic, with an absolutely stunning center and midframe performance that isn’t quite the same in the corners. At F8 the MTF is pretty much a straight line across the top, i.e. perfect.
Just for fun, let’s take a look at the Nikkor 135mm F1.8 Plena MTF:
Gulp. If the MTF is to be believed, the $900 LAB 135Z is sharper all across the frame than the $2500 Plena.
And yes, if we look at real world images, the results are just ridiculously sharp.
Take a look at the crop:
In fact, the Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 delivered once of the best all-round optical performances that I’ve ever seen and is essentially strong to extremely strong in all areas that I test. It is the rare lens that is both technically and artistically excellent. Look at the lovely overall rendering from this image:
And now let’s look at the crop that shows the technical excellence:
Yup. That’s great.
More on this in a moment. Let’s look at the technical side of things.
I was expecting a lens well corrected for LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations), and that is the case here. I see mostly neutral results on either side of the plane of focus without any visible fringing.
I tried a wide variety of situations to see if I could find some fringing while testing both the Sony and Nikon versions of the LAB 135mm, but the LAB beat me. Look at how utterly neutral it is when dealing with the shiny and engraved bits of my classic lenses, which are typically amongst the absolute worst case scenario for fringing.
Brilliant.
LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. I saw a small amount of LaCA in my tests, which actually surprised me, as I didn’t see any on the Sony version.
Viltrox lenses have not always had great profile support, and if there is any advantage to this it is that they have gotten accustomed to doing a lot of the corrections optically rather than relying on software corrections. On the Sony FE version I found essentially no distortion or vignette. Essentially all the lenses I’ve tested first on Sony and then on Nikon have exhibited more vignette on the Z-mount version.
That’s the case here as well. There’s still no measurable distortion (there’s maybe a fraction of a percent of pincushion), but I do see some vignette (I used a +50 in the correction above).
It’s not a big deal and easily correctable.
We’ll move on to inspecting our test chart. This test has been done on a 45MP Nikon Z8 sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine at high magnification:
If we take a look at crops (at 200%) at F1.8 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center and mid-frame performance is exceptionally good, and that sharpness extends right to the corners.
The lower resolution point on Nikon (45 vs 61MP) only makes the results look even more consistent. If I compare mid-frame result above with the upper left corner from the (both at F1.8).
Yes, you can see that the mid-frame result is slightly sharper, but that is remarkably consistent performance.
To put that in context, let’s take a look at the same result using the Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 that released in 2024. Not a top tier lens, obviously, but a pretty decent one that I gave a positive review to and even purchased for myself.
Wow! You can see just how radically sharper the LAB 135mm is. This is definitely the sharpest lens I’ve tested on my Z8 thus far. Stopping down to F2 does make a mild difference, particularly in the outer parts of the frame, though you might be hard pressed to spot the differences without the two images side by side and at very high levels of magnification.
By F2.8 the sharpness levels are essentially at the ridiculous level. There are more fine details visible in this old two dollar bill than I knew were even there.
The eagle-eyed among you may notice a minor reporting bug that hadn’t been squashed in my pre-release firmware yet, namely that while the lens properly registers in Lightroom as the Viltrox AF 135/1.8 LAB Z, the focal length registers as 16mm. That bug will be dealt with in the retail firmware.
Stopping on down produces improvements so minor as to be hard to see most places in the frame, though I could tell the improvements in the far corners.
Physics will affect even the mightiest of lenses, however, so expect diffraction to start to soften the image by F11 and more obviously by F16, which is minimum aperture (though this lens is still sharper than many lenses at its weakest!)
You’ll have all the portrait sharpness you’ll ever need, with perfect amounts of sharpness and contrast and beautiful skin tones.
In fact, one of the best applications for a lens like this is to shoot environmental portraiture at F1.8, where you can shoot at longer distance, compress the scene, but still get a nice separation of your subject from the background.
This is a lens that is pretty obviously overengineered for the full frame image circle. I’d actually be curious if Viltrox would ever consider bringing the LAB series to the Fujifilm GFX platform and to see how well they would cover that larger image circle. I noted, for example, when reviewing the Sony version that the LAB 135mm consistently metered a little faster than the Samyang in my comparisons while delivering similar brightness levels, so I also believe that the T-stop is about one third stop faster than the Samyang. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find that the LAB’s T-stop is very similar to its F-stop.
The Viltrox LAB 135Z clearly delivers near APO levels of sharpness and contrast. What is rarer still is the lens that can deliver incredible sharpness and contrast while also delivering soft bokeh…and you probably won’t be surprised to hear that this is one of them.
First of all, it does very well with specular highlights. Here’s an F1.8 image that shows that there is some geometric deformation near the edges of the frame, but overall the bokeh looks great. You can see just how big and soft the bokeh can be when you’re close to your subject.
If you really want all round specular highlights, stop down even to F2.5, and it is nearly perfect there.
But perhaps my favorite application is for portraits. First of all, the general rendering looks great.
But what’s harder to see when viewed full is how all of those different layers of snowflakes are being turned to varying sizes of specular highlights. It’s really pretty stunning.
The general rendering is just fantastic.
In the early stages of Viltrox’s lens development their optical glass was, well, more budget oriented, but that has radically changed in the past couple of years. I find Viltrox’s current optical glass to be excellent, and it also tends to be very neutral. Colors are rich, but not oversaturated. The images are neither warm nor cool, allowing you to choose your preference either in camera with the white balance or in post.
That intense contrast just makes the colors look very rich and, well, expensive.
Flare resistance was also very good on the LAB 135Z. The lens hood isn’t necessarily small, but it is smaller than many other 135mm lenses that I’ve tested because frankly it isn’t overly needed. Here’s a variety of positions and apertures shooting into very bright sun and you can see that contrast holds up fine, without ghosting or veiling.
I did test for coma on the Sony version, which I’ll share here (snowstorms don’t make for good astro tests!). This makes yet another interesting application for this lens, as the longer focal length lends itself to a different perspective on astrophotography. Coma was very well controlled even into the corners, and the extremely low fringing assures that bright heavenly bodies aren’t ruined by some nasty color smears around them.
The bottom line is that this is one the most complete lenses that I’ve tested optically, and I would be hard pressed to point to a better optical performance from any lens priced under $1000, and could probably count the number of better optical performances, period, on one hand. If you’d like to see more images in my extensive image gallery, just click here.
Conclusion
I found reviewing the FE version the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB a real treat, and I felt no differently about covering the Z mount version. To do my job correctly I need to invest a lot of time and care into using and evaluating a lens whether I personally enjoy it or not. It can be very frustrating to have a camera in hand in a beautiful photographic opportunity and be stuck with a lousy lens attached to the camera because that’s what I happen to be testing. Not so with the LAB 135Z; this is a lens that I would choose to shoot with. It’s also a fabulous match for my Z8 in the larger size of the camera, the great autofocus system, the stellar VR, and of course the gorgeous images that the LAB/Z8 combo can produce.
I’m so glad that Nikon has opened up to third party brands, and while this lens will certainly steal some potential Plena purchases, the availability of high end, affordable lenses like the Viltrox LAB series has the potential to sway customers debating between Canon and Nikon in Nikon’s direction.
I’ve come out this review impressed all over again. I recognize that LAB 135Z will be too big and heavy for some potential buyers, but if this happens to be something that you can look past, you will find an absolutely stunning lens that will produces images that are richer, sharper, and more compelling that what you can get with just about anything else in your bag. Yes, please!
Pros:
The LAB series is supposed to be Viltrox’s BEST…and it shows
Beautiful built lens
Feature rich
Very good weather sealing
USB port for firmware updates along with Bluetooth for wireless access
New Hyper VCM motors are fast and accurate
Focus pulls are nicely damped
Exceptionally sharp lens that matches or bests the very best in the center and mid-frame
No distortion or vignette
Exceptional control of fringing
Colors look great
Amazing contrast
Gorgeous bokeh
Great flare resistance
Low coma
Amazing price to performance ratio
Cons:
Big and heavy
Don’t love the aperture ring design
Some might be put off from the “clunk” of the floating elements
Keywords: Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB Z, Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Viltrox 135mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.8, f/1.8, VCM, Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 FE, Viltrox 135mm Review, Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 FE Review, VCM, Pancake, Chip, 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
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.
In the course of any given year, I review a LOT of gear. In 2024 I did 108 total reviews, including 7 cameras and many dozens of lenses at all price points. At this stage of my career, I have reviewed hundreds of lenses and many dozens of cameras. We are, I believe, in a golden age of photography. 2024 saw a slight shift in the overall movement towards using phones for photography with more people considering a “real camera” instead. But what gear stood out from the crowd in my reviews? Find out by watching the 2024 DA Awards below! There’s also a summary of the awards in this article.
If you just want a summary of what I covered in the video, you can can see the list of contestants in each category below along with the slide of the winner and a photo taken with each winner. Just to clarify: these are my top picks among the lenses I personally reviewed. I review Canon, Sony, and Fujifilm (APS-C and medium format), and Nikon, so there won’t be any M43 or Leica gear here…even though I’m sure there are several deserving products from those brands.
For the second year in a row, Sony wins with the top zoom lens. The Sony 28-70mm F2 GM was a winner to both me and my audience. Here’s one favorite photo from it.
DA Awards 2024 – Top Budget APS-C Prime Lens (Under $600)
List of contenders:
Viltrox Pro AF 27mm F1.2 (Sony)
Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7
TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8
7Artisans AF 27mm F2.8
Yongnuo AF 11mm F1.8
Sirui Sniper 16mm F1.2
Sirui Sniper 75mm F1.2
Yongnuo 50mm F1.8 DA DSM Pro
Yongnuo 33mm F1.4 Pro
Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7
AstrHori 25mm 2-5x Macro
Viltrox takes home a win in this category for the second year in a row. The 35mm F1.7 AIR isn’t as high end as last year’s winner, but it (along with the 56mm F1.7 AIR) are big winners for providing very good optical instruments at budget prices.
DA Awards 2024 – Top Budget Full Frame Prime Lens (Under $600)
Here’s the list of contenders:
7Artisans AF 50mm F1.8
7Artisans AF 85mm F1.8
Nikkor 40mm F2
Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5
Nikkor 50mm F1.4
TTArtisan AF 75mm F2
Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5
TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl
Pergear 100mm F2.8 2x Macro
Thypoch Simera 28mm F1.4
Thypoch Simera 35mm F1.4
Sirui Aurora 85mm F1.4
The Nikkor Z 50mm F1.4 is a very solid lens at a shockingly affordable price of $499. In my review I concluded that it was “enough” in basically every category for most all photographers. Here’s a photo favorite from it.
DA Awards 2024 – Premium Full Frame Prime Lens
List of contenders:
Laowa AF 10mm F2.8
Sigma 500mm F5.6 Sport
Sigma 15mm F1.4 Fisheye
Sigma 50mm F1.2 ART
Voigtlander Nokton 75mm F1.5
Voigtlander Nokton 50mm F1.9
Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II
Fujinon GF 500mm F5.6
Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro
Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8
Laowa 55mm F2.8 T/S
I’ve been very eagerly awaiting Viltrox’s LAB series ever since it was announced, and the LAB 135mm F1.8 did not disappoint. It is feature rich, optically amazing, and sported a whole new autofocus system (Hyper-VCM) that allows it to have quick, accurate autofocus. It’s a treat.
DA Awards 2024 – Which Company Had the Best Year?
Sigma released a ton of interesting lenses this year, from intriguing zooms (24-70mm F2.8 II, 28-45mm F1.8, 28-105mm F2.8) to interesting primes (50mm 1.2, 15mm F1.4, 500mm F5.6), to being the first to move into the Canon RF (APS-C) space with both primes and zooms.
DA Awards 2024 – Which Lens Surprised Me the Most?
There’s nothing surprising about a 50mm F1.4 lens. But what is surprising is that a first party brand like Nikon would release a very good 50mm F1.4 for just $500. My conclusion was that this lens was “enough” for most people, and for Nikon to take the risk of undercutting more expensive options took a lot of bravery.
DA Awards 2024 – Most Disappoint Lens?
The sad thing about the Canon RF 35mm F1.4L VCM is that in many ways it is a very good lens, with great autofocus and amazing sharpness, but it also has a number of qualities that I consider inexecusable in a $1500 lens, like massive distortion and vignette along with some really questionable design choices. I wanted to love this lens, but ended up very disappointed by it…even though you can make some lovely images with it.
DA Awards 2024 – Reader’s Choice Awards
I polled my audience on YouTube over a series of weeks in three categories, and got around 1000 votes in each category. Here are the winners:
Keywords: DA Awards, 2024, Best, Worst, Reader’s choice, Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Nikon Z8, Sony a7CR, Sony 28-70mm F2 GM, Sigma, Nikkor, 7Artisans, TTArtisan, Yongnuo, Tamron, Laowa, Voigtlander, 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
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.
The LAB series is to be Viltrox’s “Otus” series; an optically superlative lineup of lenses that will eventually include 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm F1.2 lenses in addition to the 135mm F1.8 LAB lens that I’m reviewing here. Viltrox is unique in my experience in that they tend to announce their development cycle well ahead of releases rather than hide them until they are ready for release. We’ve had more than a year to get excited about the LAB series, and I’m delighted to finally get my hands on one of them. So is the LAB 135mm worth getting excited about? That may depend on your tolerance of large, heavy lenses, but if that doesn’t turn you off, then the LAB 135mm is about as close to optical perfection as you’ll find. It is Viltrox’s most expensive lens, yes, but at a price tag of $899 USD it still is a pretty huge value (and if you use code DUSTINABBOTT at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 8% off!). But, of course, you can also get the excellent Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 for even cheaper, and it is smaller and lighter as well. So which is the 135mm to get on Sony E-mount? Find out in my head to head comparison video here!
Thanks to Viltrox 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.
I have an interesting relationship with 135mm lenses. I fell in love with the Canon EF 135mm F2L a decade ago, and held onto it for years. I replaced it with the amazing Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2, a lens that I called worthy of being labelled an Otus. As I began to shoot Sony more and more, I eventually replaced the Milvus with the outstanding Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM lens. I finally parted with the GM lens in order to purchase the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM instead, but only because I found the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 good enough that I felt I could sell the 135GM and get both the Samyang and the 50mm GM lens for roughly the same money. In short, I have owned a premium quality 135mm for just about as long as I have been a professional photographer. I value the focal length above all for the utterly unique portrait shots you can get; shots the feature extreme isolation and wonderfully creamy bokeh.
But the biggest downside of a 135mm lens for many of us is the simple fact that it isn’t the most versatile of focal lengths. You often need a fairly large amount of working room to do portrait work, so many people prefer an 85mm lens even though the 135mm images are bit more special. I loved the 135mm GM lens but was willing to part with it because I had a lot of money invested in it but didn’t reach for it as often as what I would like.
But now Sony shooters have two awesome options available at very reasonable price points in the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 (my review here) and the Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 (my review here). In my head to head video I break down the relative strengths and weaknesses of both lenses. Here’s a summary of the points I found:
Reasons to Choose the Samyang:
Deep dive video review of the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8
Price: $799 vs ($899)
Weight: 772g (27 oz) vs 1300g (45.85oz)
Size (130mm [5.1”] vs 145.7mm [5.73”])
Better edge sharpness at F1.8
Reasons to Choose the Viltrox LAB
Deep dive video review of the Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8.
Slightly higher magnification and better up close performance
Better center and midframe sharpness
Better flare resistance
Softer bokeh
Lower distortion and vignette
Better light transmission
Conclusion
The only real advantages for the Samyang lie in being much lighter and slightly cheaper. The Viltrox has a superlative build, features, autofocus, and overall image quality performance, and is my personal clear choice. At the same time, the difference in weight is significant enough that those who don’t need as fast of autofocus might considering going with the Samyang instead. It remains an excellent choice.
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Viltrox 135mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.8, f/1.8, VCM, Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 FE, Viltrox 135mm Review, Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 FE Review, VCM, Samyang, Rokinon, Samyang AF 135mm, 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
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.
I’ve just wrapped up a review of Viltrox’s smallest, lightest, and cheapest lens: the AF 28mm F4.5 “Chip” – a micro-pancake lens just 15mm long. That makes it somewhat ironic to immediately pivot to what is easily their biggest, heaviest, and most expensive lens to date. I’ve been excited about reviewing the Viltrox LAB series ever since they announced it in 2023 as a part of their roadmap ahead. The LAB series is to be Viltrox’s “Otus” series; an optically superlative lineup of lenses that will eventually include 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm F1.2 lenses in addition to the 135mm F1.8 LAB lens that I’m reviewing here. Viltrox is unique in my experience in that they tend to announce their development cycle well ahead of releases rather than hide them until they are ready for release. We’ve had more than a year to get excited about the LAB series, and I’m delighted to finally get my hands on one of them. So is the LAB 135mm worth getting excited about? That may depend on your tolerance of large, heavy lenses, but if that doesn’t turn you off, then the LAB 135mm is about as close to optical perfection as you’ll find. It is Viltrox’s most expensive lens, yes, but at a price tag of $899 USD it still is a pretty huge value (and if you use code DUSTINABBOTT at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 8% off!). Find out more in either the video review below or by reading the text review…or just enjoy the photos in the gallery.
Thanks to Viltrox 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.
I have an interesting relationship with 135mm lenses. I fell in love with the Canon EF 135mm F2L a decade ago, and held onto it for years. I replaced it with the amazing Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2, a lens that I called worthy of being labelled an Otus. As I began to shoot Sony more and more, I eventually replaced the Milvus with the outstanding Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM lens. I finally parted with the GM lens in order to purchase the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM instead, but only because I found the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 good enough that I felt I could sell the 135GM and get both the Samyang and the 50mm GM lens for roughly the same money. In short, I have owned a premium quality 135mm for just about as long as I have been a professional photographer. I value the focal length above all for the utterly unique portrait shots you can get; shots the feature extreme isolation and wonderfully creamy bokeh.
But the biggest downside of a 135mm lens for many of us is the simple fact that it isn’t the most versatile of focal lengths. You often need a fairly large amount of working room to do portrait work, so many people prefer an 85mm lens even though the 135mm images are bit more special. I loved the 135mm GM lens but was willing to part with it because I had a lot of money invested in it but didn’t reach for it as often as what I would like. Can the Viltrox LAB 135mm provide GM levels of performance for $1300 less? While I think there is at least one area where the GM has an advantage, the optics definitely aren’t it. After using the LAB 135mm for a month, I’ve concluded that it has the peerless microcontrast of the recent Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II while also delivering smoother, creamier bokeh. Yes, this is one of the best lenses optically that I’ve tested. Take a look at this unedited shot.
Nice, right? Nice colors, smooth bokeh. But when I hit the zoom button on the back of my Alpha 1, here’s what I saw:
That was a bit of a “jawdrop” moment, because that level of microcontrast and detail at F1.8 is pretty amazing. From landscapes to portraits to general purpose shots, the LAB 135mm delivered results that I simply loved.
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Viltrox 135mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.8, f/1.8, VCM, Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 FE, Viltrox 135mm Review, Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 FE Review, VCM, Pancake, Chip, 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
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.
I’ve just wrapped up a review of Viltrox’s smallest, lightest, and cheapest lens: the AF 28mm F4.5 “Chip” – a micro-pancake lens just 15mm long. That makes it somewhat ironic to immediately pivot to what is easily their biggest, heaviest, and most expensive lens to date. I’ve been excited about reviewing the Viltrox LAB series ever since they announced it in 2023 as a part of their roadmap ahead. The LAB series is to be Viltrox’s “Otus” series; an optically superlative lineup of lenses that will eventually include 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm F1.2 lenses in addition to the 135mm F1.8 LAB lens that I’m reviewing here. Viltrox is unique in my experience in that they tend to announce their development cycle well ahead of releases rather than hide them until they are ready for release. We’ve had more than a year to get excited about the LAB series, and I’m delighted to finally get my hands on one of them. So is the LAB 135mm worth getting excited about? That may depend on your tolerance of large, heavy lenses, but if that doesn’t turn you off, then the LAB 135mm is about as close to optical perfection as you’ll find. It is Viltrox’s most expensive lens, yes, but at a price tag of $899 USD it still is a pretty huge value (and if you use code DUSTINABBOTT at checkout at Viltrox, you can get an additional 8% off!). Find out more in either the video review below or by reading on in the text review.
Thanks to Viltrox 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.
I have an interesting relationship with 135mm lenses. I fell in love with the Canon EF 135mm F2L a decade ago, and held onto it for years. I replaced it with the amazing Zeiss Milvus 135mm F2, a lens that I called worthy of being labelled an Otus. As I began to shoot Sony more and more, I eventually replaced the Milvus with the outstanding Sony FE 135mm F1.8 GM lens. I finally parted with the GM lens in order to purchase the Sony FE 50mm F1.4 GM instead, but only because I found the Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 good enough that I felt I could sell the 135GM and get both the Samyang and the 50mm GM lens for roughly the same money. In short, I have owned a premium quality 135mm for just about as long as I have been a professional photographer. I value the focal length above all for the utterly unique portrait shots you can get; shots the feature extreme isolation and wonderfully creamy bokeh.
But the biggest downside of a 135mm lens for many of us is the simple fact that it isn’t the most versatile of focal lengths. You often need a fairly large amount of working room to do portrait work, so many people prefer an 85mm lens even though the 135mm images are bit more special. I loved the 135mm GM lens but was willing to part with it because I had a lot of money invested in it but didn’t reach for it as often as what I would like. Can the Viltrox LAB 135mm provide GM levels of performance for $1300 less? While I think there is at least one area where the GM has an advantage, the optics definitely aren’t it. After using the LAB 135mm for a month, I’ve concluded that it has the peerless microcontrast of the recent Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II while also delivering smoother, creamier bokeh. Yes, this is one of the best lenses optically that I’ve tested. Take a look at this unedited shot.
Nice, right? Nice colors, smooth bokeh. But when I hit the zoom button on the back of my Alpha 1, here’s what I saw:
That was a bit of a “jawdrop” moment, because that level of microcontrast and detail at F1.8 is pretty amazing. From landscapes to portraits to general purpose shots, the LAB 135mm delivered results that I simply loved.
Sound interesting? Let’s take a closer look.
Viltrox LAB 135mm Build and Handling
In many ways the preview for Viltrox’s future blueprint for their higher end lenses came with the release of the fantastic 16mm F1.8 that came first for Sony FE and then later for Nikon Z. That lens has a lot of the same design language and pioneered some of the new features that we’ll see here. Viltrox did deviate from the formula a bit, but I’m not sure it is for the better.
In many ways the new LAB 135mm feels like a blend between a Canon L series and a Zeiss Batis lens. The overall feel of the lens and its textures reminds me of a Canon L series, while the top mounted LCD screen reminds me of a Batis lens. It is almost ridiculous to put Viltrox’s two most recent lenses side by side:
The LAB lens is huge; the 28mm F4.5 pancake is the smallest autofocusing lens I’ve ever tested. The LAB 135mm is the largest and heaviest 135mm lens I’ve ever tested. It is 93mm in diameter (3.66″) and a whopping 145.7mm (5.73″) in length. The Samyang is 130mm in length, which is actually perhaps the longest 135mm that I had previously tested, but it is very obviously shorter than the LAB 135mm.
That makes the LAB a full 18mm longer than the GM (127mm). And, at a whopping 1300g (45.85oz), it is a full 450g heavier. The Samyang is just 772g, which is getting perilously close to half the weight of the LAB 135mm. Do not buy this lens if you are adverse to some weight. Why is it so heavy? Above all, it has a LOT of glass inside.
Viltrox has demonstrated that they are capable of producing small, lightweight lenses with good optics, but that’s not the point of the LAB series. These are like autofocusing Zeiss Otus lenses. I once reviewed a Zeiss Otus 28mm F1.4 that was nearly the size and weight of this lens, and that was without an autofocus motor, weather sealing, or any features! The brief for the Otus series is similar to that of the LAB series: build the best lens optically at the focal length that you can, and don’t worry about the size and weight. These types of lenses are not for everyone, but some photographers simply want the optical best. If the LAB 135mm is anything to go by, photographers may get just that.
Up front we get a large 82mm front filter thread, though that is pretty common for any 135mm lenswith an F1.8 aperture. You can’t beat physics!
The Viltrox 16mm F1.8 had a traditional approach to aperture similar to either Sony’s GM series or Sigma’s better DN prime lenses. That was a marked aperture ring that could either be clicked or declicked. For some reason Viltrox left that tried and true approach for a new approach more dependent on the LCD screen. The first ring on the lens is for aperture, but it is an unmarked ring that relies on the LCD screen to show you the selected aperture. You still have the option to have the ring either clicked or declicked, but in the clicked mode it has clicks at every 1/9th aperture stop rather than the typical one third aperture stops. I assume the logic is to provide more precision, but frankly it is wasted when A) Sony cameras only register one third stops and B) the LCD screen shows only one third stops between the full stops like F2 and F2.8. In real life it just feels like too many clicks, and I don’t enjoy it. A more traditional aperture control setup would have been preferable all around. You can still rotate all the way to the left and move into automatic mode, and I suspect some people will probably prefer to just control aperture from within the camera. You do have the option to turn the clicks off as well via a switch on the left side of the barrel.
When you turn the clicks off you can smoothly move through the whole aperture range without defined slots. This allows for smooth video aperture racking and has become an expected pro-grade feature on modern lenses. There does seem to be less lag in the aperture iris than many lenses, however, making smooth aperture racks more possible. This is the rarely lens that I prefer the aperture clickless rather than clicked even for stills.
The iris itself has 11 aperture blades, and these make for a nicely rounded aperture even when stopped down a fair bit.
Beneath the declick button there is a three position focus limiter that allows you to select the full range, up close (0.7-2m), and to eliminate the close focus range (1.5m to infinity). The LCD screen also functions as a distance scale, showing you the focus distance in large letters while showing a scale above in smaller letters.
Further up the barrel is an AF | MF switch along with two FN (function) buttons. The top one functions like the typical function button, performing whatever function you have that button programmed to in camera. The second button is going to be used more commonly for video functions, however, as when in manual focus mode it allows you to preset two focus positions and automatically switch between the two at the press of the button (A-B focus). This works in conjunction with the LCD screen on the top of the lens (more on that in a moment). You can preset the focus position(s) by long pressing the FN 2 button, and then access the focus changes by short pressing it.
Now to that LCD screen. The LCD functions in many ways like those found on the Zeiss Batis lenses, though with some improvements. The screen itself is nice and bright, allowing for good visibility even in bright conditions. It solves the problem of a distance scale (something missing on most mirrorless lenses), as it gives you a large font telling you the precise focus distance along with a distance scale above that. The bottom part of the screen gives you a readout of the current aperture. It also gives you some information related to the function buttons however, with the Fn icon lighting up when the first Function Button is depressed, and then the A or B function lights up when you are presetting focus distances. There’s actually a lot of useful information on the LCD screen once you get familiar with how it is all being displayed, though I’m sure a lot of people will still find it somewhat of a gimmick.
The manual focus ring is slightly raised and has a rubberized, ribbed texture. It moves smoothly and with nice damping. It isn’t linear, so the amount of focus covered will depend on the speed in which you rotate the ring. Using the A/B focus is a much more precise way to set up repeatable focus pulls.
We also have weather sealing on this lens that starts with a unique maroon-colored gasket at the lens mount along with other seal points through the lens (a total of 12 of them, by my count).
This is an internally focusing lens, so there is nothing that moves where dust might intrude. There’s also an HD-Nano multilayer coating on the front element to help with water and fingerprint resistance, making the front element easier to clean. As always, however, “moisture-proof” does not mean “water-proof”, so don’t go crazy! This is a professional grade lens with professional sealing.
Viltrox continues with a trend that other lens makers are now imitating by including 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. This allows Viltrox to future proof their lenses and continue to improve them through firmware.
But Viltrox never seems to rest on their laurels. They’ve added a Bluetooth module to the lens, and through their new app for IOS or Android, you can also update firmware wirelessly. Right now the app function seems to be limited to just firmware updates, though the promise is that they will add more functionality to the app control in the future.
There is no lens based stabilization, so you will need to rely upon the in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped.
One thing worth noting is that when the lens is powered off, there will be some movement/clunking if you rotate the lens up and down. This can be very disturbing if you are not familiar with modern lens design. Many high end modern lenses employ floating elements that allow for better up close performance. The lens groups are not fixed, but float in a certain area, so when they are not energized they will move around a bit. This is by design, however, and when the camera is powered on, those elements will be energized and will not move any longer. You can rotate the lens up and down without anything moving around. The LAB 135mm doesn’t have the smoothest implementation of this that I’ve seen, however, so you will get a bit of a “clunk” when the lens is powered on and those floating elements lock into place.
This does allow the lens to have a very good close up performance, however, which is often not a strength for Viltrox lenses. You can focus as closely as 72cm, giving a maximum magnification figure of 1:4, or 0.25x, which is right there with the Samyang (0.24x) and the Sony (0.25x), though the actual up close performance of the Viltrox is better than either of them.
At 200% magnification, look at how much better the contrast and detail is for the LAB 135mm (left) vs the Samyang on the right:
That’s macro lens levels of performance there!
Viltrox has redesigned the front lens cap with a bevel along the front that makes it feel slimmer (good, as this is their biggest front lens cap so far). The lens also comes with the hood and a nicer than usual leather pouch (similar to Canon L-series lenses). There is some cushion on the bottom, but I don’t find these pouches nearly as useful as a good padded nylon case like what Sigma provides.
The LAB 135mm comes with the nicest lens hood that I’ve seen on a Viltrox lens. The plastics are extra thick and sturdy. There is a felt lining inside to keep light from bouncing around, and there is a rubberized transition section that helps to protect the lens from bumps and also makes a nice option for placing the lens facing down. The lens doesn’t have a lock, but does have a firm bayonet into place that sits securely. I had no issues with it coming loose. I will note that it can reversed for storage but fits very tightly, so it can be a little work to get off sometimes as the rubber of the hood grips the rubber of the focus ring.
As noted, the lens barrel construction reminds me a lot of Canon’s better L- series lenses, with an magnesium alloy body, which is the same material used in expensive camera bodies. The new LAB badge on the side of the barrel reminds you that this is from this new premium series of lenses.
While I don’t agree with all of the ergonomic choices Viltrox made with the LAB 135mm, I do think that this is a very nicely executed package. The lens feels high quality in the hands, and it handles like a premium lens. In many ways this feels like a much more expensive lens than the $899 USD price tag. The finish feels durable and I would expect the lens to hold up well for the long haul. This is a big, heavy lens, so that will obviously be a deterrent for many. But while this is the most extreme example on the market, it’s not like any of the alternatives are small and light. You’ll have to decide for yourself if that extra weight is made worth it by the sections to follow…
Autofocus and Video
I was excited to see that Viltrox was pioneering a new autofocus system on their most recent lenses, as I felt like A) they had gotten about as much out of their STM motors as they were going to get and B) a premium lens like this with big, heavy glass elements needs as much thrust in the focus motor as possible. This is their lens to receive not just a VCM (voice-coil motor), but dual “Hyper VCM” motors that work in harmony to drive autofocus. This is a similar approach to what Sony did with their 135mm F1.8 GM lens, and it great to see a third party company doing the same. The Samyang AF 135mm is very good optically (about the same as the GM), but there was big difference in autofocus performance. The Samyang focuses fairly well, but lacks the extreme thrust and confidence of the GM lens. Viltrox has managed to close that gap a lot with the dual Hyper VCM motors in the LAB 135mm. It’s hard to beat a premium first party lens on their own brand’s cameras, so the win goes to the GM lens for a few reasons, but using the Viltrox lens alongside the Samyang showed me that the AF in the LAB 135mm is much closer to the GM performance than the Samyang. I was able to snap up and immediately acquire birds in flight…even at F1.8.
I have been reviewing a prerelease copy of the lens, so the lens arrived without the final “retail firmware” update. AF worked fine on my Alpha 1, but wasn’t fully stable on my a7RV. Fortunately I was able to update the firmware to version 1.14 via the app and got stable performance on both platforms after that.
Autofocus speed is very good. Not quite instant, but near to it. Even major focus adjustments arrive quickly, and I saw good focus confidence even in dimmer lighting. I got this shot of a bookcase and photo on a shelf in a nearly dark room (1/25th of a second, F1.8, ISO 12,800).
Focus was a hair longer than good light, but it found proper focus very quickly.
I was able to track basketball players on the court without issue, with focus having enough speed to keep up with fast and erratic action.
Focus sound is near silent, with a very light whirring sound as focus moves back and forth. Focus confidence is very high, even when shooting through layers of grass to capture this dandelion bud.
I had pinpoint accuracy on the eye of a speaker in church even in profile. I took a number of photos and they were all well focused.
Perhaps most important, however, is the focus for portraits. I shot an extended portrait session with the LAB 135mm, occasionally switching over the Samyang 135mm for comparisons. The Viltrox was a champ in that setting, with perfectly focused results at all focus distances.
I doubt there is a lens out there that is going to give nicer results for portrait work (as a complete package) for this price.
Here’s a look at that kind of focus accuracy, even when depth of field is incredibly tiny (F1.8 here):
By comparison the Samyang lacked confidence, with more pulses and not that instant acquisition of the subject. And, when comparing the results side by side, I definitely preferred the Viltrox. The results are better focused, there is better microcontrast on the textures, and even the bokeh is more pleasing to me.
This is definitely in the upper tier of autofocus performance for third party lenses. It’s amazing how far Viltrox has come in just a few short years.
I will add one caveat, however. While the Viltrox is fast enough to keep up with a quick moving action, burst speed is limited by Sony to 15FPS. If you are using one of their sports bodies, like my Alpha 1, that means that you can only achieve half the maximum burst rate that you can with a Sony lens like the GM. That difference will be even more pronounced on a camera like the a9III. Fortunately when this lens comes to Nikon there will be no such limitation.
The focus excellence carries over the video side of things. Video focus pulls are smooth, quick, and confident. The advantage of not having a STM (stepping motor) is that there are no visible steps, allowing focus to move consistently and smoothly from one subject to another without any visible pauses. There is some focus breathing, but its not terrible for a such a long focal length.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went exceptionally well. Focus confidently moved from my hand to my eye and back without any settling or lack of confidence.
Overall video focus was excellent. Here’s a frame from a video where I was moving focus back and forth between two subjects. You can see that focus is excellent in this frame.
Viltrox clearly wanted the LAB series to be a statement in every area, and fortunately that includes autofocus. The dual Hyper VCM motors allow autofocus to keep up with everything that you’ll want to do with the lens, and, in particular, makes shooting portraits a painless joy.
Image Quality Breakdown
Ahhh, and now to my favorite part, because the LAB 135mm is just a special, special lens. I fell in love with the Zeiss Otus lenses because, despite their being ridiculously big and expensive, they were just so good optically. It might be heresy to say, but the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB is just that kind of lens. The optical design is 14 elements in 9 groups, with four of those being ED (low dispersion) elements and two of them being HD (high refractive index) lenses. The MTF is fantastic, with an absolutely stunning center and midframe performance that isn’t quite the same in the corners. At F8 the MTF is pretty much a straight line across the top, i.e. perfect.
Not everyone reads MTF, but if you do, here are the Samyang 135mm F1.8 and Sony GM 135mm F1.8 MTF charts for comparison.
On paper the Samyang lens is better than the GM and even slightly better than the LAB, but after testing multiple copies of the Samyang (and owning one), I can say that the LAB just delivers better microcontrast and more detail in real world results. I did several dozen head to head comparisons, and the LAB lens won all of them.
In fact, the Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 delivered once of the best all-round optical performances that I’ve ever seen and is essentially strong to extremely strong in all areas that I test. It is the rare lens that is both technically and artistically excellent.
More on this in a moment. Let’s look at the technical side of things.
I was expecting a lens well corrected for LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations), and that is the case here. I see mostly neutral results on either side of the plane of focus without any fringing.
I intentionally put the lens is some of the most intensive scenarios to produce fringing that I could devise, but it did brilliantly well in all of them. Here are some deep crops from three images that should have LoCA but clearly do not.
We’ve also got perfect corrections for LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) that typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. You’ll see no fringing on either side of the black and white transition areas.
Viltrox lenses have not always had great profile support, and if there is any advantage to this it is that they have gotten accustomed to doing a lot of the corrections optically rather than relying on software corrections. Never has that been truer on this lens. Check out my vignette and distortion test:
You may have noticed that the image on the right looks just like the image on the left. That’s because for the first time that I can remember there was nothing to correct. No distortion, no vignette. Here’s an uncorrected RAW image at F1.8. Notice that the corners look flawless.
In fact, I actually find that when stopping the lens down the corners almost look a little too bright! I would probably add a little vignette to this F5.6 shot to achieve my desired result.
We’ll move on to inspecting our test chart. This test has been done on a 61MP Sony a7RV sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine at high magnification:
If we take a look at crops (at 200%) at F1.8 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center and mid-frame performance is exceptionally good, and the corners are good but a bit softer.
So let’s put that in perspective. The premium lens in the class is the Sony 135mm GM. The LAB 135mm is sharper everywhere save in the corners, where the GM might have the slightest edge. (*this comparison is done on the 50MP Sony Alpha 1, as that was the camera that I tested the GM on)
The Samyang AF 135mm is also an extremely good lens optically, but the Viltrox shows a similar level of dominance everywhere but the extreme corners, which are close but might slightly favor the Samyang.
In real world directly compared shots with the Samyang (as I have it on hand right now), I found that the LAB consistently won all the comparisons. I feel pretty safe in saying that this is the sharpest 135mm lens that I’ve ever tested, though frankly all three of these lenses that I’ve mentioned are amazingly sharp.
Another thing worth noting is that the LAB 135mm consistently metered a little faster than the Samyang in my comparisons while delivering similar brightness levels, so I also believe that the T-stop is about one third stop faster than the Samyang. I wouldn’t at all be surprised to find that the LAB’s T-stop is very similar to its F-stop.
For the fun of it, let’s also compare it to the recent Sony 85mm F1.4 GM II, which is the sharpest 85mm lens that I’ve ever tested (and perhaps the sharpest lens I’ve ever tested, period). It has a little advantage in this comparison in that I’ve stopped it down to F1.8 to match the maximum aperture of the LAB 135mm.
The LAB 135mm still manages to take a win the middle, though the GM shows superiority in the mid-frame and corners. If I stop down to F2.8, the Viltrox slightly wins in the midframe, but the corners still belong to the 85GM II. But bottom line is that the Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 is in the very top tier of lens sharpness, with a center and midframe sharpness that rivals the very best lenses I’ve seen.
I found it much like like the 85GM II in terms of microcontrast, as when I would zoom into images I would discover even more detail than expected time and again. Take this shot at F1.8 of some little thistles catch the faint sun on a foggy morning.
It’s a pretty image, but the amazing part is when you zoom in (here at about 115%) and discover that in the narrow plane of focus all of the little water droplets on the thistle as clearly delineated, and you can even see all of the little droplets of moisture in the air.
Or with this portrait shot, where even when shooting at a distance (I was separated from the subject by a small body of water), I was able to get a clear separation of the subject from the background (and great detail on my model).
The extremely low vignette meant that I could shoot (uncorrected) in the very last light of day get evenly illuminated results even when the corners needed to be bright.
You can probably tell that the optical performance here has left me very impressed.
Stopping down to F2 didn’t really offer any boost that I could see, but I did see a slight improvement at F2.8. You can see a definite improvement in the “two dollars” area on the lower right side of this comparison.
Somewhat surprisingly, there is even more sharpness available at F4, and now the corners are pin sharp.
F5.6 has a hair more contrast, and image quality is just exceptionally good everywhere. Landscape results in the F4-F8 range are just exceptional, with amazing color, contrast, and detail.
Physics will affect even the mightiest of lenses, however, so expect diffraction to start to soften the image by F11 and more obviously by F16, which is minimum aperture (though this lens is still sharper than many lenses at its weakest!)
So, the Viltrox LAB 135mm has delivered near APO levels of sharpness and contrast. But what few lenses are able to achieve is a blend of incredible sharpness and contrast while also delivering soft bokeh. That was arguably the weakest aspect of the Sony 135 GM. It was so well corrected that the bokeh wasn’t quite as exceptional as what I would like. The LAB 135mm is the rare lens that also manages to deliver really beautiful bokeh, however.
First of all, it does very well with specular highlights. Here’s an F1.8 image that shows that there is some geometric deformation near the edges of the frame, but overall the bokeh looks great. Many times the specular highlights in an image like this are tainted by some fringing around the edges, but the LAB 135mm handles that with aplomb.
If you really want all round specular highlights, stop down to F2.8, and it is nearly perfect there.
The close focus capabilities combined with the long focal length and large maximum aperture of the LAB 135 mean that it is easy to very strongly blur a background.
The next two images show what happens as you move progressively back a few steps, and, in the case of the latter image, even when stopping down to F2.5:
But arguably the most unique and valuable thing about a 135mm lens, and, in particular one like the LAB 135 that had the heady combination of sharpness/contrast and soft bokeh, is the ability to strongly separate your subject from the background even at a distance. This shot is far greater than full length, and yet there is still great subject isolation at F1.8:
I love images from a 135mm where you have both big scale but still have that very professional subject isolation – a “cutout” type look.
135mm is a great outdoor portrait lens, but there are some potential downsides. You need some working room with a longer focal length like this, so it isn’t as flexible indoors. And, even outdoors, working with a 135mm lens means that sometimes communicating with your subject is difficult. I was probably 60+ feet away from my model for the shot above, which means that I would have to shout at him to be heard. This is part of the reason why many portrait photographers stick with an 85mm lens. I do find that 135mm images are more special, however.
In the early stages of Viltrox’s lens development their optical glass was, well, more budget oriented, but that has radically changed in the past couple of years. I find Viltrox’s current optical glass to be excellent, and it tends to be very neutral. Colors are rich, but not oversaturated. The images are neither warm nor cool, allowing you to choose your preference either in camera with the white balance or in post.
Autumn in Ontario, Canada where I currently live is a gorgeous season, and I enjoyed shooting a few of those beautiful scenes with this lens.
Flare resistance was also very good on the LAB 135mm. It actually has a shallower lens hood than the Samyang 135mm, and that is because it doesn’t need it as badly. The Samyang isn’t bad, but the Viltrox is definitely better at resisting flare. You can see the exact same shot side by side here, and see how much more veiling there is with the Samyang:
The Viltrox holds its contrast much better along with the color fidelity.
I shot into intense sun a number of times but without any kind of negative impact. The LAB 135mm shows an amazing performance for this type of lens, and, as you can see below, did it a variety of aperture values (shown below are F1.8, F11, and F5.6).
This adds a lot of additional versatility for portrait photographers, as they can shoot backlit subjects without fear of their images falling apart. This image shows amazing contrast at F1.8 despite the intense sun reflected off the water near the boat.
One a final note on the optics, I was able to test one very early morning for coma. This makes yet another interesting application for this lens, as the longer focal length lends itself to a different perspective on astrophotography. Coma was very well controlled even into the corners, and the extremely low fringing assures that bright heavenly bodies aren’t ruined by some nasty color smears around them.
The bottom line is that this is one the most complete lenses that I’ve tested optically, and I would be hard pressed to point to a better optical performance from any lens priced under $1000, and could probably count the number of better optical performances, period, on one hand. If you’d like to see more images in my extensive image gallery, just click here.
Conclusion
The Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB is a rare treat for a reviewer like me. To do my job correctly I need to invest a lot of time and care into using and evaluating a lens rather I personally enjoy it or not. It can be very frustrating to have a camera in hand in a beautiful photography opportunity and be stuck with a lousy lens attached to the camera because that’s what I happen to be testing. But the LAB 135mm has allowed me to both do my job (as a lens tester), but do photography with one of the nicest optical instruments I’ve had the privilege to use. As I got towards the end of this review I had a hard time even choosing which images to conclude with as there were so many great photos yet unused in the review.
The long leadup to the release of this first LAB lens has allowed a lot of anticipation to build. Viltrox has been demonstrating that they are a serious new player and capable of making amazing lenses, and this series was to be their best yet. And thus far I am not disappointed, as while the LAB 135mm is big and heavy, the great autofocus and amazing optics make it a joy to use nonetheless.
Yes, it may be too big and heavy for some. And yes, there are a few ergonomic choices that I question, but at the same time Viltrox has once again seriously advanced to the next level. Their new Hyper VCM AF motors are definitely next level in speed and smoothness. The optical performance from the LAB 135mm is near perfect. The build quality is premium throughout. And, the price tag of $899 is nothing short of a tremendous bargain for a lens that matches or exceeds the Sony 135mm F1.8 GM in almost every category…and that lens costs $2100. The Samyang AF 135mm F1.8 is an excellent lens, and is $100 cheaper at $799 USD, but other than weight and price, the Viltrox wins every comparison that I put them through, with superior autofocus, optics, build, and more. If you have GM tastes but don’t have a GM budget, then put your money down for the Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 LAB; you won’t regret it!
Pros:
The LAB series is supposed to be Viltrox’s BEST…and it shows
Beautiful built lens
Feature rich
Very good weather sealing
USB port for firmware updates along with Bluetooth for wireless access
New Hyper VCM motors are fast and accurate
Focus pulls are nicely damped
Exceptionally sharp lens that matches or bests the very best in the center and mid-frame
No distortion or vignette
Exceptional control of fringing
Colors look great
Amazing contrast
Gorgeous bokeh
Great flare resistance
Low coma
Amazing price to performance ratio
Cons:
Big and heavy
Don’t love the aperture ring design
Some might be put off from the “clunk” of the floating elements
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, LAB, Viltrox LAB, #LAB, #LAB135, Viltrox 135mm, Normal, Full Frame, F1.8, f/1.8, VCM, Viltrox LAB 135mm F1.8 FE, Viltrox 135mm Review, Viltrox AF 135mm F1.8 FE Review, VCM, Pancake, Chip, 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
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