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
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.
Earlier this year I did one of my first ever Nikon Z-mount reviews, and it was of a brand new Viltrox lens that released first to Nikon – the Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5. I found it to be quite an impressive little lens for the money in my review, and noted in that review that we would almost certainly be seeing that lens in other mounts like Sony E-mount in the near future. Fast forward three months and that time has arrived, and the Sony E-mount version (which we’ll call the 40mm F2.5E in this review) is now available. The 40mm F2.5E offers a “normal” angle of view on full frame cameras and a slightly faster maximum aperture than equivalent zooms covering this focal length. But probably most attractive to potential buyers will be the budget price of just $158 USD, as while Nikon has an attractive 40mm F2 Z lens that is reasonably priced at under $300, the closest comparison first party lens on Sony is the $600 Sony 40mm F2.5 G (a lens I did appreciate in my review, but that’s a HUGE price difference!) I suspect a lot of people will appreciate a budget alternative, so we’ll explore whether this is worth considering in today’s review. You can watch the video review or just read 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.
The Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5E is a compact, lightweight, and tough little lens with relatively few features. But it also is capable of producing beautiful photos, delivering great autofocus, and being an extremely easy lens to throw into a bag and bring along.
When you combine this with a budget price, you have a lens that is going to interest a lot of people as a an inexpensive “normal” lens.
So is this a lens that you should consider? Keep reading to find out.
This review is a mix of elements from my previous review (on Nikon) though updated with all of the specific Sony details and many new photos taken on Sony.
Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5E Build and Handling
As noted, the build here is basic, but that’s to be expected at this kind of price point. At least everything is built around a metal lens mount.
There’s also the ubiquitous Viltrox feature there – a USB-C port to enable firmware updates.
This has been a great move by Viltrox, as it has enabled them to keep their lenses current and to allow for some improvement to function (like autofocus). The ability to easily update firmware assures that lenses will stay compatible in the future, which is obviously very important.
The E-mount version of the lens is identical to the Z-mount version but with one exception; the Z mount version has a much wide flange near the lens mount to accommodate the much larger diameter (55mm) of the Z-mount vs the E-mount (which is 46mm). This does change the overall diameter of the lens a bit since this is actually the widest point of the lens. You can see that the shape is a bit different in the comparison of the two here.
The primary objective for Viltrox is to keep things small and lightweight. And in that metric they have been very successful. The 40mm F2.5E is 65mm (2.5″) in diameter and right under 60mm (2.2″) in length. It has a common 52mm front filter thread and weighs just 167g (5.9oz). That’s 13g lighter than the Z mount version. The weight here is so negligible that you never need think twice about throwing it into the bag for a hike or a trip.
I used this on some of the larger Sony cameras, though frankly there isn’t a radical size difference between many of Sony’s models. It would be a great pairing on the compact A7C series of cameras, though, making for a truly lightweight kit.
The size is virtually identical to the 20mm F2.8. The two lens hoods are identical, and I suspect that if one were to compare lenses for identical mounts they would be identical.
If we look inside, we can see that there are seven aperture blades that aren’t particularly rounded. You will see that aperture shape at times. And, as is sometimes the case with Viltrox lenses, I don’t find the aperture shape perfectly symmetrical, either.
The only thing on the lens barrel is the manual focus ring, but fortunately that is pretty well executed. It’s nice and wide, has good feel, and offers good manual focus precision without visible steps. Nothing really to complain about there, particularly on such an inexpensive lens.
There is a very slim lens hood included that bayonets into place but without as much precision and confidence as I would like. It doesn’t feel like it really “clicks” into place and locks in the right position. A lens pouch is also included. The pouch doesn’t add a lot of protection value, but, like the hood, at least it is included. There are many more expensive lenses that include neither a pouch or a hood.
Viltrox lenses have traditionally had a fairly poor minimum focus distance and maximum magnification standard, but fortunately that is starting to change. The Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5Z has a minimum focus distance of 34cm and a respectable maximum magnification of 0.14x.
Up close performance is only okay at F2.5. You’ll need to stop down a bit to get maximum sharpness and contrast.
This inexpensive lens does not have weather sealing, though that’s obviously not expected in such an inexpensive lens. This is a pretty basic lens, but it doesn’t feel “cheap” or “plasticky”. It is primarily made of plastics, but they are good quality, and the lens has a tough, durable feel that seems like it will hold up well for the long haul. I’ve traveled a fair bit with the 20mm F2.8 that is the virtual twin to this lens, and I’ve had zero problems with it. I expect the same here.
Autofocus and Video
The Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5E utilizes a stepping focus motor (STM) that works well, though it isn’t blazingly fast. Focus changes for most things are quick enough for you to forget about autofocus, but every now and then when a major focus change is required you are reminded that this is an autofocus motor that could use a little extra thrust. Fortunately accuracy isn’t a problem; I got consistently well focused results.
I love 40mm for “everyday photography”; the ordinary moments when you just want to have a camera on hand to capture the moments. I like it for family events around a room, but it was also a fun lens to throw into a little bag and take kayaking with my wife and I.
You can see that focus locked in very precisely on Nala’s eye here.
There is a faint clicking sound if you put your ear right next to the lens barrel, but if I held the camera at chest level and racked focus here and there, I couldn’t hear anything. Focus speed was good but not instantaneous in my formal tests.
I didn’t get a chance to shoot any portraits with the Sony E-mount version, but I used the Fuji X-mount version for portraits and it worked fine (and autofocus is much better on Sony than Fuji!)
I did find that focus would sometimes lag behind a moving subject. In this shot of Nala, the focus has fallen to her shoulder rather than on her face.
Switching to video found focus pulls smooth and nicely damped, but not speedy. You could turn the autofocus speed up in camera for focus pulls if desired. What I didn’t see was any hunting or pulsing. Autofocus was solid in terms of confidence. There’s just enough focus breathing for me to notice it, though it isn’t bad.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it didn’t go well. The lens wasn’t reactive enough, and so it often hadn’t really switched to focus on my hand by the time I moved it again.
The natural speed is more set for smoothness, so I found that real world focus transitions were fairly smooth and cinematic, but not particularly fast or reactive.
So I give good marks for confidence on the subject and not being jittery, but poor remarks for the reactiveness of the focus motor when needing to move to a new subject. On a positive note, video AF was able to track Nala quite well as she moved rapidly toward me while I backtracked to keep her from reaching me. Here’s a screenshot from that:
The bottom line is that the focus system for both stills and video is smooth and confident, but not incredibly fast. It’s fast enough for most situations, but there might be a few situations where you find yourself wanting more. I was actually more impressed by the AF in the Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7 that I just reviewed.
Image Quality Breakdown
The optical formula is 10 elements in 6 groups, with five of those elements being special elements (including 1 ED, 3 HR, and 1 aspherical element). The MTF chart shows a good (not great) center performance, a dip right past mid-frame, and then a slight recovery in the corners.
I started reviewing Viltrox lenses right at the beginning, and at first I was less than impressed by the optical glass when it came to colors. But Viltrox has really improved their optical glass in the past two years, and now I find colors both neutral and natural looking.
There is a slight amount of LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations), but nothing too severe.
In a real world application, I can see a tiny bit of fringing after the plane of focus on these blossoms, but there’s nothing that will actually be disruptive.
There’s also minimal LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) that typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. Here we can see at F8 there there isn’t much to see.
So no significant issues there.
If we move on to vignette and distortion we find good results here. There is next to no distortion (a +1 corrected an almost undetectable amount of barrel distortion) and vignette is less on Sony than what it was on Nikon. I needed only +43 to correct on Sony while it took a +72 to correct on Nikon. I think this has a lot to do with the difference in the mount diameter and flange difference. That’s about 1 1/2 stops of vignette.
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 F2.5 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center performance is good, but the mid-frame and the corners stand out as being sharper than most budget lenses.
That was reflected in my real world results, which I consistently found pleasingly sharp and with nice amounts of contrast.
Stopping down the 1/3rd stop to F2.8 doesn’t make any kind of radical difference in sharpness or contrast, but it does reduce vignette a bit and increases contrast just enough that the overall looks brighter and slightly snappier.
A more obvious improvement is found from F2.8 to F4, where image quality is now very sharp all across the frame…including the far corners.
There’s a bit more on tap by F5.6, and that makes for very nice landscape results that are richly detailed, have good contrast, and exhibit nice color as well.
Expect the typical diffraction pattern on high resolution cameras where the image is a little softer by F11 and softer still at the minimum aperture of F16, though frankly this isn’t as bad as I often see.
This a degree of sharpness that easily surpasses what you’ll find in a typical “nifty fifty” lens. The maximum of F2.5 isn’t particularly bright, though the lens makes up for it by delivering great sharpness wide open. I zoomed in to 100% magnification on many images and liked what I saw.
Bokeh is a subjective measurement, and I personally find the bokeh from the 40mm F2.5Z a bit of a mixed bag. Probably the most controversial element will be the outlining around specular highlights (sometimes called “bubble bokeh”). Some people love it, some people hate it. Here’s an example:
You can also see that the geometry gets a bit squeezed near the edges of the frame, losing the circular shape.
I don’t mind the look of the outlining of the specular highlights in the image above, but in other situations I found that it created some busyness.
Get a little closer, however, and that bokeh gets softer looking and quite nice.
This shot of a chain-link fence shows both the good and the bad, with a fair bit of outlining in the defocused blackberry vines.
Again, this is a budget optic, and so the bokeh really isn’t bad for the price, but neither is it incredible. I’m more impressed with the lens’ sharpness than its bokeh.
Flare resistance is a bit of a mixed bag. On the plus side, I didn’t see any egregious ghosting patterns either at wide or small apertures.
But you will get some flashing effects when the sun or bright light source is either at the edge of the frame or right out of frame (you can see a bit of this in the first image above). You can see the effect in this image here, though I’ve used it to artistic effect and like the look here.
The Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5E should serve as a nice street lens, general purpose lens, and even a budget portrait lens for when you want a little more of the environment in the shot.
A lens with a maximum aperture of F2.5 is not incredibly bright, but when you consider that a typical kit lens is going to be either F5.6 or F6.3 by 40mm, that means this inexpensive little prime will be giving 200-300% more light gathering potential, making it a much more attractive low light performer than such lenses.
Overall, I would say there is far more good than bad here. You can check out more photos by visiting the image gallery here.
Conclusion
Sony shooters obviously have a wealth of lenses available to them, but even with all of that I’m not sure that there is anything that quite compares to the Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5. Sometimes after having saved a long time to buy a new camera, there isn’t much left over to spend on lenses, and being able to get a quality full frame lens for just $160 USD is fantastic. If you’ve only got a kit lens, for example, getting a brighter lightweight prime lens will open up both better low light performance and more image sharpness as well.
The 40mm F2.5E has a lot of strengths and a very decent (if simple) build for the money. Autofocus speed is adequately fast on Sony, and is also quiet and accurate. The 40mm F2.5E has a number of strengths and no real fatal weaknesses. I suspect that no one would know that you are shooting with inexpensive glass from the images alone.
For the money, this is a great little performer, and the light weight makes it an easy lens to throw into the bag for an alternate perspective or aperture value. I love lenses like this for travel, and this is a great pairing for the smaller a7C series of cameras. There’s no real natural competitor for the 40mm F2.5 E on Sony that costs under $300, making this a great value option for those looking for a “normal” prime.
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 40mm, Normal, Full Frame, F2.5, f/2.5, STM, Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5 E, Viltrox 40mm Review, Viltrox AF 40mm F2.5 E 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.
I have found it interesting to revisit certain lenses as mounts like Nikon’s Z-mount have started to open up to third party development. It’s interesting to see just how well these lenses translate onto a new platform. My very first review on my new Nikon Z8 body this spring was of another Viltrox full frame lens – the more premium Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 lens. I really love that lens, though at 110mm long and 550g, it isn’t particularly small. So what if you want to travel small and light instead? That’s where the second Viltrox wide angle option comes into the play, as the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is very small (about 60mm long) and light (only 173g). It’s also inexpensive, with a price tag of just $175 USD. So does the Viltrox 20Z make sense for Nikon Z-mount cameras? Dive into either the text review or video review to find out, or just enjoy the photos 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.
I have previously done a full review of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 on Sony E-mount, which you can visit here. I’ve even done a travel video with that lens, which you can see here:
So rather than being a completely new video, this is more of an updated review that looks at the subtle changes to build, autofocus, and optical performance that we find on Nikon rather than Sony. While the Viltrox 20Z retains one difficult flaw here on Nikon, it also produces images that I tend to really like.
I took that image in the woods on a hike in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario, and I mention that because the Viltrox continues to excel as a great hiking/travel wide angle, as it is very light, has a great focal length, and delivers images that look great.
20mm is in the sweet spot for landscape type photography on full frame, with an angle of view of 91.6°. It allows you to get beautiful, dynamic images that really pop.
I would call the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z one of the best wide angle options currently available if you want to travel light. Enjoy the photos of the lens and those taken with it below.
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 20mm, Viltrox 20mm F2.8, 20mm, F2.8, STM, AF, #viltrox, Nikon, Nikon Z8, Z, Z-mount, Z8, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #NIKON, #Z8, #NIKONZ8
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 have found it interesting to revisit certain lenses as mounts like Nikon’s Z-mount have started to open up to third party development. It’s interesting to see just how well these lenses translate onto a new platform. My very first review on my new Nikon Z8 body this spring was of another Viltrox full frame lens – the more premium Viltrox AF 16mm F1.8 lens. I really love that lens, though at 110mm long and 550g, it isn’t particularly small. So what if you want to travel small and light instead? That’s where the second Viltrox wide angle option comes into the play, as the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is very small (about 60mm long) and light (only 173g). It’s also inexpensive, with a price tag of just $175 USD. So does the Viltrox 20Z make sense for Nikon Z-mount cameras? Dive into either the text or videos and find out!
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.
I have previously done a full review of the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 on Sony E-mount, which you can visit here. I’ve even done a travel video with that lens, which you can see here:
So rather than being a completely new video, this is more of an updated review that looks at the subtle changes to build, autofocus, and optical performance that we find on Nikon rather than Sony. While the Viltrox 20Z retains one difficult flaw here on Nikon, it also produces images that I tend to really like.
I took that image in the woods on a hike in the Blue Mountain region of Ontario, and I mention that because the Viltrox continues to excel as a great hiking/travel wide angle, as it is very light, has a great focal length, and delivers images that look great.
20mm is in the sweet spot for landscape type photography on full frame, with an angle of view of 91.6°. It allows you to get beautiful, dynamic images that really pop.
I would call the Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z one of the best wide angle options currently available if you want to travel light. Why? Let’s dive into the details together and discover the reasons.
Build and Handling
Many of the recent Viltrox lenses have a metal, more hefty feel to them, but the Viltrox AF 20mm embraces a more conventional, lightweight design in polycarbonates (engineered plastics). The very first Viltrox lens I reviewed was a manual focus 20mm F1.8 lens, and that lens weighed in at a whopping 775g, or 618g heavier than this new lens. The new AF 20mm is a completely different kind of lens, only 68mm in diameter (2.67″) and 60.8mm in length (2.3″). It weighs only 173g (6.1oz). That’s a little bigger in every dimension from the E-mount version, largely because the Z mount version has a much wider flange near the lens mount to accommodate the much larger diameter (55mm) of the Z-mount vs the E-mount (which is 46mm). This does change the overall diameter of the lens a bit since this is actually the widest point of the lens. That also makes the lens a bit heavier (+16g). You can see that the lens profile looks a bit different. in the comparison of the two here.
I mentioned the 16mm F1.8, and it dwarfs the 20mm F2.8 (and the Nikon 20mm F1.8 S is longer still!)
Up front we have a 52mm filter thread, which is a small but relatively common filter size. The front of the lens fascia has a variety of information imprinted on it and has a classic profile. You’ll want to stick to slim filters to avoid adding any additional vignette, which is already very heavy on the Nikon version.
There is a very slim lens hood included that bayonets into place but without as much precision and confidence as I would like. It doesn’t feel like it really “clicks” into place and locks in the right position. A lens pouch is also included. The pouch doesn’t add a lot of protection value, but, like the hood, at least it is included. There are many more expensive lenses that include neither a pouch or a hood.
There is no aperture ring or switches on the barrel. The only feature on the lens barrel is a wide manual focus ring. The manual focus ring has a nice amount of damping and moves smoothly. All typical manual focus aids on your Nikon camera will work with the Viltrox.
The Viltrox AF 20mm employs a lower blade count in the aperture iris with 7 blades. I like a higher blade count on many lenses, but sometimes a lower blade count on a wide angle lens works better to produce cleaner sunstars.
The Viltrox AF 20mm is somewhat stuck in between, however, as the lower blade count keeps the aperture from being completely circular when stopped down, but I also don’t find the 14 pointed sunstars to have incredible definition (points to the rays).
We have an important Viltrox standard in the form a USB-C port on the metal lens mount that allows you to connect the lens to a computer and update the firmware directly. Viltrox’s firmware update process is very simple and easy.
Viltrox lenses have traditionally had a fairly poor minimum focus distance and maximum magnification standard, but fortunately that is starting to change. The Viltrox AF 20Z has a minimum focus distance of 19cm and a respectable maximum magnification of 0.17x.
Before 2024 I had never seen a Viltrox with a magnification figure higher than 0.10x, so 0.17x sounds like a win. It’s enough to get close to a subject and blur out the background a bit.
While some Viltrox lenses have started to come with weather sealing, this inexpensive 20Z lens does not have it. It does have a HD Nano multilayer coating with water-resistant and antifouling coating on the front element.
Here on Nikon there really aren’t a lot of rivals for this lens, so it really fills a niche. Nikon’s own closest competitor is the Nikkor Z 20mm F1.8 S, but that lens costs 6x as much, is nearly twice as long, and weighs 325g more. It’s not really a competitor at all other than having the same focal length. That makes the Viltrox an inexpensive, stripped down lens that will serve a different kind of audience. The lens is light but doesn’t feel cheap or flimsy. There are no bells and whistles here, but that’s okay at this price point.
Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 STM Autofocus
The Viltrox AF 20mm STM utilizes a stepping focus motor (STM) that makes fast, quiet focus changes. Focus felt silent unless I put my ear up next to the barrel, where I could hear some very light whirring during major focus changes. When doing focus speed tests, I could feel inertia shifting in the lens, but there wasn’t anything to hear. I had no problem locking quickly on to subjects near or far.
Unlike when I compare lenses across, say, Sony and Fuji, where there is a huge difference in autofocus performance, there really isn’t much of a difference between autofocus on my Nikon Z8 and what I would see on my Sony a7RV or Alpha 1. There wasn’t really any area that felt all that different.
I did a focus speed tests both indoors and outdoors and was generally impressed with focus speed and the confidence of focus acquisitions. Focus speed was nice and quick; not quite instant, but with no obvious lag between near and distance subjects. I did notice a bit of micropulses, so I’m not sure focus lock is always quite as confident as on Sony, but neither did I notice any issues in real world shooting.
I got accurate focus when faces were in the frame, though, to be fair, depth of field is already so large at even 6 feet that it would be hard for them to not be in focus.
The same attributes apply to video AF. Autofocus continues to be silent during video focus pulls and pulls are quick, but not always as confident as I would like. I definitely saw some of those micropulses at times as focus didn’t seem to full lock and settle, even though it had reached the proper focus point. There is a fairly small amount of focus breathing that shouldn’t prove a problem for video shooters.
My hand test where I alternately block the view of my face with my hand and then remove it went reasonably well, though the lens is set up for more smooth and controlled focus changes, so the transitions from my hand to my face and vice versa weren’t always reactive.
On a more positive note, I shot a number of video clips with the 20Z and my Z8 of my wife’s new vehicle for a review of it, and focus was stable in those shots.
This will a solid lens for either gimbal work or vlogging. It’s very lightweight, allowing for a wider variety of gimbals to be used. I did a quick vlogging test and focus had no problem staying locked on my eye as I moved along or spun around. Here’s a screenshot from a vlogging sequence:
Other than a little less confidence in some of my tests, I felt that autofocus was roughly on par with what I saw on Sony. In real world situations, focus was flawless: quick, quiet, and accurate. You really can’t ask for much more than that from such an inexpensive lens.
Image Quality Breakdown
The Viltrox AF 20mm sports an optical formula with 10 elements in 8 groups. This includes 2 ED lenses, 1 HR element, and 2 aspherical elements. The MTF chart suggests good but not exceptional center sharpness with a steady decline towards the edges wide open and with a nice uptick in sharpness when stopped down.
I felt like real world results were stronger than what the MTF suggests, though with one significant caveat that I’ll detail in just a moment. Real world results looked sharp and detailed across most of the frame with a bit of a dip in the corners.
We’ll work through the chart results by first looking at distortion and vignette. The latter tends to be the one area that varies between Sony and Nikon versions. There’s not a lot of distortion here, though what does exist is fairly complex. You essentially can’t correct it one direction without creating some distortion in another. For example, if I treat the distortion as pincushion distortion (a -2 correction in Lightroom’s Distortion slider), I can get the outside rectangle as close to straight as possible, but this comes at the cost of creating a bit of bulge in the inner lines, however. Alternatively, I can work at getting the inner lines as straight as possible by correcting for barrel distortion (a +3 correction). This has the negative effect of really exaggerating the distortion in the corners, however.
Bottom line is that the actual correction profile will work best. Thankfully the quantity of distortion is quite low, and that means that you can mostly get away with leaving it uncorrected.
So far I’ve always seen more vignette on Z-mount versions of lenses also available in E-mount. On Sony, I used a +78 to correct the vignette, whereas on Nikon I had to max out the slider. There’s at least four stops of vignette in the far corners. You are probably more likely to see uncorrected vignette than you are distortion in real world images. This image has not received correction for either:
At this point, Viltrox lenses aren’t receiving correction in camera for JPEGs or video. I mostly shoot RAW images, so I don’t think about it much, but those of you who typically rely on in-camera corrections and shoot JPEG are going to be disappointed here. My hope that is Viltrox gets to a place where they get more support and their lenses get in-camera corrections.
The 20mm F2.8 showed relatively low amounts of longitudinal chromatic aberrations. I saw very minimal amounts of fringing here.
That’s not really unusual for a wide angle lens with only a moderately large maximum aperture, but it does happen. Not having an issue with that allows you to shoot in high contrast situations without worrying about fringing.
Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas (like bare branches framed at the edge of images), but that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. You can see a nice, neutral transition from black to white on the corners of my test chart.
That’s an area of strength, as many inexpensive wide angle lenses really suffer from fringing in the corners.
So how about resolution and contrast? All chart tests done with a Nikon Z8 (45MP) using a tripod and a two second timer. Here’s a look at my test chart:
And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner at F2.8:
The center looks excellent, with high acuity (a word I use to describe resolving fine details) and strong contrast. The midframe looks very good as well, and while the corners are considerably softer than the center, they don’t look as bad relatively as what I saw on Sony.
Because I saw such poor performance in the corners on Sony, I proactively did a second test where I focused in the corner on my Nikon test, and there’s a pretty obvious improvement in the corners when focused there:
This points to something called “field curvature”, where the plane of focus isn’t flat or consistent. The biggest challenge at the distance of my test chart is that if you focus in the corners, the center isn’t as sharp. In the case of the Z-mount version, however, neither shift was as extreme.
That being said, I did notice that the corners in real world images were never as sharp as the center 2/3rds of the image, and that’s a bit more exaggerated when shooting at F2.8.
Here’s a real world landscape at F2.8, and you can definitely see that the edge is a fair bit softer than the center:
You can see from this comparison that the edges do improve considerably, but are never pin sharp. Here’s an F5.6 comparison:
Real world corner sharpness is one of my least favorite aspects of the lens, though the truth of the matter is that I’ve seen much worse results from much more expensive lenses. I did see good centering with roughly equal results in all four corners of the image.
Stopping down to F4 showed an uptick in contrast and (to a lesser extent) resolution. You can see from this comparison in the midframe that contrast has significantly improved.
There’s a little bit more on tap if we stop on down to F5.6:
Peak performance for consistency across the frame on my Z8 comes at F8, which looks really strong across the frame. I would choose F8 as an optimal landscape aperture.
After F8, diffraction will start to soften the image, though the effect isn’t as pronounced as on some lenses. The lens is softest at F16 (minimum aperture), but not much more so than F2.8.
This inexpensive lens makes for a nice landscape lens. It’s a great focal length, and the light weight makes it a breeze to bring along as a compliment to something longer. I found that I tended to really like the overall “look” of images from the lens, which is surprising in a lens so inexpensive.
Color is subjective to some degree, but I didn’t notice anything unusual or off about the color rendering. It seemed reasonably neutral to me – neither garish or flat. Greens seemed very nicely saturated in these images, but that was accurate to the scene.
Skin tones seemed accurate in shots with people in them:
Overall I found that colors seemed accurate and I was generally happy with the images that I got during my review period.
Flare resistance was fairly good but not exceptionally good. At all tested apertures contrast stayed good, but there is a flare/ghosting pattern that is faint at F2.8 but becomes more defined when the lens is stopped down. Overall I would say that results are fairly good for such an inexpensive lens.
Bottom line is that the portability of the Viltrox 20Z combined with the fact that you can make some pretty great looking images with it makes this lens a great pick to bring along when hiking or traveling.
I personally find the combination of light weight, low price, and this optical performance to be a pretty compelling package. This lens feels as compelling as many lenses that I’ve reviewed costing 2-3 times as much. You can see more beautiful images by visiting the image gallery here.
Conclusion
The Viltrox AF 20mm F2.8 Z is a surprisingly interesting lens, and I feel like it fills a real void on Nikon. The fact that Z mount has only recently opened up to third party development means that, unlike Sony, there is a lot of gaps in the lineup. There just really isn’t much other options in terms of cheap, light wide angle lenses, and the Viltrox provides a surprisingly high performing little optic.
This is a great focal length for a lot of different applications, and I found it an easy lens to throw into the bag and bring along for a wider perspective. I suspect that it will stick around in my own Nikon kit for the times I want to travel with a longer focal length but want to augment my options with a wide angle lens.
Undoubtedly we will see more alternatives in the future as more and more third party lensmakers develop for Z-mount, but at the moment the Viltrox 20Z pretty much stands alone. In many ways, however, this will be a hard lens to top, because it really is quite excellent for the $175 price tag. Happy shooting!
Pros:
Lightweight, compact design
Well executed, smooth manual focus ring
USB-C port for firmware updates
Quick and quiet autofocus
Good focus accuracy
Good center and midframe sharpness wide open
Excellent sharpness across most of the the frame when stopped down
Fairly low distortion
Good color rendering
Fantastic price to performance ratio
Fills a serious need on Nikon
Cons:
Corners always lag a bit behind the rest of the frame
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 20mm, Viltrox 20mm F2.8, 20mm, F2.8, STM, AF, #viltrox, Nikon, Nikon Z8, Z, Z-mount, Z8, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #NIKON, #Z8, #NIKONZ8
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.
Viltrox is clearly a very ambitious company. I’ve had the unique opportunity to start from the beginning with them, reviewing their first 20mm F1.8 manual focus lens in early 2019. Then came an 85mm F1.8 manual focus, then their first autofocus lens right after that (also an 85mm F1.8). They spent a few years honing their craft with fairly standard “series” lenses (23mm, 33mm, and 56mm F1.4 APS-C lenses, then 35, 50mm, and 50mm F1.8 full frame lenses). But I first noticed them start to break out with a more ambitious lens in the form of the 13mm F1.4 APS-C lens, and then came the standout Pro series (27mm and 75mm F1.2 for APS-C) and the amazing 16mm F1.8 full frame lens, which was their first premium full frame lens. They have now diversified into their high performing yet lightweight “Air” series (20mm F2.8, 40mm F2.5, and 56mm F1.7) while also prepping the launch of the ultra high performance LAB series. Ambitious indeed. But part of what makes Viltrox unique is that they are simultaneously tackling both the high end of the market (LAB and PRO series) while also addressing the extreme budget end of the spectrum (AIR series). Nothing illustrates that better than their next two lens releases – the ultra high performance LAB 135mm F1.8 VCM and their cheapest lens yet – the Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 VCM micr-pancake lens that they have nicknamed “the Chip” (as in ‘as thin as a potato chip’. And at just 15.3mm in length, this is the second thinnest lens I’ve ever reviewed, and easily the thinnest autofocusing lens that I’ve ever tested. And at a price tag of just $99 USD, it’s a lens that anyone can afford. But is this tiny little thing worth buying? Find out in the video review, read 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.
This a very different kind of lens for Viltrox, as producing a lens this thin means that there are some things that will have to be compromised. For many such lenses, what gets sacrificed is image quality along with functionality. While the functionality is a little different here, fortunately the image quality is not.
But at the least, the functionality is different. This is the first “fixed aperture” lens for Viltrox, in that the 28mm Chip is always F4.5. Not bigger, not smaller. No aperture ring or aperture control from within camera. Aperture is fixed at F4.5.
There also isn’t any manual focus here. Whereas the only smaller lens that I’ve ever reviewed was manual focus only (the Brightin Star 28mm F2.8), the Viltrox 28mm Chip is autofocus only. There is no manual focus ring. Fortunately autofocus is good enough that you probably won’t miss it, and, frankly, the lens is so compact that there just isn’t room for any rings on the barrel.
So let’s dive a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of this extremely unique new lens.
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 28mm, Normal, Full Frame, F4.5, f/4.5, VCM, Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 E, Viltrox 28mm Review, Viltrox AF 28mm F2.5 E 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.
Viltrox is clearly a very ambitious company. I’ve had the unique opportunity to start from the beginning with them, reviewing their first 20mm F1.8 manual focus lens in early 2019. Then came an 85mm F1.8 manual focus, then their first autofocus lens right after that (also an 85mm F1.8). They spent a few years honing their craft with fairly standard “series” lenses (23mm, 33mm, and 56mm F1.4 APS-C lenses, then 35, 50mm, and 50mm F1.8 full frame lenses). But I first noticed them start to break out with a more ambitious lens in the form of the 13mm F1.4 APS-C lens, and then came the standout Pro series (27mm and 75mm F1.2 for APS-C) and the amazing 16mm F1.8 full frame lens, which was their first premium full frame lens. They have now diversified into their high performing yet lightweight “Air” series (20mm F2.8, 40mm F2.5, and 56mm F1.7) while also prepping the launch of the ultra high performance LAB series. Ambitious indeed. But part of what makes Viltrox unique is that they are simultaneously tackling both the high end of the market (LAB and PRO series) while also addressing the extreme budget end of the spectrum (AIR series). Nothing illustrates that better than their next two lens releases – the ultra high performance LAB 135mm F1.8 VCM and their cheapest lens yet – the Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 VCM micr-pancake lens that they have nicknamed “the Chip” (as in ‘as thin as a potato chip’. And at just 15.3mm in length, this is the second thinnest lens I’ve ever reviewed, and easily the thinnest autofocusing lens that I’ve ever tested. And at a price tag of just $99 USD, it’s a lens that anyone can afford. But is this tiny little thing worth buying? Find out in the video review or just read 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.
This a very different kind of lens for Viltrox, as producing a lens this thin means that there are some things that will have to be compromised. For many such lenses, what gets sacrificed is image quality along with functionality. While the functionality is a little different here, fortunately the image quality is not.
But at the least, the functionality is different. This is the first “fixed aperture” lens for Viltrox, in that the 28mm Chip is always F4.5. Not bigger, not smaller. No aperture ring or aperture control from within camera. Aperture is fixed at F4.5.
There also isn’t any manual focus here. Whereas the only smaller lens that I’ve ever reviewed was manual focus only (the Brightin Star 28mm F2.8), the Viltrox 28mm Chip is autofocus only. There is no manual focus ring. Fortunately autofocus is good enough that you probably won’t miss it, and, frankly, the lens is so compact that there just isn’t room for any rings on the barrel.
So let’s dive a little deeper into the nuts and bolts of this extremely unique new lens.
Viltrox 28mm Chip Build and Handling
28mm is a focal length that was very popular during the film era, was largely forgotten during DSLR era, and has been experiencing a bit of renaissance in the past two years. It’s a fun focal length as a general walkaround lens, and that’s doubly true with such a tiny lens like this.
While this lens is very small and lightweight, it isn’t because of compromised build quality. This is actually a very nicely made little lens with a retro/classic vibe to it. The closest analog that I can come up with is Nikon’s SE (Special Edition) versions of their 28mm F2.8 and 40mm F2 Z mount lenses.
The interesting thing about the photo above (supplied by Viltrox) is that the slim Sony rear cap is almost as thick as the lens itself. Here’s a closer look at how close the two pieces are:
As I don’t have any of Sony’s smallest full frame cameras on hand right now (I’m doing this review on the larger a7RV and Alpha 1 cameras), I’ll borrow one more photo from Viltrox to show the 28mm Chip mounted on the compact a7C camera:
The actual dimensions are 60.3mm in diameter (2.37″) and just 15.3mm in length (0.60″). The weight is a minimal 60g (2.11oz). This may be the easiest lens to bring along on Sony E-mount that has yet been released, as it won’t take up much more room in your bag than the front camera cap.
The mount is metal (made of duralumin, an aluminum alloy). The body is also made of metals and feels different from something like brass, but surprisingly premium for such an inexpensive lens. Viltrox has been able to maintain their standard of having a USB-C port in the mount to allow for firmware updates, however.
You’ll note that there is a small lever on the front of the lens. That essentially serves like a front lens cap. One direction will open the protective cover over the glass elements for shooting, the other direct will close it and protect things for storage.
There are no other “features” on the lens. No switches (autofocus only), aperture ring (fixed aperture), or other buttons. This is the ultimate grab and go lens.
The fixed aperture makes it unique. F4.5 is neither fast nor slow, and that’s kind of the point. The hope is that F4.5 is “fast enough” that it doesn’t penalize too much in low light, but also provides enough depth of field to keep enough in focus at one time as you don’t have the option to close the aperture further. I think of this more as a street/general purpose lens than a portrait lens for that reason, as depth of field will almost never be small enough to give you real subject separation.
As far as handling, the truth of the matter is that the only thing you need to handle is the lever to open or close the protective cover. The lens is small enough that you might not even touch it during operation and instead keep your hands on the camera instead.
The only other thing to really discuss here is the minimum focus distance, which is 32cm. That’s not particularly impressive, though it does best the Viltrox AF 28mm F1.8, which can only focus as closely as 37cm. That gives a very slightly magnification advantage to the 28mm Chip at 0.11x vs the 0.10x of the F1.8 lens. Here’s what that magnification looks like:
Remember that the aperture isn’t particularly large, so don’t expect backgrounds to be blurred too much at minimum focus distances. Here’s a real world example:
While there is no weather sealing here, the front element has been treated with an HD nano multilayer coating that is moisture and fingerprint resistant.
People have been waiting a long time for an autofocusing pancake lens on Sony, and the fact that one hadn’t yet arrived had led to the rumor that the E-mount diameter just wouldn’t allow it. Viltrox has shot down that rumor just as Sigma put to bed the idea that an F1.2 full frame lens on E-mount was impossible. It’s great to see more innovation from Viltrox. Oh, and by the way, here’s the comparison between their two upcoming lenses (this one and the 135mm LAB). There’s a bit of size difference for you.
Autofocus and Video
The 28mm Chip is the first Viltrox lens (along with their upcoming 135mm F1.8 LAB lens) to receive a brand new autofocus system – VCM (voice-coil motor). This is similar to Tamron’s VXD focus system in being a linear style motor. It’s extremely unusual for there to be autofocus in a lens this thin, so the focus motor had to prioritize being extremely miniaturized. There’s clearly a difference between this focus motor and the dual “Hyper VCM” focus motors in the LAB 135mm lens, as that lens focuses with the speed of a GM lens, which the 28mm Chip is a bit more leisurely. Focus changes for most things are quick enough for you to forget about autofocus, but every now and then when a major focus change is required you are reminded that this is an autofocus motor that could use a little extra thrust. Fortunately accuracy isn’t a problem; I got consistently well focused results.
This is, of course, an autofocus only lens, so it is fortunate that autofocus is accurate.
Likewise with this shot, which I took during my tests of eye detection, shows that autofocus stayed properly locked on the eye even when I had a lot of foreground obstructions in the way.
In a dimly lit restaurant I was able to focus quickly and easily on a singer doing music even though there was no stage lighting on him.
There is a faint clicking/whirring sound if you put your ear right next to the lens barrel, but if I held the camera at chest level and racked focus here and there, I couldn’t hear anything. Focus speed was good but not instantaneous in my formal tests. There is a somewhat false impression that major focus changes are slower than they actually are due to some fairly strong focus breathing.
On the video side of things, focus pulls are smooth and have a somewhat cinematic “damping” to them, in that they are not abrupt and move smoothly from one subject to another. The advantage of the VCM over an STM is shown in the absence of any visible steps in the process. There is some very obvious focus breathing, however, so that makes things slightly less cinematic. I did find that in my focus pull tests that autofocus wasn’t always “nailed” on my foreground subject. It was sometimes lightly off.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went fairly well. The 28mm Chip was reasonably reactive in moving back and forth when appropriate, though the obvious focus breathing made that process a little more jarring than it needed to be.
On a side note, I did notice that my handheld results for video were a little shakier than usual. Having almost no weight at the front the camera actually makes stabilizing it a little tougher.
The strengths of the VCM motor here are in the smoothness and lack of steps. Focus speed is about average, and focus breathing is higher than average. This probably has to do with the tiny size of the lens and the fact that there isn’t much space for the focus elements to go. Still, there was the notion that an autofocus pancake lens couldn’t be done on E-mount, but here we actually have a micro-pancake lens that focuses just fine. That’s impressive!
Image Quality Breakdown
The optical formula is 6 elements in 6 groups (no grouping of elements), with 4 of those elements being special elements (including 2 ED and 2 aspherical elements). The MTF chart shows a good (not great) center performance, good midframe results, and then much softer corners.
The Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 VCM is a very interesting lens optically. In many ways the optical performance reminds me a bit of a vintage lens. It’s as if it doesn’t have modern lens coatings, and that is for good and bad. I’ve rarely reviewed a modern lens where the “look” of the images is more dependent on the shooting situations and how you use it. This is true of contrast, detail, and more. The biggest single factor is going to be light: it’s direction, intensity, and placement in (or out) of the frame.
If I shoot towards the source of light, it will often produce a lower contrast look with almost a “halation” type glow to it, like here:
But all I had to do was turn the opposite direction and shoot, and you can see that there is more contrast, no glow, and the result is a more modern/conventional look.
If you are a fan of a warm glow to your images, then you may just fall in love with the look of images from the 28mm Chip:
More on this in a moment. Let’s look at the technical side of things.
Lenses with smaller maximum apertures rarely have an issue with 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.
There is, however, some issue with LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) that typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. You can see some obviously fringing as we get near the edge of the frame.
As the example above suggests, these LaCA issues tend to be reserved for the extreme corners. Here’s a real world example that shows no issue in the crop from further down the edge of the image (#2) and shows the actually fringing reserved for the extreme corner (#3):
If we move on to vignette and distortion we find reasonably good results. Distortion is essentially a non-issue, with just a tiny amount of distortion that is mostly not worth correcting (I liked a -1 result the best in Lightroom). Vignette is a fairly heavy, however, at a +77 to correct. It’s not surprising that there is a vignette in such a small optic.
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 F4.5 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that center performance is good but slightly low contrast, with good detail but lower contrast in the mid-frame, while the corners are reasonably good until the extreme edge, where acutance really drops and the details become mushy.
What I found out in real world shooting was that my impressions of sharpness really varied from image to image. In this country landscape, detail in the center looks good (though with a light glow to textures), and the corner is softer but not bad.
Here’s another shot that looks really good on a global level (global contrast):
But if you zoom into a pixel level you’ll find that sharpness and contrast just okay.
But again, if I take a step back, I realize that is a tiny $100 pancake lens on a 61MP full frame camera. It’s actually pretty amazing that you can take credible images at all with this kind of combination. Pop this lens on a small, lower resolution body like the a7C or a7CII, and you’ll get much more impressive looking results. Switching into the 26MP MRAW mode on my a7RV made for more impressive looking results at a 1:1 pixel level.
Clearly one of the most attractive applications for a lens like this will be street photography, as you couldn’t ask for a more discrete lens. I suspect a lot of people will have fun with the unique optical characteristics of this lens, and the constant F4.5 aperture makes it very much a “point and shoot” style lens.
The very low distortion also means that your city shots will have nice straight lines.
This has proven a fun companion for autumn walks, as the natural glow of the lens works well with a foggy autumn morning.
Diffraction won’t be an issue here due to the fixed aperture. You can’t stop the lens down to a place where diffraction would become apparent.
Bokeh is another interesting conversation, as obviously the amount of potential defocus will be limited by that relatively small maximum aperture of F4.5. In many situations bokeh will be somewhat limited, as the background will only be mildly defocused, or not at all.
If you get close to your subject, the defocus will be a little more pronounced, but nothing major.
Here is about the strongest amount of bokeh I could produce, as I could both get close to my subject (this is near minimum focus distance) while the background was largely a great distance away.
The quality of the bokeh is fine, and probably less of a factor with a lens like this anyway.
Much, much more of a factor is going to be flare. This is a lens that does a wide variety of things when a bright light source is in the frame. Shooting full into the bright morning sun made the light (and the rays from the blades of the aperture) the dominating feature of the image (for good or evil, depending on your tastes):
That was true of a close focus image that had the sun in the frame, too.
Composing with the sun out of frame on the right of the image left a bit of a flashing look, though this is arguably more artistic.
Here’s another example where the image is flooded with light. I like this one, but tastes are going to vary.
Just be aware that you either need to like flare artifacts or you will need to compose carefully to avoid them.
My optical conclusion is that this is an interesting lens optically. I don’t like everything about the optics, personally, but I also appreciate that the lens has a lot of character, and that, combined with the tiny size and price, is probably going to result in a cult following for the lens. You can see more images in the gallery here.
Conclusion
I had an interesting thought while out hiking with the Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 “Chip” lens; “…this feels a lot like using the Fujifilm X100VI. No, the focal length isn’t the same, but something about the very compact nature of the lens and its purist aesthetic definitely reminded me of shooting with the X100VI. And therein, I think, lies the charm for this little “Chip”. It is the ultimate low profile lens, and, what’s more, it’s actually a lot of fun to shoot with. It doesn’t hurt that the images you can produce can be special.
The 28mm Chip shows once and for all that a tiny autofocusing pancake (and thinner!) lens CAN be done on Sony E-mount. This little Viltrox lens is very unique, but I suspect that a lot of people will have a lot of fun with it!
There are so many lenses available for Sony E-mount at this point (I’ve reviewed literally hundreds!), so it is a pleasant surprise to review a genuinely unique lens on the platform. This is the smallest autofocusing lens that I’ve ever reviewed, and the handling and optics are very unique. The Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 VCM will be launching on Indigogo, and the interesting thing about that is that we will be able to see in real time just how interested people are in this lens. I, for one, am looking forward to watching the reaction of the photography world. I suspect a lot of people will be interested in having a “Chip”!
Keywords: Viltrox, Viltrox AF, Viltrox 28mm, Normal, Full Frame, F4.5, f/4.5, VCM, Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 E, Viltrox 28mm Review, Viltrox AF 28mm F2.5 E 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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