Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 EVO Review: Budget APO Prime That Punches Above Its Weight
If you’ve never considered a 35mm prime lens, you are missing out on a focal length that packs a punch not only for portraits and street photography, but landscapes and astrolandscapes. The nifty fifty is most often the prime lens most photographers think of when talking about portraits and street photography. Getting a little more area with a 35mm gets you into the wide angle realm of vision, but still has a good chunk of that 50mm intimate feel.
I picked up this Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 EVO lens for my Nikon mirrorless cameras. I’ve used a Nikkor 35mm f/2D F mount lens for decades. Its small, ridiculously sharp and fast. The poster child of tiny and mighty. It is still a staple in my kit and I continue to use it with my DSLR, mirrorless and film cameras. I picked up this Viltrox specifically to have a dedicated 35mm for my Z cameras.
Quick Disclosure (Before We Get to My Compulsive Gear Opinions) This post may contain affiliate links to Amazon, Focus on Stars, LRTimelapse, Benro, and Bolt Hunter. If you grab something through them, I might earn a small commission — basically charity for a gal who owns way too many tripods, still drops half of them in the field, used to spend hours hunting for perfect focus in the dark, and misses lightning bolts with embarrassing regularity. No extra cost to you..
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Same deal with Focus on Stars (the diffraction filter that actually lets me nail focus instead of guessing), LRTimelapse (my only defense against total time-lapse disaster), Benro (steady support for my wobbly existence), and Bolt Hunter (the predictive trigger that catches strikes even when my reflexes don’t). I only recommend stuff I actually buy myself and use… even if I use it poorly sometimes.
Your support helps fund more ridiculous experiments in the dark. High five (or whatever I can manage without knocking the camera over).
Out of the Box
The lens comes with end caps, lens pouch and lens hood.
It has weight. It is not a cheap feeling lens. It is partially weather sealed – meaning you can shoot in light rain or dusty environments (per Viltrox product page). It has a rubber sealed lens mount and the front element is coated to be water and smudge resistant. So, protect it when shooting in heavy rain. (I protect a fully weather sealed lens too – regardless of the claim.)
It has a switch to set the lens to auto or manual focus.
Although the firmware can be updated by the USB-C port, it doesn’t come with a cable. You can use any good quality data cable to update the firmware. Having this option is huge. It prevents the lens from potentially failing auto focus if your camera’s firmware gets an update or you upgrade to another camera.
The aperture ring allows you to either set it to A to control it via the camera, or manually adjust the aperture.
A slide button changes the aperture ring from smooth to click stop rotation.
It takes a 58mm filter.
Image Quality
I tested the lens using a Nikon Z9. The lens is very responsive, focuses quickly and the color is rich, clean and beautiful. The lens has a lovely bokeh too. The following images were converted from camera raw to jpeg after the usual adjustments in ACR using Adobe Bridge. No extra sharpening was applied in post. Only ACR’s default sharpening level was applied.
The lens has a close focusing distance of 0.34 meters (13.39 inches). These were shot wide open at f/1.8. The reds are deep and true.
Shot close and wide open, the corner of the post is the only thing that is sharp. The brush strokes are evident.
The flat top of the metal bar is nicely defined. Once again, wide open and a close shot.
At f/1.8 and f/8
📷Nikon Z9 | [ ◉¯] Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 EVO | ISO 1250 | 𖣐 f/1.8 | ⏱️– 1/800 seconds |
📷Nikon Z9 | [ ◉¯] Viltrox 35mm f/1.8 EVO | ISO 1100 | 𖣐 f/8 | ⏱️– 1/400 second |
Astro Capabilities
From my perspective, stars are an excellent barometer for lens quality. Stars are hard to focus. A quality lens is one which has sharp stars edge to edge. This lens very nicely passes the astro test. Below are screenshots of ACR zoomed at 66%. The same top left edge is on each image reflecting the various apertures used. Even wide open, the stars are well formed and sharp. I did not need to apply any chromatic aberration corrections. It’s that clean!
f/1.8
f/2.0
f/2.2
f/2.5
f/2.8
Conclusion
This Viltrox lens surprised me. For the price, I didn’t expect it to be as nimble and as sharp edge-to-edge as it is. Then again, the other Viltrox lenses I own all were a surprise as to how well made they were. This is another in the Viltrox lineup that has beat expectations.
It has some vignetting, but this is easily mitigated in post. The lens is available in Nikon Z and Sony FE mounts.
This is an impressively solid lens with quality higher than the cash outlay. I am very pleased by its astro capabilities. I bought mine on Amazon on one of their deals. To be clear, this is not the “Pro” 35mm LAB f/1.2 Viltrox lens. It makes me wonder what the $1000 one is like since this “essential” version is so good. I do have their 50mm PRO f/1.4. I will be reviewing this lens next.
If you are in the market for a fast, solid 35mm prime lens without a big hit on your wallet, definitely take a look at this lens.
Reminder for Nikon Shooters – when upgrading the camera’s firmware, do not have a 3rd party lens attached. This is a good practice for all camera makes-not just Nikon. You never know what a camera’s update will do to a third party lens.
© Silvana Della Camera
Night Shades – A Guide to Photography after Dark
Sights Beyond the Spectrum – An Infrared Photography Handbook
Master the Benro Polaris: The Ultimate Handbook for Photographers and Astrophotographers
To learn about upcoming workshops and tips on photography, consider subscribing to my website.
Taking photos and want to make them more compelling?
Art isn’t just for walls. Art is also to hold in one’s hands.
Leave a Reply
Want to join the discussion?Feel free to contribute!