Viltrox AF 35mm F1.7 Large Aperture Prime APS-C Lens for E/X/Z

The first thing you need to know is that this Viltrox 35mm f/1.7 lens is designed for Sony E-mount APS-C cameras. It's a great value for the price and a solid go-to if you're looking for a versatile lens. The compact design and quality build make it easy to carry around, while the f/1.7 aperture helps reduce noise and delivers impressive sharpness. Check out the video to see the results for yourself!Let me know if you have any questions about this product, I'll be happy to help

Autofocus is fast and more importantly, it is very quiet. It is very light and matches the camera body's small size too. The colours of the images have impressed me both in photo and video modes. The colours are not clinical. Instead they are natural and almost vintage like straight out of camera. When the aperture is wide open to f1.7 there is some vignetting until you go down to f8.0

My first prime portrait lens. Sharp picture with beautiful background blur. I'm very happy with it and I highly recommend it !

I am very impressed at the quality of image I get from a lens in this price range! Viltrox is for sure a serious competitor in the lens space. I am using it on a full frame camera, Sony A7IV and it looks great! This is an APSC lens so there will be some vignetting if you put it on a full frame camera. That can be rectified by slightly cropping in. The lens is light, small and easy to add to any kit. It has a plastic feel to it with almost no weight, but that is to be expected for a nifty fifty style lens.

An auto focus lenses from Viltrox!!It's an APS-C lens folks and it is plenty sharp.This is a fairly new development. I have purchased several manual lenses over the last few years. I have found them to be very good products for the coin being asked. Manual is great, but there are times when auto focus just makes it all easier.Typically if this was a manual Viltrox the body would be made from metal and it would have some serious heft to it...all part of that manual look and feel...which I always enjoy.Here however, they have made an adjustment. They have designed the lens body from the typical poly resin you see on Canon, Sony, Nikon etc. Nothing wrong with that, and this feels pretty much the same in the hand as my other Sony lenses. To keep prices down they have put the coin into the autofocus...something a manual lens doesn't have. It drops the weight as well, and I think this is a trade off I will make all day long. I find the fit and finish on this lens to be very good.It takes 52mm filters which is a very common size.Optics: This is a great achievement for the price. I attached this 56mm to my 61MP Sony body. A body that will show you any optical defects of any lens it uses. This lens by Viltrox did very well indeed.There is a small drop in contrast wide open at f/1.7, but not much and it improves quickly afterwards.It's very sharp wide open...not absolute razor sharp, but I don't expect that at this price. Frankly, that's a tall order for a lot of 'bright' lenses . But I am getting very usable images wide open at f/1.7. Stop down and it starts to really perform.Auto Focus: Yay!! Auto focus on a lens this cheap! I found it to be snappy, but not Sony fast. I also do not expect it to be as fast as my Sony lenses. But it is snappy, and more importantly, I did not experience hardly any hunting at all. Once the AF cycled, it locked on the subjects very well. For me, this is more important than the actual speed of the auto focus. The AF is fast enough, and it does well with locking in on the subject.Manual Focus: Let's not forget we still have that capability. Using my camera to swap over to MF, I found the focus dampening to be very good. It may be an electronic focus, but there is great dampening on the focus throw. Focus peaking and magnification kick in automatically, allowing detailed focus capability. Better than average manual focusing by wire.Image Stabilization: It worked perfectly on my Sony. I took a peek in the menu and the body told me the IS was already on and in auto mode...which means the camera recognizes the lens and what focal length it is. Just like going native. A step forward here.Video: This lens is not designed to be your video lens. It's designed more for still photography. Watch the little video I created. You can hear the AF really pop into the camera mic. For photography, I can hear it, but it's not loud at all. The mic makes it sound far louder than it really is with stills. But you can also see that the AF works well, and it keeps the focus locks.Bokeh: Bokeh is very nice wide open, one of the perks here. Again for the coin, this lens is delivering something special.Images: The images of the bench with a stick on it is shot at f/8 and at f/1.7...to give you an idea of the background shifts. I find the f/1.7 background to be soft and not too busy.The two plant images were both shot at f/1.7 and look great to my eye. Nothing has been sharpened in regards to the images. They look better on my monitor than on this page too.Options: Bells and whistles...focus buttons...nope...aperture ring...nope. It's all done by electronic wire...which quite a few other companies do also. But the big perk with this Viltrox is EXIF data...this lens can talk to your camera. Your imaging data is all saved. Manual focus peaking worked perfectly with this lens, as did the manual focus magnification. That's more than good enough for my taste...at this price...it's a lot. You alter the aperture and shutter through your camera body.Conclusion: This is a very good lens for the coin. Viltrox has made a bright...light...capable 56mm auto focus lens for less than two hundred dollars. There have been a few sacrifices made, but those sacrifices have not been in vain. The savings are put where they will count the most.Instead of putting on all the focus buttons and aperture ring on, they give you great optics, auto focus, and complete communication with the camera body.Is there a down side? Of course. The auto focus is robust but a step behind a native lens...but not terribly so. Wide open (f/1.7) in high contrast situations you will see some LoCa (color aberrations)...mostly the purples. It settles down by f/2.8 and even wide open it's not that bad. I've seen much worse off of more expensive lenses. Wide open on most lenses is where it shows up...fairly common. Controllable with any post processing.I think this a high value lens...easily can recommend it for anyone just starting out or on a budget. I'll be us...