This lens is unbelievably good for the price. I'm really floored at the value delivered for the price ($158 at time of review). Let me share some details.
First, the kit I received has the lens, front and rear covers, a hood, a small carrying pouch, and a 52mm UV filter to protect the front element. The lens is VERY lightweight with a hard plastic body and a metal mount. Markings on the lens are traditional white on black and very traditional looking. A single focus ring is the only real control on the lens and that's all you need really. The metal mount fit snuggly on my Nikon Z9, clicking and locking into place as expected and detaching as expected using the release on the camera body.
The lens was working perfectly right out of the box with no firmware update required. There is a USB-C port on the lens for firmware updating. The autofocus was snappy and accurate, nearly as good as native lenses. With focus peaking turned on, I was able to manually adjust to fine tune my subjects and had no issues at all. It was functioning as I would expect a native Z lens might on the Z9. I can also confirm that the EXIF data was passed through correctly and was read as expected in NX Studio (see image attached).
I took a few shots straightaway of a couple flowers and the family pooch and included those in this review. I did a bit of pixel peeping on the original files and found a little softness when compared to native Z lenses at this focal length. I compared this with the Nikon 50mm f/1.2, the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 and the Nikon 40mm f/2. In comparison, the 50mm and the 24-70mm were optically better and produced higher quality images and rightfully so priced at about 20 times the price of this little 40mm. However, when comparing the Viltrox 40mm f/2.5 to the Nikon 40mm f/2 (about twice the price) the differences were very difficult to see if there were any. Stopping both lenses down to f/3.2 made the two nearly identical and maybe a slight advantage to Viltrox. Check the sample image attached.
So who is this lens for? If you are looking for a lightweight full frame Z mount prime lens to do street or travel photography and you're budget conscious this lens has to be on your list as a possible option. The quality for price is just unbelievable in my opinion. While I tested it on the Z9, this lens should perform nicely on any of the Z mount bodies. Really impressed with Viltrox.
| Produttore | Viltrox |
|---|---|
| Riferimento produttore | ESUS-VT-00019 |
| Dimensioni prodotto | 12 x 8 x 8 cm; 180 grammi |
| ASIN | B0D2W37JRH |
| Aggiornamenti software garantiti fino a | sconosciuto |
