Wiltrox has just announced the Wiltrox AF 28 mm F/4.5 chip lens, a certain-aperture autofocus lens for Nikon Z Mount, which is available for Sony e Mount for some time. This pancake lens is very small, cheap, and some interesting features for $ 99. In this review, I will take a look at this funny small lens, which I tested on Nikon Z6.
Introduction
The basic features of this lens are:
- Mount: Nikon Z, Sony E, Fujifilm X (APS-C)
- Focal Length: 28 mm
- Angle of Views: 73.42º
- Minimum focus distance: 0.35 m (1.15 ′)
- Design: 6 elements in 6 groups
- Length: 15.3 mm (0.6 ″)
- Weight: 60 grams
- Filter Size: Filter does not accept
Yes, this lens is small – as in, I cannot tell the difference between it and the camera body without a lens. Honestly, this lens is giving me apathy about point-end days!
To add to its compactness, Viltrox 28 mm F/4.5 also does not have a traditional lens cap. Instead, it has found a built -in lens shield, which looks strange at first but quite easy. The shield is activated with a simple switch, which can turn the camera on or turn, and it means that there is no worry about the lens cap when you are shooting.
Despite its compact and light design, 28 mm F/4.5 is mostly made out of metal including mounts. Overall, it seems strong.
A disappointing fact about the lens is a lack of manual focus ring. The lens has a ribbed edge, but it is just to help you lock the lens on camera. The autofocus is decent and accurate in itself, but it is slightly less and it is slightly slow.
You can see the front lens element movement when focusing, although it is always below the facial level of the lens and never protruding. It combines the ability to dust to go to the lens barrel over time.
One important thing you should know is that it is a certain aperture lens. You have found f/4.5, and you get it all.
Is this a big thing? Certainly, if you plan to use this lens like any other lens. However, for the intended purpose – essentially a substitute body cap – I think it is less than a problem. This lens is viable for things like street photography, environmental paintings and events. It can be used for the scenario in a pinch, but you just have to accept that you will not be able to close the area down to get more depth-so you will either need to avoid the nearby foreground, accept some out-of-focus blur, or focus stack.
Optical features
Viltrox 28 mm F/4.5 is a simple lens with 6 elements in 6 groups. The two elements are additional-cum-spread elements and two are aspherical. It also has various coatings, including Wiltrox called an HD nano-koting, and a fluorine coated front element to guard water and dust. So, let’s see how all these stuff turns into the real world!
First, let’s check the deformation. The Wiltrox claims minimal deformity with this lens, and it sounds accurate to me. Here is a grid so that you can see how much:
There is a small amount of pinsulation deformation, but not bad. You will also see that there is a proper quantity of viewing. Here is described how it looks uniformly against an uniform light source, uncontrolled:
The center of extreme corner decline is very strong, but still mostly correct until you are recovering too much shade in the corners.
While testing this lens, I noticed that there was some important focus in it. Here is a close and distant focus shot of the same subject (of course, it is out of the focus for a shots).
What about sharpness? I compared the lens to my Go-to Nikon Z lens, also set on Nikon Z 50 mm F/1.4, F/4.5. Here is the center performance:
The Wiltrox is less contrast than the Nikon Z 50 mm f/1.4. However, this is not very bad, and I have no real complaint about its performance at the center.
What about corners? Here is what it looks like under my best effort in getting the same framing:
This time, Nikon wins very easily. The viltrox is clearly soft and vice versa is quite low. But the result is still acceptable and better as I expected for Wiltrox. Pancake lenses rarely perform high levels, and given that it is $ 99 pancake, it is not a bad result.
This lens has another interesting feature, which has an unusual starburst effect. It was designed to give a very long, thin starburst effect when shooting small point sources of light. You can see it in this sunstar, but it produces them quite easily with almost any point source of light. Surprise for a certain f/4.5 lens:
What about Bokeh? With a focal length of 28 mm and a certain aperture of F/4.5, not to mention a minimum focus of 0.35 m, it is unlikely that you will find a lot of background blot with this thing. Nevertheless, at a minimum focus distance of 35 cm, you can see Bokeh a little.
I would say that it is smooth with some nervousness, but the nervousness actually appears only with specular highlights.
And you were probably thinking about that flare, right? Very interesting, if you ask me. If you keep the lens in the right position, you can get these injections of flare of different colors, which I thought was very radical. You can see an example in the image above. Because this lens does not have a hood nor is there any way to attach anyone, you Desire To see out for raging in backlit situations (or I should say flair?) But I found that you can use your hand to block it if you want.
Colorous disaster appears in such a backlit situations:
There are two crops here, from a center and one from the top corner, so you can see what we are doing:
In other situations, such as shooting environmental paintings with strong light, I did not find any of these marks, so I think in practice, it is really nothing of anxiety.
conclusion
Viltrox AF is a fun lens to use F88 mm F/4.5 chip lens. It is a little alternatively winner (not always in a bad way), and sharply faster. It has some bizarre such as funny flaminging, but I learned to love its character, and now I want to experiment with its rainbow flaring capacity. Small size means that it is a great way to shoot at 28 mm without taking too much extra weight, while leaving a lot of money in your wallet.
However, I think the main use of this lens is as body cap option. A lens without a manual focus, without the ability to replace the aperture, is unlikely to have a Go-to tool for a significant shoot with a bizarre optical performance.
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