The Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8: A Hidden Gem of a Lens

Wide angle prime lenses are a must-have for many photographers, offering a useful perspective for landscape, architectural, and even portrait photography. Finding a lens that delivers both quality and value can be challenging, but this lens seems to check all the right boxes.

Coming to you from Dustin Abbott, this comprehensive video review explores the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 lens, a Z mount adaptation of the popular Sony E mount lens. Abbott highlights the lens' impressive features, including its robust build, weather-sealing, and innovative custom function buttons. He praises the inclusion of a top-mounted LCD screen, which offers functionalities like a distance scale, aperture display, and A-B focus point selection. 

Abbott emphasizes the lens' autofocus capabilities, noting its speed, accuracy, and quiet operation, particularly when compared to the Sony version. He points out the advantage of Nikon's open-source approach, allowing for a full 30 frames per second burst rate with the Viltrox lens, a feature not possible with third-party lenses on Sony's system. The video also covers the lens' video performance, highlighting its smooth and controlled focus pulls and minimal focus breathing, making it ideal for cinematic shots.

Abbott is impressed by the improved optical glass, resulting in vibrant colors and minimal chromatic aberration. He acknowledges the presence of minor, non-linear distortion, which can be challenging to correct manually. However, he praises the lens' sharpness, particularly at f/2.8 and above, ensuring high-quality landscape images with edge-to-edge clarity. Abbott also examines the bokeh, noting its limitations due to the lens' minimum focus distance but recognizing its decent overall quality. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Abbott.
 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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1 Comment

Agreed! I sold my Zeiss 18mm and picked this lens up for the wider angle and similar image quality. I'm not regretting it.