We’re looking at the latest full-frame lens from Viltrox Sony E-mount mirrors cameras. It is the Viltrox AF 50mm f 1.8 AF. As usual, this is an independent review. I will talk about all the pros and cons I found about this lens. Before we start, I notice that the price of this Viltrox AF 50mm f 1.8 lens is $379, and the cost of the Sony FE 50 1.8 is only $248. If the third-party lens is more expensive than the first party lens, it has to be a better lens and has something unique to make people want to pay more to buy a third-party lens.
In this review, I will compare the Viltrox AF 50mm F1.8 FE with the Sony FE 50 1.8 lens. We‘re going to find out why the Viltrox AF 50mm F1.8 FE is more expensive than the Sony.
Table of Contents
Build Quality and Design
Viltrox 50mm f 1.8 lens has very similar design to the other full frame Viltrox autofocus lenses. The size of the lens is the average size for a 50mm f1.8 mirror primeless. The Sony 50F 1.8 lens is quite a bit smaller, though. The Sony FE 50mm F1.8 is about 25% shorter than this Viltrox lens. Viltrox lens’s optical formula consists of 11 elements in 10 groups, so it is a pretty complicated design for a 50 f1.8 lens. The Sony lens is only six elements in five groups.
The body of this Viltrox lens includes the lens mount made of metal. There’s no mention of a weather seal and rubber seal on the lens mount. Maybe this is not a weatherproof lens. The lens feels solid and of excellent quality when holding it in your hands. The build quality of this viltrox lens is relatively better than the plastic Sony 50mm F1.8. A plastic lens hood in the package is suitable for storage and securely locks onto the lens.
There is a big metal focus ring at the front of the lens, and behind that, we have the aperture ring de-clicked, just like the other Viltrox lenses. One interesting fact that you may not know is that some Viltrox lenses have a clicked aperture, but it’s only their unique addition like this red Viltrox lens that has clicked on the aperture ring. If you want to use the camera dial to adjust the aperture instead, you can set the aperture ring to the position. There is a USB C port on the metal lens mount for updating firmware.
I’m happy to see companies putting a USB C port on their product instead of the micro-USB port.
Auto-Focus
The Viltrox 50mm f1.8 FE adopts an STM stepping autofocus motor, an internal focus lens. The length of the lens doesn’t change. When it comes to Sony FE, 50mm f1.8, moves back and forth a bit when you change the focus distance. The autofocus performance is pretty decent. I won’t say it is super-fast, but it seems to be a little bit faster than the Sony 50mm f 1.8 lenses. This Viltrox lens is quieter than the Sony lens.
For this Sony Lens, another thing I found is that there is a noticeable and distracting focus hunting when I’m doing a single AFS focus on a static object with Sony A7R4.
There are no apparent issues found in Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8. Viltrox 50mm f1.8 FE has accurate and reliable autofocus, even when I shot some photos in the low light with Sony A7R, A7R4. I feel Viltrox’s lens autofocus seems to be more reliable than the sony 50f 1.8 lenses, even when I asked my daughter to take some photos of me using the IAF at f 1.8. The result seemed to be always spot on when I checked the images. From my experience, I have no autofocus issues at all, even with the very demanding A7R IV.
Close-Up
After testing a few full-frame Viltrox lenses, I noticed all of them have pretty average close-up shooting capability. The minimum focus distance of Viltrox AF is 50mm F.8 is 55 cm or almost 22 inches. The maximum magnification ratio is only 0.1, which is slightly lower than most other 50mm f 1.8 lenses in the market. Sony 50mm f 1.8 lenses can focus 10 cm closer, and the maximum magnification ratio is a bit higher at 0.14 time.
Image Sharpness
Now let’s look at the image’s sharpness, and as usual, let’s look at the center sharpness firstly. The center sharpness of Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 lens is quite decent already at the maximum Aperture. I’m testing it using a 60-megapixel A7R4, and even when I zoom in the photo at 200, the sharpness is not bad.
The center becomes sharp when stopping down to f2.8.
If you stop down the lens any further, there is no improvement in center sharpness.
Sony FE, 50mm f1.8, appears to be slightly sharper at the center at f 1.8, but the difference is minor. I see the sony has a little bit more chromatic aberration.
The Sony FE 50mm f1.8 also becomes sharp when stopping down to f2.8, and I don’t see any difference between these two lenses.
Now let’s have a look at the corner sharpness.
The corner sharpness of the viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 is surprisingly good at f1.8. I won’t say it is super sharp, but we are looking at the extreme corner from a 60-megapixel photoshoot at the maximum aperture.
I really can’t complain at all. The corner becomes pretty sharp when stopping down to f 2.8.
At f4, the corner sharpness of this Viltrox lens is excellent.
Compared to the Viltrox lens, Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 has sharpness photos at f1.8. I don’t think the Sony FE 50mm f1.8 is terrible for the price. But the Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 is just simply much better.
Sony’s corner is still softer when stopping down the sony to f 2.8 than Viltrox lens at f 1.8.
I need to stop down the Sony lens to f4, and then the corner sharpness is finally slightly better than the Viltrox lens at f 1.8. when it comes to corner sharpness, the Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 impressed me.
Bokeh
Let’s have a look at the bokeh. For Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8, I shot this photo at f1.8, and I shot this photo at f1.8. The bokeh looks quite lovely. There is no strong halo near the edge of the bokeh.
Overall the bokeh does not look nervous, and there’s only a tiny amount of cat’s eye effect near the corner. When I zoom in on the photo, I see some pretty obvious onion patterns. I checked a few other images that I shot with the Viltrox lens. They all show a similar kind of onion pattern.
Compared with the Sony lens, bokeh looks quite similar overall, but one big difference is that the Sony lens doesn’t have any noticeable onion pattern.
Vignetting
Viltrox lens has a surprisingly small amount of vignetting even when shooting at the maximum aperture f 1.8 even with this blank wall photo. The light fall-off at the edge is still not that noticeable. The Sony lens is also not wrong. When looking at these two photos side-by-side, you can see that the view shots are less vignetting. Both lenses have virtually no noticeable vignetting when stopping the lenses to f 2.8.
Color Fringing
Looking at the photos, I shot at f 1.8 with the Viltrox lens; I can see a bit of color fringing around the high contrast area. I won’t say it is terrible, but you may need to do a bit of post-processing if you don’t want to see color finishing in your photos. When I look at the test photo that I shot with the Sony FE 50mm f1.8, the Sony also has quite a bit and probably a very similar amount of chromatic aberration around the high contrast areas.
Now, let’s turn to my local test photos. When I put the image from these two lenses side by side, both lenses show a bit of longitude chromatic aberration and the amount of local, I think, is quite similar.
After testing lots of lenses, I found that the first party lens or lens from the older brands usually has much better lens fair performance than the newer third-party lens manufacturers.
The sony does indeed has a little bit better lens fair performance than the Viltrox lens as it has less ghosting, and it also maintains better contrast. I think Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 FE does a pretty good job, but the Sony FE 50mm f1.8 is just better in this area.
Distortion
Let’s look at my brick wall test photos to check these lenses distortion performance.
I am happy to say that both lenses have a very minimal amount of distortion. The Sony 50mm 1.8 lens is quite famous for its low distortion, and Viltrox 50mm f1.8 is not worse than the Sony lens in this area.
Sunstars
You can use the Viltrox 50mm f1.8 lens to shoot sun stars at around fA, and the sunstars become pretty sharp at the minimum aperture f 16.
When it comes to Sony FE 50mm lens, I need to stop down the lens slightly more to get similar sun stars effect, but Sony has the advantage of having a smaller minimum aperture of f-22 compared to Viltrox f16. The sunstars from Viltrox lens are 18 points sun stars, while sun stars from the Sony lens are 14 points sun stars. Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 has a pretty good comma control.
Comma
Let’s have a look at the test photo shot at f 1.8. If we zoom into the corner, the amount of comma is at a pretty low level. The Sony has more butterfly shape comma at f 1.8, so this viltrox lens could be a good budget lens for astrophotography.
If you are a filmmaker, I would recommend the Viltrox lens instead of the Sony lens for a few reasons.
Firstly, the autofocus is a lot quieter with the Viltrox lens, and the autofocus tracking appears to work just as well as Sony FE 50mm f1.8. Viltrox also has a de-clicked aperture ring, while the Sony doesn’t have an aperture ring.
Both lenses have some noticeable focus breathing. Viltrox lens is a bit better control than the Sony as well. You can see the Viltrox has less amount of focus breathing in this side-by-side comparison video.
I asked myself why the Viltrox AF 50mm f1.8 lens is more expensive than the Sony FE 50mm f1.8 before starting to work on this review. After doing all this comparison testing and shooting in the real world, I know the answer. I was impressed by the Viltrox lens image’s sharpness, especially the corner sharpness, the autofocus performance, vignetting control, and even the comma.
They are all quite good. The biggest downside of the wheelchair’ lens is probably the onion pattern bouquet and the closed. Focus capability is not that good. But I think the only reason someone would want to choose the Sony 50mm lens over Viltrox 50mm f1.8. The Sony lens is more compact and lightweight, which is excellent.
If you want to have a compact setup or are on a tight budget, you could save a bit of money by buying the Sony lens instead, which sounds a bit right. But other than that, I feel the Viltrox is the better lens overall.
I know the Sony 50mm f 1.8 is an older lens, but it’s still good to see the brand-new third-party lens manufacturer.
Price: $379
Viltrox AF 50mm F1.8 E Mount for Sony https://amzn.to/3eVnZ09
Sony FE 50mm 1.8 https://amzn.to/3EUpEgZ
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