If you’re used to the perspective of your smartphone’s lens but crave higher-quality shots with a dedicated ILC, the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 deserves your attention. With swift autofocus, respectable sharpness, and true-to-life colors, it stands out as an above-average lens for Nikon Z-mount or Sony FE-mount cameras. Notably, neither Sony nor Nikon currently offer a 1.8 version of this focal length in their mirrorless lineup. Viltrox is consistently impressing with each lens release, presenting a challenge to mainstream manufacturers.
Table of Contents
The Big Picture
It’s slightly wider than the conventional street photography perspective of 35mm, but that’s probably where the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 deserves your attention most. It helps you capture a wider field of view than you might be traditionally used to. And it does this without slouching in any way. It doesn’t quite have the absolute AF accuracy of the Viltrox 16mm f1.8 that I reviewed a few months ago, but it definitely fared better than the AF on the 35mm f1.8. I often forced myself to use this lens instead when usually otherwise I’d whip out my smartphone to capture a scene. The moderate wide-angle perspective balances capturing expansive scenes and maintaining the subject as a central focus point. Overall, it’s a good choice for your camera if you’d rather not use your smartphone but want a similar perspective and field of view. You can get as close as 37cm (14.5 in) to your subject for some close-up shots with decent bokeh.
Overall, the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 remains a solid choice for various photography scenarios, offering good performance with its versatile focal length and wide aperture. I’m giving this lens four out of five stars.
Pros
- No other f1.8 lens exists for Nikon and Sony at the moment
- Close focusing distance of 0.37m
- Worked straight out of the box, without any firmware upgrade needed, with the new Nikon Zf. It has a USB-C port for any such upgrades, which is rare in most lenses today
- Silent and quick autofocus, which helps videographers greatly too
- Extra-low dispersion lens almost eliminates chromatic aberration
- A little under 13oz (367g) in weight
Cons
- No weather sealing
- Vignetting at f1.8 can seem heavy
- The lens seems to attract a lot of lint and dust
- Only available for Nikon Z-mount and Sony FE-mount at the moment
Gear Used
I tested the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 lens on my Nikon Zf.
Ergonomics
This lens resembles the Viltrox 35mm f1.8 Nikon Z-mount lens in many ways. It’s got the same red dot for the lens mount alignment. There’s the same looking aperture ring and the large focus ring. It’s almost exactly the same weight and length. Put them side by side; it would be almost impossible to tell them apart. The filter size is 55mm too, so if you already own the 35mm, you’ll find this one fits in easily with your collection.
Build Quality
The Viltrox 28mm f1.8 not only resembles a Nikon Z-mount lens but also shares a similar build. Impressively, the lens boasts exquisite finishing, a remarkable feat given its sub-$400 price point. It’s crucial to note that the affordability comes with a trade-off – the lens lacks weather sealing. While it held up well in dusty conditions, it’s not ideal for heavy downpours. The exterior feel adds a touch of quality, though a plastic lens hood slightly detracts from this impression. A commendable decision by Viltrox was maintaining a 55mm filter thread size, aligning with the 35mm f1.8, enhancing user convenience.
Ease of Use
If manual focusing isn’t really your thing, you can customize this ring to change other parameters on your Nikon Z camera using their menu system. Otherwise, it has a large throw to it, so you can quite accurately focus on your subject. I also got eye-tracking capabilities in manual mode to aid this. Of course, you could just stick to autofocusing, which is pretty reliable on this lens. Just keep the aperture ring to A and use the command dials on your camera to adjust this value, if you don’t want to do it the old school way.
Focusing
Autofocus is relatively fast, but I still felt it wasn’t as great as it was on the Viltrox AF 16mm f1.8. That lens was simply brilliant in the speed and accuracy with which it nailed focus on anything. Still, the AF on this lens gave me more than 90% accuracy. Even when it missed focus at times, it wasn’t by much. It did a decent job tracking some moving subjects on the streets.
Shooting portraits on the street was made easy by the Viltrox 28mm f1.8. Eye-Af on the Nikon Zf worked perfectly fine with this.
Image Quality
I don’t have any major complaints about the quality of images this lens can produce. There’s just a bit of pincushion distortion at the edges, but it’s not a dealbreaker. This lens significantly outperforms smartphone cameras in the same focal length when used with a full-frame camera. I particularly enjoyed shooting many black-and-white photos with it, although it works equally well for color photography.
Bokeh
The depth of field falloff is so smooth that I found myself using this lens wide open more than I expected to. The seamless transition between focused and blurred areas compelled me to frequently shoot with the lens wide open. While you may not experience a pronounced subject separation that leaps out at you, the gradual bokeh adds a subtle and aesthetically pleasing touch to your images. I’d highly recommend this lens for photojournalistic and photo documentary work.
Color Rendition
I mainly shot jpegs with this lens. The raw files that I shot were on Nikon’s Standard picture profile. Colors on both file types displayed no discrepancies when compared to those in the actual scenes. I often didn’t have to adjust saturation in post-processing.
Lens Character
While the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 lens generally performs well, it’s worth mentioning a few minor things to remember. If you get close to a subject, you might notice a bit of pincushion distortion, which is typical for wide-angle lenses. Additionally, there could be a slight purple fringing on objects near the edges of the frame, but it’s not very prominent.
It’s important to highlight that these quirks are more noticeable in specific situations, particularly up close. You probably won’t even notice these things for landscape shots or when your subject is farther away. Also, expect some vignetting at f1.8
Sharpness
If you want to nitpick at this lens, you could argue that the sharpness isn’t as outstanding as what you’d find on a Nikon Z-mount S-series lens. Having said that, I can’t say that this lens is meant to replace any lens from that series. The sharpness it gives for this price is still quite great, and when used carefully it can deliver some great images that look sharp. I shot landscapes for two days at various apertures with this lens. Even at f1.8, you can still expect sharpness to at least be on par with what a Nikon F-mount AF-S lens would give you on your Nikon mirrorless camera.
Extra Image Samples
From day one, The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, lots of folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can make a decision for yourself.
Unedited
Edited
Who Should Buy The Viltrox 28mm f1.8?
If you’ve been shopping around for a wider, but not too wide lens for your street and travel photography, give the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 some serious thought. It is a snug sort of focal length, giving you some comforting images when you’re out and about. And to those who find the field of view quite familiar, it’s pretty close in focal length that almost every smartphone camera out there has. This lens is worth a space in your camera bag and is reliable when you need quick autofocus for your photography. If I was doing a lot of documentary photo work or even heading out for some casual sightseeing, I would always carry this lens. I really enjoyed the perspective it gave me. As much as I like photographing images shot at 35mm, I relished shooting slightly wider with this lens. Again, Viltrox proves that getting good images doesn’t necessarily need an expensive lens on your camera.
Tech Specs
Taken from the Viltrox 28mm f1.8 product page