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Viltrox 85mm f1.4 Review Update: Autofocus Superpowers

Chris Gampat
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Last updated on 08/12/2025
09/24/2025
2 Mins read
A Sony camera with a large Viltrox lens rests on magazines with a blurred photo in the background.
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The Viltrox 85mm f1.4 Lab is a beautiful lens in many ways. Wide open, it’s soft yet sharp and gorgeous. When stopped down, it becomes an insanely sharp lens that renders details you’ll love looking at. When the lens was launched, we had certain findings about the autofocus. But new firmware has come. So we’ve updated our full Viltrox 85mm f1.4 Review, which you can find here. If you just want to view the updated text though, check it out below.

Focusing Update August 2025

Viltrox has given this lens many firmware updates. Here’s what’s new:

V1.0.5: Fixed the issue of the lens aperture jumping under certain conditions

X1.0.4:

  1. Optimize the AF-S focusing speed.
  2. Optimize the continuous shooting focusing performance of AF-C.
  3. Fixed known issues.

1.0.3:

  1. lmprove the focusing stability of the lens in AF-C mode.
  2. Fixed known issues.

In order to really see the difference after updating the firmware via my computer, I needed to clean the lens contacts and camera contacts before testing. I also removed my clip-in haze filter to not slow down the autofocus performance. Once that was done, I started testing. I mention this because Sony cameras can get pretty funky more so than others that we’ve used for years.

Thankfully, Viltrox lenses have good build quality at the higher end. In fact, I have to say, it’s a tight fit with my Sony a7r III, but I appreciate that because Sony’s own lenses don’t give me as much confidence in their build quality.

The autofocus performance in AF-S and AF-C mode is indeed better. It’s not G Master fast performance, but it’s still slightly better than Sigma lenses that I’ve used. It’s still not as good as Tamron’s AF performance though.

I’m very curious to know how many Sony users use their cameras set to AF-S anyway. Most of them just seem to shoot in AF-C mode and forget that AF-S exists. However, AF-S is useful in a variety of situations.

If you’re shooting portraits, I think it will be just fine. But I’m not sure that I’d use the Viltrox 85mm f1.4 for sports. But I’d absolutely use it for events.

85mm f1.4 af-c AF-S events portratis sony Viltrox
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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