The Viltrox 28mm f/4.5 VCM is launching on indigogo, but you might want to save your money if you trust Optical Limits, which just published its full review here or you can check out the excerpt below.
The Viltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 VCM is an interesting interpretation of the pancake lens theme. Performance-wise, it’s not great on a high-resolution sensor. The broader center quality is actually pretty good, but the borders aren’t overly impressive and the corners are soft (and our sample was a bit uneven). Image distortions are surprisingly low, whereas vignetting does benefit from auto-correction. Lateral CAs are quite high in the image corners as well. While not aligned to shallow depth-of-field photography, the technical quality of the bokeh is Ok for a wide-angle lens. Veiling glare can be an issue in certain scenes.
The build quality is generally good. Surprisingly there’s a metal mount and the quality of the plastic for the body is decent. The tiny built-in lens cap mechanism feels a bit flimsy but it’s good to have it on board. Other than that, there isn’t much to report here. There are no buttons nor control rings on the lens. The AF is quite fast and silent. Manual focusing is not supported.
The biggest question is probably for which user groups is targeted here. A fixed aperture of f/4.5 is quite exotic for an 28mm lens. It’s certainly not meant for landscape photographers because at f/4.5 the foreground just won’t be sharp in infinity focus scenes. If you want high corner-to-corner quality, it’s also not for you. There are, however, a couple of scenarios where this lens could make sense. Using it with a small Sony camera on a drone comes to mind. 4K video is just about 8 megapixels and the Viltrox lens can do that. If you are looking for a lightweight lens for “talking & walking head”-style YouTube videos could be another one. f/4.5 won’t matter much here. And, of course, street and social photography, where you tend to shoot quickly just to capture the moment – “Lomography” is a thing out there for many enthusiasts. In conclusion – make sure that the Viltrox AF 28mm f/4.5 VCM fits your shooting style.
Maybe OL just received a bad copy or the poor performance could be due to its form factor. Either way, I would want to see more reviews to see if there is sample variation before putting down money for this lens. Viltrox lenses are generally a great value and it sounds like this lens misses the mark unless you really want a compact “Lomography” AF lens.
Viltrox lenses can be found on Amazon and B&H Photo
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