The Viltrox 55mm 1.8 EVO APO will be the third lens I have reviewed from the Viltrox EVO range. The first was the 85mm EVO which I was incredibly impressed by. The second, the 35mm EVO that I was also incredibly impressed by, and this 55mm which – spoiler alert – I’m also incredibly impressed by. In fact, all three lenses are all so similar – and similarly impressive – it’s quite difficult for someone like me to review them without basically running out of things to say…!
I have a pretty good relationship with my contact at Viltrox, but I’m starting to become nervous that they won’t want to send me any more of the lenses from this series. I take my lens reviewing process particularly seriously. I like to identify unique things about lenses – both positive and negative – to highlight. The problem with these three lenses is that they all look exactly the same, feel exactly the same and have very similarly excellent optical quality. If I were a more conventional lens reviewer – one that took a deeper dive into various optical traits, this wouldn’t be such a limiting factor. I could just go through the motions and talk about the various pros and cons objectively and it wouldn’t matter that the content of the review was so much like that of the others in this series. As it is, I’m more of a subjective experience kind of lens reviewer. Until relatively recently, my reviews rarely even followed the same structure – I’d just waffle on about whatever I liked in whatever order my subjective experiences led me. That’s all well and good until you get to the third lens that’s practically the same as the first two.
The thing with these three lenses that makes this situation even more unusual is that both the positive and the (albeit subtly) negative traits also have some parity. In short, in pretty much every sense, they are like a matched set. As I will come to talk about though, as indeed I did in the 35mm EVO review, this isn’t really an issue. In fact, where there are shared compromises, they are compromises I am pretty comfortable with!
The 35, 55 and 85mm set
All three lenses in the current Viltrox EVO range look the same. In fact, aside from the front element and the places on the lens where it literally says what the lens is, you’d be forgiven for getting them mixed up. I speculated in the 35mm review that this might be a cost saving measure – that perhaps if they share lots of common components, the parts they are made of can be made and stocked more efficiently or maybe there’s a lower cost of manufacturing due to the higher quantities. One way or another, all three lenses are very similar to each other, and it seems to have been a very intentional choice to make them so.
I’m sure this does have a positive impact on the manufacturing processes in one way or another, but I have also found it to have a positive impact on me. With the user experience of each lens being essentially exactly the same, switching from one lens to the next in no way breaks the flow. Of course, this is mostly in how easy it is to find the aperture control and Fn button with the camera to the eye, but it does make a small difference. The size and weight on the camera also feels familiar regardless of the lens attached. I have – as I said in the 35mm review – found this to be something of a novelty that has passed, and since writing a similar note in that review have grown possibly slightly more aware of how often I pick up the wrong lens. But, I have also started keeping them in the same slots in the camera bag too, the 35mm near the top, 55 next and 85 nearer the bottom, which seems to have helped. One way or another, I do feel like the conveniences of their similarities override the negatives.
Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO build – A tour of the lens
This next section really is largely a copy/paste job from the 35mm EVO review – just look at the lenses, there are only so many ways you can describe something that looks and feels essentially the same!
Starting at the base of the lens, the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO has a metal lens mount. On the mount itself, it also has a USB-C port for updating the lens firmware.
It also has a weather sealing rubber ring. As mentioned in my 85mm review, a little bit of rubber ring around a base of a lens doesn’t automatically imply that it will survive a monsoon. I suggest you take whatever level of precaution you are comfortable with in the knowledge that some effort has been taken in this lens design to keep some level of wet from getting into it/the camera it is mounted to.
Moving up the lens, the next part of the body seems to be metal and feels nice and solid. Then we have the aperture control which I think is also made of metal. There is a switch to set it to either click or not. With it set to click, it clicks nicely. If it’s set not to click, it also rotates smoothly.
The next section of the lens between the aperture control and focus control is made of plastic. This bit feels more hollow when you tap it – though it doesn’t necessarily feel cheap. This is also where you find the click switch for the aperture control, the AF/MF switch, and also a function button, all of which feel perfectly satisfactory to click/press.
Next is the focus control which again I think is made of metal. This really is very smooth to rotate – though not quite as satisfying as a “proper” mechanical focus control – for what it is, it’s very nice! Forward of the focus ring, the front most part of the lens is also made of metal which also includes a bayonet mount for the plastic, nicely fitting hood.
Features
Again, what with the lens features being the same, it’s hard to not just repeat myself verbatim here, but just like the 35 and 85 EVO lenses, the 55 has a series of features that I have found increasingly useful. Now, I will concede that some of this is potentially down to me becoming accustomed to the lenses – the familiarity from one to the next must play a part, but quite genuinely, I now feel very comfortable with the features on offer here, and – for the most part at least – now wouldn’t want to be without them.
The on-lens aperture control is the biggest factor here. I have in fact become so accustomed to using it, that when I accidentally set the dial to ‘A’ the other day, I realised I had forgotten how to control the aperture on-camera, and for a brief moment even thought I had broken something. I moment of daftness really, but it did make me realise how used to the feel of these lenses – especially using the aperture control – I have become!
Not all the controls on the lens are as useful to me. I don’t use the switch that allows the click on the aperture to be turned on and off – the clicked aperture just makes more sense when I am changing the settings whilst looking through the viewfinder. I also don’t use the MF/AF switch. I don’t use manual focus much anyway, but having the switch there is definitely going to be useful for some – I know if I used this camera for video, I would find it useful for sure!
Finally, since writing my 35mm EVO review, I have stuck to using the Fn button on the lens as a switch to alternate between FX and DX mode. This allows it to be used as a quick digital zoom. There are loads of other things it can be used for though, including AF activation which I have toyed with the idea of switching it to.
The Size
As I have made clear, all three of these lenses are the exact same size. The 85mm feels nice and small for its focal length, but I thought the 35mm – for a 35mm f/1.8 lens – could have been slightly smaller were it not for the design choice from Viltrox. I sort of feel the same here too – it’s not a massive 55mm f/1.8, but I think the Sony 55mm f.1.8 is a smaller lens. Ultimately though, this is a very minor comment as clearly it’s not a massive lens – especially when compared to some of the much faster lenses on the market. I would rather a 55mm 1.8 that’s this size than regularly lug around a huge 1.2 lens.
AF Performance
As I mentioned in my 35mm EVO review, since reviewing the 85mm EVO, I have reviewed one of Viltrox’s higher end lenses, the 56mm 1.2 APSC lens. That lens showed me just how capable Viltrox are when it comes to making lenses with fast AF. The 35mm EVO is not as quick as the 56mm, and nor is the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO. As it goes, I didn’t actually test the 35mm as strictly as I did this 55mm – my test with previous Viltrox lenses has been to try it with my daughter hurtling toward me on her go-cart, and if keeps up with that, try the dog running at me.
I got some great shots of Norah on the go-cart, but it definitely missed a few times too. I haven’t tried with the dog as much – I didn’t feel it necessary to test it that hard. This essentially illustrates the gap between the AF capability of this lens and Viltrox’s Pro line of lenses. The 56mm 1.2 Pro did much better with the go-cart and even held up impressively with the dog. This EVO line lens is definitely behind that level, but I really do feel the need to stress that the sort of difference we are talking about here really isn’t relevant to the massive majority of subject matter. Unless you’re undertaking specifically demanding subject matter, the lens is going to be absolutely fine when it comes to AF performance!
Image quality
As I have said in slightly differing ways on both 85mm and 35mm EVO reviews, what I want from lenses like this for my Zf is a level of quality that allows me to just take photos without having to think about lens character. I have stacks of lenses that give me character – not least all my old AF-D lenses that I have been using with the Monster adapter. I love those lenses – especially the 90s image quality – and wouldn’t change them for the world. But sometimes I just want reliable, easy, good image quality from lenses that don’t impose much of themselves on the final image.
That said, of course, all lenses have a character of some sort, and there’s always something I can find to highlight that some might see as negative. As I said at the beginning of this review though, what I find interesting about these Viltrox EVO lenses is that their character traits are actually very similar – slightly different in specifics, but the areas where I find comment are the same. Fortunately for me, there is nothing I don’t like, and a lot I do!
Sharpness, contrast and colours
Just like the 85mm and the 35mm EVO lenses, the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO is very sharp indeed. Wide open it’s amazingly sharp until the far corners where it is just about perceptibly softer in normal use given a flat subject – but really, you have to look very closely with this lens to see any fall-off at all! Stopped down a little bit, it’s even more amazingly sharp, and is still sharp even in the corners. Stop down too much and obviously diffraction kicks in. I really couldn’t be more impressed here – have a click through to the below picture on Flickr, then zoom right in pretty much anywhere aside from the nearest foreground. If you’re a resolution junky, I can’t se how you’ll not be impressed!
The colours look great too – the Nikon is doing a lot of the lifting there of course, but I can’t see any issue with the lens’s part either!
Bokeh
Just like the 35mm and the 85mm, the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO has bokeh that’s not what I think many people would class as specifically perfect. But, as with both of the other lenses, where there is sometimes a lack of perfect smoothness, with it comes a little depth that lenses with very smooth bokeh can lack.
For me, this is a good thing. Some might prefer a softer smoother bokeh – but I like the little bit of busyness, a little bit of a cat’s eye shaped rendering toward the edges etc, these things add depth to me.
Flare
Again, just like the 85 and 35, an area where this lens could be considered less than perfect is how it can sometimes flare a bit. Actually, I haven’t managed to catch it out as much as I have the 85 and 35, but at certain angles to a light source, it certainly can find its way to a bit of veiling flare.
Just as with the 35 though, a little tweak to the framing can help a lot. As mentioned in my 35mm EVO review, I’ve also been carrying the hood that came with the 35mm around with me and on a few occasions have used it on the 55mm. It fits and seems to help, and though I haven’t tried the hood that actually came with the 55mm, I suspect it would help a little more too.
Vignetting
There’s a little bit of a vignette from the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO wide open, but not much really. Certainly a few shots where I’d have expected to see more, there wasn’t much, but there’s definitely a subtle fall off into the corners when shooting wide open.
Distortion and other aberrations
I can’t see anything that might cause any offence to anyone shooting the Viltrox 55mm f/1.8 EVO in normal, i.e. not test conditions. It would not be hard to imagne that a shot like this following one would have colour fringing somewhere – but there’s just nothing. Again click through to flickr and have a look for yourself.
APO designation
I’ve never noticed any chromatic aberrations from results taken with the 85mm EVO, nor have I with 35 or 55mm EVO lenses. The difference with the two latter lenses is that they also come with an APO designation within the nomenclature. Are these new lenses more apochromatic than the 85mm? I have no idea! In the real world all three lenses are very sharp and don’t seem to suffer from in-focus or out-of-focus area colour fringing.
Overall Character
As mentioned earlier on, the Viltrox 55mm 1.8 EVO shares a lot of characteristics with the 35 and 85mm EVO lenses. It’s difficult to find fault really, and where there are flaws or character traits that might cause some people to have issue, all three lenses have them in the same areas. Bokeh might or be perfectly smooth enough for some, but to me the slightly busyness is a positive more than a negative. All three flare a little – though I think the 55mm might flare the least. They all vignette, but again the 55 quite possibly the least. Objectively speaking, the 55mm might even be the best of the set – but there’s not much in it. It’s an incredible lens – all three of them are!
Final thoughts
Well there we go, I managed it. Despite the Viltrox 55mm 1.8 being very similar to the 35 and 85 in terms of the look, feel, image quality etc, I haven’t copy and pasted too much from those other reviews.
I think Viltrox might have copy and pasted a fair bit from the 85mm EVO when they designed this lens alongside the 35mm though. As I am sure I have made clear – and indeed as you can see in the pictures I’ve added of the lenses alongside each other – they are very similar in design. As mentioned, there might be some small disadvantage in terms of identifying one lens from the next when carried altogether in one camera bag like I have been, but aside from that small niggle, I can find very little issue with them all being so similar. The way the all feel familiar to each other is not to be sniffed at, especially in the earlier days of use and they are genuinely easy to carry with each slotting into the same sized space in a camera bag.
Moreover though, the similarities in optical characteristics between the three lenses feels like a positive thing too. Just getting used to one lens’s characteristics makes for getting used to all three. As a set they just work together fantastically.
To top it off, as I laboured in the concluding section of the 85mm EVO review – and mentioned again in the same section of the 35mm EVO review – the set of compromises and balances here just works perfectly for me. I don’t really ever need a lens that’s faster than f/1.8, but prefer a smaller lens. I don’t need mega-super-fast AF when this lens offers super-fast at a price I’m happy with. And, I also have no need for total optical perfection, when I can have a little bit of character to bokeh and a little bit of pretty controllable flare, in return for very little in the way of any other less controllable aberrations and a whole load of consistent sharpness. Everyone’s priorities are different, but mine very much suit the Viltrox 55mm 1.8 EVO APO… which fortunately means they also suit the other two lenses in the EVO series too!
You can find this lens to purchase off the Viltrox website here (affiliate link)
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