Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II (Nikon Z Mount) Review

I don’t review modern autofocus lenses all that often, but recently – for reasons I will come to in a moment – I have begun to find them increasingly interesting. Actually more specifically, it’s the more budget end of the marketplace that I have found more interesting. Modern lenses are pretty much all optically awesome (objectively speaking at least), and so with even a lot of the less expensive options on the market fitting that description, I’ve found it hard not to have my interest piqued. The lens in question here is the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II in Z-mount – a lens that can be picked up for around half the cost of the equivalent Nikon Z lens… so is it half as good…?

Well, I’m gonna answer that question straight away with a simple and very straightforward: I dunno, I haven’t tried the Nikon! Bad start right, I can’t even answer the question I set myself in the opening paragraph. Well maybe, maybe not. You see the reality is, it seems to me that we have come to a point where the real terms difference between 1st and 3rd party lenses is, in some cases at least, so vanishingly small that it makes little to no practical difference at all. I’m sure this can’t be said for all 3rd party lenses. In fact, I know it can’t. Some brands seem to pitch their products at a quality point that is noticeably lower. Some of them do this at a price point that still makes them attractive and some of them don’t – subjective perspectives play a part here too.

What it seems Viltrox does though is pitch their lenses at a quality and price point that makes them almost a no brainer. I will come to what I mean by “almost” here later. Of course, this might not be the case for all Viltrox lenses – I can’t say for certain as I haven’t tried many. But, we have started featuring them on this website, and Mike who has been doing most of the reviews has found all the ones he has tried to be very good value for money. So much so, I think his entire lens kit for his APS-c sensor sized Nikon Zfc is made up of Viltrox air lenses.

It was in fact Mike’s collection of lenses that inspired some new thinking in me. I’d been a little dissatisfied (read: bored) with my Sony A7iii for a while. I’d bought a Nikon Df as a second, more ‘me’ type of camera to use alongside it, and whilst that had been working out quite well for me, owning and shooting two autofocus interchangeable lens digital camera systems didn’t really feel quite right. I’ve also, for a long time now, been ogling the Nikon Z camera range.

A few things made me take the plunge and go for the Nikon Zf. Lens compatibility was a big factor – with the right adapters I can mount essentially all my lenses to a Nikon Z series camera, including, believe it or not my autofocus Sony lenses. Then there was the price. I could buy a used Zf for only a few hundred more than I could sell the Df. Finally, it was seeing Mike having such a positive experience with these Viltrox lenses. Frankly, I wanted in on that game.

Fortunately, thanks to a review I have written of the Viltrox 28mm f/4.5 Pancake Lens, and Mike’s reviews of course, I have a good contact at Viltrox who has been happy to send lenses to try for review. So as soon as I got my hands on the Zf I got in touch and asked if I could try the Viltrox 85mm 1.8… thankfully, they obliged!

The Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II

As it turns out this lens is actually the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II, the II at the end denoting it is the second generation of this lens. With that said, if you are looking for this lens in Z mount, it’s only the version II they made in this mount. I just mention this as there is a first version out there for Sony I believe, so if you end up searching for one of these for Sony on the used market based on my review, make sure it’s the second version you look out for… though, I am saying that with no experience of the first version, it might be just as good, but please do your own research.

Build quality

I find modern lenses like this fit into two categories: those that feel well made and solid and those that don’t. Actually, that’s not quite right. I have a 7Artisans 35mm 1.8 to review after this lens that’s very similar in feel to the 50mm I reviewed here. I was impressed by that 50mm but it had a few little niggly issues that made it feel a little like it fit into the category of not well made. The 35mm I have to review doesn’t have the same problems, but it doesn’t feel as well made as this Viltrox, so obviously there is a scale. On that same scale though, there’s no ambiguity as to where the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 sits. It feels very solid indeed. In fact, if I was handed this lens without the Viltrox brand name on the side and asked to judge if it was 1st or 3rd party, I’d find it very difficult to answer.

The outer body of the lens is made of metal. It doesn’t even feel like that thin metal that some lenses are made of. The weight of it adds to the quality of the feel. It’s not too heavy, but more specifically (unlike my Samyang 75mm) it’s not too light. Though, I should say as someone who prefers smaller lighter kit, I do find this lens to be just slightly too big and heavy for what it is. We also have a 85mm Batis lens for the Sony kit at work. I think that lens is slightly too big and heavy, and it’s smaller than this lens. They are both very much bigger than the Samyang 75mm 1.8 which is a much more preferable size for me.

The Viltrox 85mm 1.8 also has a metal lens mount, and even the knurled focusing wheel is made of metal. The caps and hood are made of plastic of course, but even they feel good quality and fit the lens perfectly. There’s also no image stabilisation here, a downside for some maybe, but the lack of it means the lens doesn’t rattle when you shake it which again adds to the effect of it feeling like a quality product.

There is only one control mechanism on the Viltrox 85mm 1.8, and that’s the aforementioned focus wheel. Like all modern lenses this is just an electronic control mechanism that isn’t directly connected to the optics in the lenses. Despite this though, it still feels nicely damped and is pleasant enough to use. Admittedly, it doesn’t feel like a “proper” old school manual focus lens, but it feels a lot more like one – and is a lot nicer to use in manual focus mode – than, for e.g. an old Nikon screw-drive AF lens which by comparison feel a bit crappy to manually focus.

In short, it feels solid! But ‘feels’ is the operative word here as really I don’t know how well made this lens is on the inside. It will be filled with plastic components. All modern lenses are – including the highest quality 1st party lenses – but I worry about the longevity of those too. I have no idea how the cost savings are made with Viltrox make these lenses. Maybe they don’t, maybe Nikon et al just sell lenses for a lot more. Perhaps it’s just the more tiered distribution and retail networks than make 1st party lenses cost more. I have no idea really, only comparative tear-downs could begin to answer the question. Though, the true and complete answer to the question of longevity will only come in time. Will these lenses still work in 30-40 years like my first generation Nikon AF lenses…? Time will tell, but this is the ‘almost’ I mentioned earlier – if you asked me to honestly tell you which brand I would be more inclined to trust to last the miles, Viltrox or Nikon, I would probably say Nikon. Is that bit of extra trust worth the extra money alone? Not for me it isn’t, as I’m acutely aware that it’s not really based on anything more than potentially misplaced brand trust/loyalty anyway… i.e. for all I know, the Viltrox could be better made…

Autofocus capability

So how does it compare to the equivalent Nikon otherwise…? There’s that question I can’t answer again. I don’t have the Nikon lens to compare… I don’t think I need it though. That’s because, whilst I can’t tell you how it compares to a Nikon 85mm lens on this same camera, I can tell you how fast it compares to the best autofocus lens I have ever used: the Sony 24-70 GMII I use for work. I shoot that lens primarily on an also-excellent A7IV. On the A7IV it has insanely fast AF, but even mounted via an adapter on the Nikon Zf it’s still incredibly good.

The Viltrox 85mm 1.8 is not as fast as the Sony 24-70 GMII. The Sony AF is almost instant, the Viltrox isn’t. This might sound like I’m slating it, but the reality is that the speed of the Sony is pretty much beyond any reasonable requirement aside from the fastest moving subject/photographer situations. The only time I find it to feel genuinely advantageous is when I’m shooting performers on stage when they are dancing and I am quickly moving around them taking photos. This is a situation where both subject and photographer are quickly and erratically moving. The Sony definitely increased my hit rate for that type of work. But in all my working career – where I have photographed a lot of different subjects, and I take literally hundreds of thousands of photos a year – that’s the only thing I have found a lens as good as the Sony GMII to be truly advantageous for. And really, it has spoiled me, as I still managed before, I just get a slightly higher hit rate now.

Within my hobby photography, nothing comes close to that level of requirement. The closest thing I could dream up was taking photos of my dog running and my child on her go-kart whizzing toward me. With the Zf set to 3D tracking, the go-kart presented no problems at all for the speed of focusing the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 is capable of. The hit rate with the dog was a little lower, but still well within what I would deem as acceptable.

Now I should probably point out that this is with the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 attached to the Nikon Zf. In case you aren’t aware, the Zf has Nikon’s current top of the line AF system. That is to say, it’s very powerful and very effective. This will, of course, be giving this lens something of a leg up in this test. Maybe it wouldn’t be as good if it was mounted on an earlier generation of Nikon Z series camera. Maybe a Nikon high end lens would be slightly more capable in a wider range of shooting situations in the same way as the Sony GMII is on an A7IV. With my level of experience with the system, it would only be speculation for me to say, but it stands to reason that this would be the case when combining Nikon top flight lenses with Nikon top flight cameras.

My point is though, outside of the specific situation where I am shooting performances on stage where I’ve learnt to enjoy the benefits of top of the line AF lenses and cameras, and also still acknowledging that the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 AF didn’t keep up with my dog running and changing directions at full pace for a 100% hit rate, it still seems to have pretty astonishingly capable autofocus that’s really not all that far off as capable as the best of the kit I have tried.

I don’t often do this, but to check my findings here against other reviewers, I had a read around the internet looking for reviewers that say it might not be as good as a Nikon 1st party top flight lens. One specific review I read was on Phillip Reeve here. I trust Martin’s insights, he’s an excellent lens reviewer and he commented that it is a little slower and not quite as good in low light with eye-detect AF. I haven’t noticed the latter myself, but it stands to the same point for me. These sorts of concerns around autofocus capability are pretty minor and probably not all that relevant to a larger percentage of normal photographers’ use cases.

Once again, for me at least this makes spending twice the money on the Nikon not something I personally would choose to do. The potential for a step up in capability is just not worth that extra outlay for me. I will continue to use the Sony A74 and GMII for the stage performer shoots I do for work. But for an 85mm lens for my personal camera I mostly use for my hobby… well, that extra hit rate of my dog when running quickly is just not worth the extra £400 to me!

Autofocus sound

For all I had to say about the AF capabilities of the Viltrox 85mm 1.8, I have a lot less to say about the sound it makes. That’s because it makes no meaningful noise. It’s easily silent enough to use for even video purposes. Very impressive!

Other features

Aside from a USB-C port on the lens mount, the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 has no other features. As I’ve said, there’s no optical image stabilisation here, and there’s also no buttons or switches, or even an aperture dial. There’s also no weather sealing – or at least there’s nothing visible on the lens mount.

I must admit, I do like having an aperture dial on a modern lens. Viltrox themselves include them on some of their ‘Pro’ lenses alongside a whole bunch of other buttons, screens etc. I think this lens is kept at a lower price point in part through the lack of all those extra features. I must admit, when I look at some of the higher end Viltrox lenses I do like the idea of these extra features, but I can’t say I have missed them in real use here… well, aside from the aperture ring. I do like to be able to change the aperture on a lens!

Image quality

What is there to say really… It’s incredibly good. Though I have a few comments of my own, I’m actually going to lean into Martin’s comments on Philip Reeve as he tests these sorts of lenses way more stringently than me. I find reviewing lenses like this in terms of their image quality pretty boring. Modern lenses, even modern “kit lenses” all exceed my expectations, standards and needs for image quality. I just don’t test lenses like Martin does, so if you want to see how it performs in the corners at various apertures when put under test conditions, then he’s your man – here’s the link again.

I do have some thoughts of my own though…

Sharpness

To my eye, the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 is reliably sharp across the frame at any distance from pretty much wide open. What I mean by reliably sharp is that for my needs, and what I see as most people’s normal needs, there’s no real issue even shooting this lens wide open close up. In the sorts of shooting circumstances where that’s the sort of settings anyone might need to lean into, it’s not going to disappoint.

With that said, it is of course slightly less sharp wider open especially towards the edges. It’s also not as sharp in the middle until stopped down a little bit, but for my uses I have found this to be a slight benefit. Shooting people close up with modern lenses can result in a level of biting sharp detail that can be quite unflattering. Wide open, the Viltrox is just slightly more forgiving – only very slightly mind.

Aside from the subtle observation, I have not taken an in-focus photo with this lens in any circumstance where I have felt that the level of sharpness it has produced has fallen short of the mark. I might be easier to please than some, but I think I am also just a real-world photographer that has no desire to nitpick when it comes to sharpness. Where I do love to nitpick is bokeh, or at least bokeh in the context of a whole photo…

Bokeh

This lens has really smooth background bokeh. If anything, it’s almost too smooth. Even with a complicated background it has the ability to smooth over details that might cause some lenses to create a busy feeling to the bokeh. Some people will absolutely love it for this. I personally think it’s very impressive, but as a massive fan of the Nikon 85mm 1.8 AF-D that just brings a little more texture to the bokeh, I could make an argument for this lens having an almost too perfect out-of-focus rendering. In a world of computational photography where artificial bokeh is a thing, I just feel that I want a little more 3-dimensionality to what’s out of focus.

There’s then the foreground bokeh to talk about which isn’t nearly as lacking in character. Have a look at this shot of Kippy. He’s nice and smoothly out of focus, but he has a halo of confusion around him.

The whole image

This lens presents what’s in focus strongly, and what’s out of focus strongly – at least in the background. The result lacks a little character and in some cases feels a little artificial to me. I feels as though there are almost just two planes to the image: the in focus and the out of focus. This is less obvious where the subject is planted on a surface and you can see the depth of field/transition zone more easily on the surface/ground. But even then there’s almost just a bit of depth to the in-focus plane. What’s out of focus then sits behind as what can appear as a flat plane of out of focus.

This is, as I have said, all very much a nitpick. For most people who live in a world of modern lenses this sort of out of focus rendering will be very pleasing. I live mostly in a world of vintage lenses where I seek out a level of smoothness, for sure, but also a more painterly look which allows for greater 3-dimensionality to both what’s in and out of focus. I can achieve something close to the sort of look the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 creates with a computational approach on my iPhone for example, and because of that it doesn’t quite appeal to me as much as what most would consider to be less objectively good bokeh.

In short, I can see very clearly that this lens is very impressive when it comes to bokeh, but as a fan of more classic lens designs, when I see the overall image – just taking into account the look of the in and out of focus rendering – I sometimes just find it a little lacking in character. Of course, this is very likely exactly what the primary audience for a lens like this are looking for, so it’s hard to be too critical.

Flare

I should probably point out that I am reviewing this lens at a time of year in the UK when the opportunities to push a lens into flaring are becoming fewer. That is to say the big yellow flare ball in the sky has buggered off behind the greyness of autumnal skies. With that said, as you can see in my shots, I have had some sunshine, and when it was there I didn’t find it to cause much in the way of veiling flare. I did manage to get a little bit of ghosting out of it, but nothing too serious. This was the worst I got out of it shooting directly into the sun.

Vignetting

Yes. It does this wide open, and not so much stopped down. As I say in basically every review I write, this isn’t issue for me as I like a bit of a vignette. Even wide open though, there’s not much here and only slightly stopping down seems to see it off.

Distortion and aberrations

I just haven’t seen anything worth comment here at all – it’s a short telephoto lens so these sorts of issues aren’t really that prevalent in many modern lenses. Again, I’m sure if I really looked I could find something, but in my real world tests I have found the rendering to be very clean and clear of chromatic aberrations, and I certainly haven’t seen any distortion!

Overall character

Overall, I can’t help but be impressed. Yes, my personal views toward lens character and my penchant for older lenses might stop me from specifically getting excited about this lens. But if I put my objective hat on I can absolutely see just how good this lens is. I can very much see how it has been designed for more current tastes – a lot of photographers seek out a more clean, sharp look. Very good bokeh is also often defined as smooth and lacking in texture. As such, it’s very hard to find objective fault with the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 and its image rendering. Is it a lens I can get personally over-excited by? Possibly not, but this absolutely wouldn’t stop me using it!

More Pictures

Final thoughts

I don’t need to get excited about every lens I use. I use a lot of lenses just because they don’t put too much of themselves into the image – the Samyang 75mm being a very good example. Having lenses to get excited about is one thing, and is fun, but having lenses that just reliably work to take objectively good photos is another altogether.

For some photographers, of course, a lens that reliably works to take objectively good photos is a lens to get excited about. I totally understand that and it’s for that very reason that I am impressed by the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II. Even with my lack of direct experience of contemporary Nikon kit, I can see it makes for a very compelling lens that really should challenge anyone’s need for the twice-the-price 1st party equivalent. Yes it might not be quite as powerful a lens in terms of autofocus capabilities. It’s possible that the Nikon is sharper and/or has other optical advantages too. What seems obvious to me though is that both those optical and mechanical advantages are going to be so subtle that the amount of photographers they will apply to in real terms is a very small percentage.

For me personally, as I’ve said, this is just the sort of lens I don’t really get excited about. I also have a very slight bias toward Nikon kit that, if nothing else, just makes me wonder if their equivalent lens is better built and therefore longer lasting. I also can’t help but wonder if I were to use one, would I find some advantage that I haven’t thought about or otherwise rationalised against here in this review…?

And then there’s the very modern rendering this lens provides that, if pushed, I would say isn’t perfectly to my tastes. And it’s a larger size and weight lens for what it is; a factor that I often find off putting – especially in prime lenses.

With all that said though, in this instance, it’s the more practical and pragmatic part of my brain that takes over. Having tried this lens, I’ve seen what it’s capable of and I’ve worked out where its limitations are and understood how those limitations are never really likely to impact my hobby photography work in any meaningful way. And so even when taking into account that I find it a little big and heavy, and that the image qualities it provides lack the sort of character I might normally seek out, I still find it a very compelling lens.

In short, when taking everything into account, even my own preferences, it’s just very hard to argue with the fact that the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 STM II is a very good lens, especially for the money!

You can find more about this lens in the Viltrox website here
Philip Reeve/Martin’s review here

Please note, during the writing of this review, Viltrox have announced that the new 85mm f/2 EVO – I am hoping to review this when it comes to Z mount at it is both smaller and as an aperture control…!

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