Viltrox AF 50mm f/2 Air Review

Sometimes I feel haunted by 50mm lenses! My first prime lens was a Pentax 50mm f/1.7, and later my first Nikon lens was the 50mm f/1.8G. Although I think 50mm is a little on the wide side for my style, my first Nikon Z lens was also a 50mm. So, when Viltrox offered to send me their new Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air lens for a review, I thought, why not? In this review, I’ll be putting this little 50mm to the test on the Nikon Z6.

Features

The Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air provides an interesting and inexpensive alternative to first-party 50mm lenses. Yes, the Nikon 50mm f/1.8 S and Nikon 50mm f/1.4 are pretty awesome lenses, but they both weigh a touch over 400 grams. Not the heaviest lenses around, but I missed the days of my older 50mm f/1.8g at 185 grams. Although this F-mount classic was a bit softer than the Nikon Z glass, it was a small lens that was sharp stopped down.

Could the Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air fill that same niche? I was interested to find out. Here are its basic specifications:

• Focal length: 50mm
• Aperture Range: f/2-f/16
• Minimum Focus Distance: 51cm (20.1″)
• Maximum Magnification: 0.11x
• Design: 13 elements, 9 groups
• Aperture Blades: 9
• Autofocus: Yes
• Stabilization: No
• Filter Thread: 58mm
• Length: 56.5mm (2.2″)
• Weight: 205g (7.2oz)

The new Viltrox 50mm f/2 reminds me a lot of my old Nikon. It’s just 205g and 56.5mm in length. It’s got a sort of minimalist design with only a focus ring, and it comes with a twist-to-snap little hood.

On a Nikon Z6 body, it’s a very light and likable lens. It’s also quite decently priced at $199, and for that it even has a metal mount – although it is not weather sealed. At this price point, that may not be a surprise. However, it’s worth mentioning that the Nikon Z 40mm f/2 does have weather sealing and is, for a short while longer, on sale also for $200.

Unlike some other third-party lenses at this price point, the Viltrox lens does have autofocus. It’s actually pretty decent. It’s not silent because you can hear a soft clicking here and there, but not terribly loud either. It’s definitely quieter than the Nikon 50mm f/1.8G, and about the same volume as the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 Z but with more distinct clicks. It also focuses fast enough, but it’s slightly slower than the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 Z (which also focuses in lower light thanks to its faster aperture). For its intended purpose, the 50mm f/2 Air’s focus system certainly works well enough.

Optics

I was eager to see how good this Viltrox was optically, given that many lenses at this price will compromise on the optics. But after shooting with the Viltrox, I got some pleasant surprises.

The first surprise? The bokeh is actually pretty nice. It’s not perfect, but not bothersome either. There’s not too much color fringing in the bokeh, and its circles of confusion are still quite circular across the frame.

And a double surprise: the bokeh still remainds relatively circular stopped down, due to the lens’s nine-blade aperture.

Here is a tight crop of the above photo so you can see how the bokeh looks at f/4.5:

I also compared the bokeh of this lens with the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 Z at f/2 and at f/4. And, I used a background that makes pretty much all lenses look bad: out of focus grass. Here are some crops to illustrate the differences:

One must of course be careful comparing these shots, as although I used the same tripod position, the size of the lenses somewhat affects the subject-lens distance. That said, my impression is that the first photo favors the Nikon’s bokeh, but the second makes it clear that the Nikon has more longitudinal chromatic aberration than the Viltrox. The third photo, stopped down to f/4, actually seems to favor the Viltrox a little in bokeh.

Overall, I think the Viltrox has pretty nice bokeh, somewhat surprisingly for the price. Given the f/1.4 maximum aperture of the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.4, that would still be my choice if you want maximum background blur. But in pure quality of the bokeh at a given aperture, I actually favor the Viltrox slightly.

Another surprise is the sharpness. I was not expecting this lens to be sharp wide open, but I was wrong. It’s pretty sharp wide open, on about the same level of the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 Z when both are shot at the same aperture of f/2.

Even more surprising, the sharpness is relatively consistent across the frame. The corners of the Viltrox look great wide open, and in fact, they are better than the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 Z:

Chromatic aberrations are well-controlled too. In fact, the design of this lens is not exactly simple, with 13 elements in 9 groups, including ED, high-refractive, and an aspherical element.

You’re probably wondering, where’s the compromise? Doesn’t this lens sound too good to be true?

Well, there are two potential compromises, but I think they are relatively small. The first is flaring. The lens has a high amount of flare in certain situations when the sun is just out of the edge of the frame. It rarely appeared, but it can show up in certain kinds of backlit landscapes. Even so, I took quite a few backlit shots where flaring didn’t appear, so it’s not an inevitability. You can also get a greenish flare with point light sources directly in the frame, as with most lenses.

The other compromise is that it is possible to attain a higher maximum sharpness with other lenses. Remember how I said that the Viltrox f/2 Air and the Nikon 50mm f/1.4Z were similar at f/2, and that the Viltrox was a bit better in the corners? Well, that’s true, but once the lenses are stopped down to f/4, the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.4 starts to show some teeth:

So if you’re shooting landscapes stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6, other glass might be a bit more appropriate, though in practice I felt that the difference was not large. Speaking practically, the sharpness of the Viltrox looks great, even when pixel peeping at 100%. At f/4 or f/5.6, some lenses will get a bit sharper, but I doubt it will make a difference in real-world photography.

Finally, this lens has some vignetting. The vignette never really goes away even when stopped down, but it does clear up a little by f/4. It is mostly correctable, and may not need to be fully corrected for portraits. Here is how it performs on a relatively uniform light source at headshot distances:

To put the sharpness and vignetting in perspective, here is a completely uncorrected image:

And here’s an ultra close-up, cropped to about 300mm field of view to show how sharp it is:

Overall, Viltrox made a great little compact 50mm that works very well for its intended purpose: at or near wide-open shooting, with optical performance at f/2 competing with lenses that cost three times as much. In practice, I see the Viltrox as a competitor to the Nikon Z 50mm f/1.4 with a similar level of performance, a narrower maximum aperture, but lighter and less expensive.

Conclusion

When I saw this lens at $199, I was hesitant. But the hesitation is gone – this lens punches above its price point with surprising bokeh and sharpness wide open. If someone were to ask me for a recommendation for a cheap 50mm “nifty fifty” for the Z-mount, the Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air would certainly be at the top of the list.

If you’re interested in getting this lens, consider buying it on B&H through the following links to support independent reviews such as this one:

• Buy the Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air for Nikon Z at B&H for $199
• Buy the Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air for Sony E at B&H for $199
• Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air at Amazon (Nikon Z)
• Viltrox 50mm f/2 Air at Amazon (Sony E)