Viltrox AF 24mm F 1 8 Review | 54 Data compared

The Photography Life review highlights the $380 Viltrox AF 24mm f/1.8 as a robust, all-metal budget prime featuring fast, accurate autofocus and a convenient USB-C port for firmware updates. While offering good center sharpness for Nikon Z and Sony E-mount users, the lens is lauded for its excellent value-to-performance ratio. Conversely, the review identifies significant optical drawbacks, including heavy, persistent vignetting, weak corner performance due to wavy field curvature, and notable focus shift. Additionally, the lens lacks weather sealing, has a weak flare performance, and may suffer from sample variation.

The Cameralabs review of the Viltrox AF 24mm f1.8 highlights it as an affordable, large-aperture wide-angle prime lens that offers a strong price-to-performance ratio for Sony E-mount and Nikon Z-mount mirrorless systems. Testers found the lens delivers very good center sharpness and notable detail in the extreme full-frame corners even when shot wide open. The lens's standout positive physical attributes include a dedicated, clickless aperture ring suited for video shooters, minimal focus breathing, a fast and reliable autofocus system, and a built-in USB-C port on the lens mount for easy firmware upgrades. Additionally, it fares well against bright backlighting, providing deep contrast in contra-light shooting situations. However, the review outlines several optical and structural compromises to accommodate its low price point. Optically, the image rendering becomes relatively soft between 8mm and 16mm of image height, meaning photographers must stop down to f/5.6 to achieve sharp architectural or landscape results across the frame. The lens also suffers from strong, complex distortions that are difficult to correct in post-processing, and the background bokeh can produce undesirable double contours and onion rings around...

The Viltrox 24mm f1.8 for Nikon Z is a budget-friendly, full-frame autofocus prime lens that offers exceptional value, especially when found on sale for under €250. Built with a durable metal barrel and a smooth, unclicked physical aperture ring, the lens feels like a robust tool rather than a cheap plastic toy. While the autofocus performance was initially inconsistent during video tracking, updating the firmware via the lens's built-in USB-C port quickly made the focus snappy, quiet, and reliable. Performance-wise, shooting wide open at f1.8 delivers great center sharpness and pleasing bokeh, though the corners lack clinical sharpness. Stopping down slightly to f2.8 or f3.2 greatly improves overall clarity, while chromatic aberration remains minimal. Despite its high value, the lens has notable drawbacks, including a complete lack of weather sealing and the omission of a physical AF/MF focus switch. There is also noticeable vignetting at wide apertures, though this distortion can be utilized creatively or adjusted in post-processing. Ultimately, the reviewer highly recommends this lens for street photography, landscapes, and video work, noting that its wide 24mm focal length provides...

The Light and Matter review compares the affordable, 340-gram Viltrox 24mm f/1.8 against the premium Sigma 24mm f/2 I-Series, noting that the Viltrox offers a fast f/1.8 aperture and excellent barrel distortion control for $429. However, the Viltrox exhibits weaker corner resolution, heavy vignetting, lacks weather sealing, and features a stiff aperture ring, making it a better, value-focused choice for video over high-resolution stills compared to the sharper Sigma. Pros for the Viltrox include its price, weight, and clickless aperture for video, while cons include inconsistent autofocus and lack of a physical AF switch.

The Viltrox AF 24mm f/1.8 Z is a budget-friendly ($379), robustly built wide prime for Nikon Z and Sony E cameras, offering fast autofocus and solid, sharp image quality aided by lens profiles. While the metal construction and smooth focus ring are pros, the lens is hampered by a loose, click-less manual aperture ring that is easily bumped off the "A" setting and lacks physical aperture locks, constituting significant handling drawbacks.

The Viltrox AF 24mm F1.8 STM FE is a compact, autofocus-enabled wide-angle prime lens designed for Sony full-frame mirrorless cameras that balances an affordable price of $429 USD with high-quality metal construction [0.11]. Optically, the lens features a 11-element design with 8 special elements that deliver strong sharpness in the centre wide-open at F1.8, maturing into excellent, near-perfect sharpness across the entire frame when stopped down to landscape apertures like F2.8 and beyond [0.11]. Its upgraded USB-C port located directly on the lens mount makes firmware updates incredibly simple [0.11]. Autofocus performance is another major highlight, as the stepping focus motor (STM) delivers fast, quiet, and accurate tracking for both stills and video, while chromatic aberration and flare resistance are well-controlled in most shooting conditions [0.11]. However, the lens does come with notable compromises, most significantly a lack of in-camera correction profile support for JPEGs or video, which leaves users to deal with heavy vignette (reaching around 3.5 stops in extreme corners) and a complex mustache-shaped distortion pattern that is difficult to fix manually without Viltrox's specific Lightroom/ACR profile [0.11]....

The Viltrox AF 24mm f/1.8 is identified by Photography Life as a budget-friendly, all-metal lens ($380) offering impressive autofocus speed and good central sharpness, making it a compelling, cost-effective option. Despite these advantages, the lens suffers from heavy vignetting, weak extreme corner sharpness, wavy field curvature, and noticeable focus shift. Further drawbacks include a lack of weather sealing and the absence of a locking mechanism for the aperture ring.