I recently acquired the Viltrox 33mm F1.4 lens to accompany my Fuji 23mm F2 lens and wanted to share some initial thoughts on how well the lens holds up for its very reasonable price point of under £300.
In search of a lens better suited for portraits and detail shots than the Fuji 23mm, I came across the range of options provided by Viltrox. 33mm is roughly the equivalent to 50mm at full frame so this lens was a suitable option for the gap I was trying to fill in my camera bag.
This lens has mostly metal construction, and in many of the reviews I read, the build quality was highly regarded. This to me was a huge selling point, as I'm sure we all agree, our equipment should last for as long as possible.
Having read several reviews, the lens sparked my interest and I took the plunge. A few days later it arrived and I was keen to get out and test its capabilities. I wanted to shoot at sunset to see how this lens handles high contrast scenes and low light shooting. With the wide aperture of 1.4 I was hopeful that I could come home with some reasonably interesting photos. I found it to be an extremely satisfying and versatile focal length, able to capture not only close details but also landscapes and bigger scenes.
My evening consisted of wandering the coast, shooting anything that caught my eye. The lens handled the combination of dark shadows and bright highlights exceptionally well, and I captured some very pleasing images (to me, at least). This lens does extremely well shooting into direct bright light and I was able to shoot scenes which were backlit by the sun relatively easily.
For a lot of the photos I shot, I used the Moment Cinebloom 20% diffusion filter to capture images with as much cinematic feel as possible. I found that this lens, when paired with the filter, gives off some really nice colors and tones, as well as some very soft bokeh in photos shot with a wider aperture. A lot of the reviews I had read about the lens touched on the fact that there is some chromatic aberration present in the image when shooting at a wider aperture, but I found this to be no issue at all. ’m really pleased with the fall off between subjects in focus and objects blurred out in the background of a scene.
Overall I think this lens is an extremely good option for those not wanting to spend crazy amounts of money on 1.4 prime lenses and I would definitely recommend this lens as a fantastic third-party option for all styles of photography.
These notes are solely focused on photography but I’m keen to try this lens for video to see how well the autofocus works with moving image. The performance of the autofocus when shooting photos was exactly what I wanted it to be, and I was able to focus and shoot rapidly and easily when needing to get the shot off quickly.
Below are a selection of my first images using the Viltrox 33mm 1.4, including a portrait I shot on the pier of a fellow photographer named Keith.
