Arrived today after purchasing on a whim, it was the least enthusiastic I've been about an order.
And...
I'm quite confident it's my sharpest lens and I have quite a few compact 40-55mm lenses (only type of lens I have for Sony FE). It was immediately obvious, I don't have one like this.
First thoughts were that it's going to make it even harder to justify repurchasing the CV 50mm apo-lanthar
- Here's one I can share F2, A7CII:
Right click the image --> open in a new tab --> click to enlarge to full-size.
Like what is this. You seen the size and price of this lens? Zoomed to 200% it looks clearer than some of my lenses at 100% and I even had a Hoya filter on it.
I imported to lightroom and exported fullsize jpeg. Didn't do anything else manually. Didn't even hit auto.
Small lens, lightweight, has autofocus, appears decently built and, relative to other lenses, cheap cheap.
Honestly, the companies charging more and going for a reproduction look need to step up their R&D and production quality game.
Feel like it turned my A7CII into an A7CR without the file sizes.
I have a Sigma 50mm f2 DG DN on the way that I wanted for casual family snaps. Let's see, I'm certainly not expecting it to be as sharp.
Yogifi wrote:
[...]
- Here's one I can share F2, A7CII:
[image]
[...]
Not bad at all for a first image!
Yes, the 50 AIR is sharp and the bokeh is not bad.
I hope your copy is OK: I had to send my back as an element was tilted. Sharp in the center, focused in front of the target to the left and behind to the right, quite severe.
I would love to have a good sample.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
There isn't one, which is why I started this one back then. I don't think discussions in a picture thread are objectionable, either.
Good! Really feel like singing its praises, particularly because of the quality for the price.
Jonas B wrote:
Not bad at all for a first image!
Yes, the 50 AIR is sharp and the bokeh is not bad.
I hope your copy is OK: I had to send my back as an element was tilted. Sharp in the center, focused in front of the target to the left and behind to the right, quite severe.
I would love to have a good sample.
Sorry to hear that Jonas, I had some decentering with the 50mm APO, know how dissappointing it is and mine was mostly in the top left corner.
To not ruin my mood, I didn't do the FM decentering test but I did shoot a brick wall (though not at infinity) - just to know what to roughly expect at different apertures.
[ EDIT - I WAS IN CROP MODE WITHOUT REALISING LIKE A DUMBASS )
Seems okay even at f2, I didn't re-focus between apertures so I'll just show this one, didn't notice really a significant bump going up, maybe a little but it was just a quick test:
F2, 100%, left to right edge
Might possibly be a touch sharper on the right than the left, but could be my (or the wall's) angle since not at infinity. Or the contrast/colour of the bricks. Or my eyes. But I'm happy with this.
Possibly with the higher resolution of an A7CR I might be less so but I can't say.
Yogifi wrote:
Possibly with the higher resolution of an A7CR I might be less so but I can't say.
Are sharp lenses on a 60MP camera actually less sharp than on a 30MP camera, for example? I mean visibly, not theoretically. I can't quite believe it. If so, that would almost be an incentive for me to upgrade to 60MP. ;-)
Nifty Fifty wrote:
Are sharp lenses on a 60MP camera actually less sharp than on a 30MP camera, for example? I mean visibly, not theoretically. I can't quite believe it. If so, that would almost be an incentive for me to upgrade to 60MP. ;-)
In the thread on the decentering test, I believe Fred mentioned they can reveal more, so decentering issues being more obvious or significant when doing the test.
Not looking forward to that headache but most of mine are for family snaps where I don't care about uniformity quite as much as I did with the CV A-L.
I did like the CV A-L for smooth "scenes" with the family, just trying to see if this lens will do for that look or if it's too sharp (knew I'd find an excuse ). This is sharper than my 50 apo was. ...
But somehow I can't get used to the Viltrox's rendering, at least not with such subjects at medium distances. Maybe it's just the maximum aperture of 2.0, who knows.
I have two comparison shots here of the Viltrox Air vs. the 1.2 GM, both at f/2.0. To me, at least, they look pretty similar. So, the rendering can't be that bad. So I think I'm mostly just missing the f/1.2. On the other hand, it depends so much on subject size, distance, etc. But I don't feel like doing detailed comparisons.
At this subject distance, I think the Air is a good fit. As I said, I see virtually no image-relevant difference.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
I have two comparison shots here of the Viltrox Air vs. the 1.2 GM, both at f/2.0. To me, at least, they look pretty similar. So, the rendering can't be that bad. So I think I'm mostly just missing the f/1.2. On the other hand, it depends so much on subject size, distance, etc. But I don't feel like doing detailed comparisons.
At this distance the Air fits, I think. At this subject distance, I think the Air is a good fit. As I said, I see virtually no image-relevant difference.
Interesting comparison. The major difference I see is in the contrast & microcontrast levels, with the Viltrox being a bit lower in contrast and in microcontrast than the Sony/1.2. That gives the Viltrox image in both the focal subject and in the bokeh background less sparkle and less emphasis.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
I have two comparison shots here of the Viltrox Air vs. the 1.2 GM, both at f/2.0. [...]
One of the big differences is the increasing DOF (and thus way less blurred things) towards the sides and corners we see in the Viltrox images.
Yogifi wrote:
[...]
Sorry to hear that Jonas, I had some decentering with the 50mm APO, know how dissappointing it is and mine was mostly in the top left corner.
[...]
I think the amount of sadness is proportional to the price and the amount of problems you have returning the lens and get your money back.
In this case no harm was done. I just learned chap Viltrox series should be checked within the time frame you have for a possible return. That's not different to any other lenses.
p.3 #11 is interesting to display the differences and to show that people see different aspects of the comparison. Like most commercial very fast lenses, rapid onset of blur is expected by the user base, for separation of event talent from the background, which is assumed to be too busy to ideally show anything more than optical suggestions.
Therefore, the V50 shows more detail and clearer object shaping in higher contrast just about everywhere off the focal plane. It's not a flat lens like the GM50, but rather is halfway toward the deep lenses on the market.
You can see the shaping effect in the front left railing, the steadier more linear fade of the pavement stones, pedal rubber, the brickwork under the graffiti left side, the tree bark. Sony is determined that, other than the plane and its immediate vicinity, you do not notice anything other than the low contrast, amorphous blur blanket, destroying all medium to high spatial data in a low contrast wash.
It's actually hard to look into that flat blur effect. Same with the far windows above the path. The V50 is a very good general purpose lens, more true-to-life even in its bokeh field. The vignette helps too, and this is of course their design aiming for it, this being an f2 image. Both are doing what they were designed for, and doing it well.
philip_pj wrote:
p.3 #11 is interesting to display the differences [...] the deep lenses on the market.
What is a "deep lens" and can you please mention a few?
You can see the shaping effect in the front left railing, the steadier more linear fade of the pavement stones, pedal rubber, the brickwork under the graffiti left side, the tree bark. Sony is determined that, other than the plane and its immediate vicinity, you do not notice anything other than the low contrast, amorphous blur blanket, destroying all medium to high spatial data in a low contrast wash.
Nah... it's about the light having changed a little combined with the increased DOF towards the sides and corners we see in the Viltrox 5020 images. Check how similar the images are in the center parts (How are these images cropped?) Some things, like the pedal rubber is very much the same in the two images.
It's actually hard to look into that flat blur effect.[...]
So, it's hard to look at the center of the Viltrox image as well?
Some of your posts I don't understand. Deep lenses? At the same time I want to thank you for the nice/great portraits and more you have posted from Nepal (I think it is Nepal)!
Flat lenses render scenery as undifferentiated blur 'fields'. The effect is not always obvious for reasons like composition, lighting, etc. It depends on compositions with objects (in the real scene) at different distances from the camera that appear in the image (in 'image space').
Relevant here is that we see the effect often in fast lenses shot wide open, because these images are bokeh-heavy. In the absence of any decent literature on the subject, different observers think different causes are behind the phenomenon of 'dimensionality'.
Designers of flat lenses have decided against developing lenses that make images with good depth cues (distances from objects in real life) showing in their images. They can do this - so you see premature onsets to bokeh with short distances behind the subject focused on, heavy smoothing of objects shown in the image, and often exaggerated low contrast of objects in image space. All these are apparent in this comparison above.
Deep lenses do the exact opposite, they provide an easier pathway for viewers who enjoy letting their eye wander around the image, both for in-focus content and all other image content. That second category includes content just off the focal plane (in both directions front and back); through the transition zone that separates in-focus from out-of-focus content; then the material that undergoes increasing levels of blur to arrive at maximum blur at the back of the blur field.
But everyone just thinks 'bokeh'. It's so much more involved that that reductionist concept, where anything not on or near the focal plane 'doesn't matter'. Their idea is to draw attention to the main subject, and diminish the impact and even identification of objects in the images their images make. This is the unstated premise of fast lenses in 2025.
Deep lenses help the viewer identify contents in the bokeh; they may shape fields to accommodate this naturalistic look - the idea is to emulate natural vision. They use high aperture blade counts to treat objects in image space more kindly by softening the edging of them (circular irises do this); they show enough contrast to have objects visible even well into the bokeh field. The images look more true-to-life.
Street and travel shooters often want both outcomes. Some scenes you want to isolate the subject, often a person. But, there are plenty of times where you want to show the context for the subject. This is why 3D is more important for stills than cine, because cine/video can use the movement to assist in making the 3D emulation.
But stills images benefit greatly from depth cues, careful and progressive bokeh design, identifiable contents inside bokeh shown at levels of abstraction in the blur field that correspond well with their distance from the camera.
The high blade counts liberate the photographer from a dependence on wide open shooting, by providing circular apertures at all settings - these mean that troublesome apertures just off wide open can make images much closer to what you get (and want) from wide open shooting.
If the photog wants a little more detail in the bokeh, he can simply move to f2 or f2.8 to get it, knowing the round light path is retained, and he can have confidence his lens is not going to introduce its own imprint in his photos if he dares to do so.
It's OK that we disagree about this matter. Both models of photographic 3D are useful and most prefer the establishment position of fast focus fade and a fast entry to high levels of blur. But my position is that there is another way to produce image depth (3D) - in a more naturalistic, true-to-life design-induced method that does the opposite of the dominant paradigm. And knowledge about it should be made available.
I concentrate on bokeh and wide open behaviour because I believe it all starts there and radiates as one closes the aperture. But keep in mind all these issues apply to some degree in stopped down images too - flat lenses at wide open tend to be flat at f5.6-f8 too.
Bear with me while I post a few images of what happens with less than circular non-wide open aperture settings. I am shocked we still see this kind of thing in 2025. Why, it's almost as though lens makers want to stamp their signatures on your images. And they have been extremely tardy in fitting their four and five figure lenses with decently circular irises.
People have been complaining about bokeh ball characteristics seemingly forever - in often super-pixel peeping mode. Inspecting asph surfacing artefacts, rim lighting of same, their size, and let's not forget shape - goodness, that one over in the corner is not round! And those ones have cats eyes!
Meanwhile it's crickets on saw-tooth and octagonal, nonagonal and decagonal distortions of bokeh balls, so severe you can barely look at anything else in the image (examples below). This one I believe we will win, because there is grudging admissions from the industry (makers, major vendors, YT and journos) that circularity is important. Many makers are surreptitiously increasing blade counts, one step at a time.
I mention this not just to show the ugliness lens makers think nothing of introducing into our photos, but also to point out that many makers that use 14-15-16-18 blades tend to make lenses with excellent image depth, suggesting a correlation. There are overriding effects though - Zeiss now use 16 blades in their ultra high end Supreme Primes, which are nevertheless still flat (fast axial focus fade, rapid bokeh onset, short transition zone) so their imagery in deep bokeh has no chance to show itself as what it is. The irony.
I'd be sweating too if this happened to my images
smaller balls, nicer shaping in Cooke's small and very good SP3s - they increased the blade count
test shot: Zeiss's $20,625 Supreme Prime 100/T1.5, look at the cats eyes lurking in the darkness
why the fuss about knowing more about bokeh? this is why..
