I do have to agree with feedback about the mushy aperture ring, though I suspect that's a downrange consequence of it being clickable.
I hate that the hood blocks EVERY physical control (click switch, AF/MF switch, and Fn button) besides aperture when reversed. It's a bad design that only needed to be half as long.
AF is nice and snappy and on par with the native brand option. Microcontrast is great.
The Viltrox seems just about completely devoid of LoCA wide open. Specular highlights just beyond the plane of focus are particularly distracting and annoying on the Viltrox compared to the TTA at least - Viltrox left, TTA right
RoamingScott wrote:
I do have to agree with feedback about the mushy aperture ring, though I suspect that's a downrange consequence of it being clickable.
I hate that the hood blocks EVERY physical control (click switch, AF/MF switch, and Fn button) besides aperture when reversed. It's a bad design that only needed to be half as long.
AF is nice and snappy and on par with the native brand option. Microcontrast is great.
The Viltrox seems just about completely devoid of LoCA wide open. Specular highlights just beyond the plane of focus are particularly distracting and annoying on the Viltrox compared to the TTA at least - Viltrox left, TTA right
I will admit, I did like the overall rendering out of the TT Artisan 75mm and 40mm lenses when I saw them, do you have a larger comparison between the two? Appreciate the time you've taken to test this.
Stargenx wrote:
I will admit, I did like the overall rendering out of the TT Artisan 75mm and 40mm lenses when I saw them, do you have a larger comparison between the two? Appreciate the time you've taken to test this.
Haha, gonna get there, just got my lens yesterday after sunset so haven't had much time at all to do much testing.
I'm not sure how many people would choose between the TTA 75 and Viltrox 85, since most mounts have a native 85/1.8 that seems more analogous.
Kasey has yet to realise that HRI balances out ED glass - for the most egregious effects, anyway. Here, we see very good skin tones and nicely smoothed background in his studio. It's lighter than my Simera 75mm. Viltrox left off any asphericals, they must have serious confidence in their glass.
It's a lot of lens for the performance level - good looking design, features, image quality, judicious formulations.
Can't you use one on Canon? I can see why they want to avoid competition with these guys. Best they can hope for is user loyalty (the 'rustadons') and a near-total lack of market situational awareness/info. It's a odd feeling visiting their forum, like a time warp at times.
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Went out to stress test bokeh in midday light wide open. These aren't meant to be art, these were scenes that had a good range of things happening near to far so you could see how things render wide open.
This lens has a fantastic sharpness across the entire frame. The obvious weak point seems to be the transition zone just behind the focal plane as I came across yesterday, and I'm not a huge fan of distance bokeh busyness. The first photo has the worst of all possible bokeh at every turn.
And one shot that shows the sharpness top to bottom, including a small woodpecker that wasn't even visible during taking it.
Lots more testing today, this time with some A/B with the TTA 75/2 again. Over and over, the TTA images are half a stop brighter at all apertures when shooting in Aperture Priority mode. I have adjusted the TTA exposures down to get closer to how they came out of camera with the Viltrox.
Wide open, the Viltrox often has the edge...sharpness, contrast, "more" bokeh, less flat color thanks to the microcontrast. The Viltrox does, however, have noticeably more vignette. The LR profile for the TTA fixes vignette more evenly than the Viltrox profile, for what it's worth.
Even by F4, the TTA distant bokeh has become smoother, and by all of my metrics, BETTER, than the Viltrox. This is disappointing, because the Viltrox actually has the built in advantage of being a longer focal length and should still be dominating here.
At F8 I really prefer the TTA rendering of distant foliage. Less mechanical, better bokeh balls.
Now, with a more distant in focus subject, we see that even wide open, the Viltrox is killing it. The rivets leap off the image, and the TTA looks downright mushy. This isn't really a use case you'll often encounter, but more of showing how sharp and contrasty the Viltrox is open. These TTA lenses all tend to have a bit of bloom wide open and here we are starting to see that.
And again, by F8, the TTA has caught up to the point of irrelevance (the TTA is actually sharper farther out to the edges than the Viltrox is here). Important if you have any desire for landscape type applications.
The coatings are also quite different. The TTA tends to trend more orange, and the Viltrox more pink at the same white balance (the TTA had to be brought down .7 stops here!). Sunset shows this well.
I have to admit I don't see huge distractions in the transition zone tbh.
My Viltrox 85mm f/2.0 will arrive within a week or so. I don't need it. I have the Samyang 75mm as the lightest option, the 100mm t2.3 arrived yesterday as my low weight reach option, and I ordered this Viltrox 85mm just because it was so crazy affordable, 156 Euro from China..... Compared to the 230g 75mm Samyang and the 280g 100mm T2.3 this Viltrox is a bit on the heavy side at 340g..... but I like the wide open sharpness I see in your pictures a lot.
philip_pj wrote:
Can't you use one on Canon? I can see why they want to avoid competition with these guys. Best they can hope for is user loyalty (the 'rustadons') and a near-total lack of market situational awareness/info. It's a odd feeling visiting their forum, like a time warp at times.
I have a Canon R5. I also have an A7RV, as there was no RF 85mm f/1.4 VCM when I wanted the Sigma 85mm f/1.4 DN. The Tamron 35-150mm f/2.0-2.8 is my most important lens now. When buying another lens it's always the FE option giving best value for money. The Tamron 25-200mm for instance looks better than the RF 24-240mm.
I think the RF 85mm f/1.4 VCM is a nice lens, it has some advantages over the Sigma DN, however, at grey market prices the GMmkII is more affordable than the VCM. Once there's a Sony camera in your kit it pays for it self while Canon is loosing the game.
The Sigma 135mm f/1.4 looks interesting too, no Canon equivalent.
The Sony 50-150mm f/2.0 is my dream lens, but that one is out of budget. At the same time we all know Canon would ask double the price at least if they would ever release something like it.
To stay a bit on topic: if you want a prime with good IQ weighting less than 500g longer than 35mm Canon can't offer you anything, while the FE platform has lots of options, and this Viltrox 85mm f/2.0 is a great example. Combined with A7C camera options including IBIS it's great for travel. With Canon most customers would buy an R8 + 24-240mm, find out that's too big, let it collect dust while using the phone.
RoamingScott wrote:
Lots more testing today, this time with some A/B with the TTA 75/2 again. Over and over, the TTA images are half a stop brighter at all apertures when shooting in Aperture Priority mode. I have adjusted the TTA exposures down to get closer to how they came out of camera with the Viltrox.
Wide open, the Viltrox often has the edge...sharpness, contrast, "more" bokeh, less flat color thanks to the microcontrast. The Viltrox does, however, have noticeably more vignette. The LR profile for the TTA fixes vignette more evenly than the Viltrox profile, for what it's worth.
Even by F4, the TTA distant bokeh has become smoother, and by all of my metrics, BETTER, than the Viltrox. This is disappointing, because the Viltrox actually has the built in advantage of being a longer focal length and should still be dominating here.
Scott - again, in these side by side bokeh tests - I just can't see what you're seeing. The out of focus rendering is so similar between the two that I have to think the only way you could ever tell the two apart, especially in the stopped down renderings, is by taking out a loupe on a giant print and going over them with a fined-tooth comb. I just don't see a big difference at all. So much so that, because you didn't label these images, I'm not even 100% sure which lens is which to be honest. I THINK the left is the Viltrox because it has larger specular highlights in the wide open shot, and the framing looks a little tighter, and you also put it on the left in the distant detail shots in the next post - but then that doesn't jive with your text for the f/4 shots, because the left image looks smoother in the background to me than the right, especially in the green foliage areas just to the right of the post. (though further away, it might swing slightly in favor of the right image in the space between branches...but again, they are so close as that the difference is so negligible to my eye.) At f/8, I might give a slight edge to the TTA, but again...they're so close I don't think I would be able to tell them apart if they weren't side by side. Wide open, though, I prefer the left (assumed Viltrox) image by a larger margin than I prefer the right image on the f/8 shot. But again, both look very nice wide open to my eye.
Jman13 wrote:
Scott - again, in these side by side bokeh tests - I just can't see what you're seeing. The out of focus rendering is so similar between the two that I have to think the only way you could ever tell the two apart, especially in the stopped down renderings, is by taking out a loupe on a giant print and going over them with a fined-tooth comb. I just don't see a big difference at all. So much so that, because you didn't label these images, I'm not even 100% sure which lens is which to be honest. I THINK the left is the Viltrox because it has larger specular highlights in the wide open shot, and the framing looks a little tighter, and you also put it on the left in the distant detail shots in the next post - but then that doesn't jive with your text for the f/4 shots, because the left image looks smoother in the background to me than the right, especially in the green foliage areas just to the right of the post. (though further away, it might swing slightly in favor of the right image in the space between branches...but again, they are so close as that the difference is so negligible to my eye.) At f/8, I might give a slight edge to the TTA, but again...they're so close I don't think I would be able to tell them apart if they weren't side by side. Wide open, though, I prefer the left (assumed Viltrox) image by a larger margin than I prefer the right image on the f/8 shot. But again, both look very nice wide open to my eye. ...Show more →
Well you're now on the record across multiple threads and multiple lenses to "not see what I'm seeing" so we can safely assume that (and I don't mean to sound dismissive) you have lower quality standards than I do for IQ, or at the very least, aren't bothered by the same bokeh characteristics as I am. That's fine. To repeatedly tell someone that because you don't see something that it's not there is just silly. I don't need to blow anything up, I can look at the images at 100% on my 5K monitor and the differences are stark to my eye. Would the bokeh differences matter at normal viewing size? Not really. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
All of my posted samples have been Viltrox on the left, which was said originally and I thought very obvious since the subject is clearly bigger being 10mm deeper
steamtrain wrote:
I have to admit I don't see huge distractions in the transition zone tbh.
My Viltrox 85mm f/2.0 will arrive within a week or so. I don't need it. I have the Samyang 75mm as the lightest option, the 100mm t2.3 arrived yesterday as my low weight reach option, and I ordered this Viltrox 85mm just because it was so crazy affordable, 156 Euro from China..... Compared to the 230g 75mm Samyang and the 280g 100mm T2.3 this Viltrox is a bit on the heavy side at 340g..... but I like the wide open sharpness I see in your pictures a lot. ...Show more →
If you want wide open sharpness, I think the Viltrox is the obvious choice...the Samyang and TTA lenses just don't have that.
RoamingScott wrote:
Well you're now on the record across multiple threads and multiple lenses to "not see what I'm seeing" so we can safely assume that (and I don't mean to sound dismissive) you have lower quality standards than I do for IQ, or at the very least, aren't bothered by the same bokeh characteristics as I am. That's fine. To repeatedly tell someone that because you don't see something that it's not there is just silly. I don't need to blow anything up, I can look at the images at 100% on my 5K monitor and the differences are stark to my eye. Would the bokeh differences matter at normal viewing size? Not really. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
All of my posted samples have been Viltrox on the left, which was said originally and I thought very obvious since the subject is clearly bigger being 10mm deeper ...Show more →
I think you are being incredibly dismissive - coupled with the 'it's ok to like wrong things' comment about the hood. And frankly it comes of as a strange bias against Viltrox for whatever reason. You have described the Viltrox as having bokeh that 'is on the border of distractingly busy', and 'has a strong soap bubble effect', and yet your samples don't show that at all in the vast majority of situations (except when focusing at longer distance, where it definitely does get busy)....and then you post these comparisons with the TTA, which you describe as having beautiful bokeh, and yet the differences are EXTREMELY minor, and frankly in many cases look smoother on the Viltrox. I'm not some noob who has only shot with a couple lenses, so dismissing my statements as 'you simply have lower quality standards' is just crazy. There are lenses with massive differences in bokeh....these two are not them. I'm not the only one who has commented that they don't see what you're describing.
Who are you to tell me what I find distracting? Either way, I don’t like the Viltrox. It’s going back, and hopefully my samples were helpful for folks who own the TTA or Samyang and wanted to know the differences.
A funny aside, other photographers who I showed examples to outside of this forum unanimously thought that the EVO rendering was suspect at first glance, which actually surprised me.
Jman13 wrote:
I think you are being incredibly dismissive. And frankly it comes of as a strange bias against Viltrox for whatever reason. You have described the Viltrox as having bokeh that 'is on the border of distractingly busy', and 'has a strong soap bubble effect', and yet your samples don't show that at all in the vast majority of situations (except when focusing at longer distance, where it definitely does get busy)....and then you post these comparisons with the TTA, which you describe as having beautiful bokeh, and yet the differences are EXTREMELY minor, and frankly in many cases look smoother on the Viltrox. I'm not some noob who has only shot with a couple lenses - there are lenses with massive differences in bokeh....these two are not them. ...Show more →
Given the above kerfuffle, your #1 and (to a lesser extent) #2 give readers some sense of the transition zone from two different focus distances - very important as we approach the limit of natural vision focal lengths.
We see the trademark highlight rendering and the still apparent image motifs in the far backgrounds of #1-2-4, very soft treatment, easy on the eye while still retaining shape and 'identification' - this is something Zeiss does not do, for example.
They don't like the world encroaching on their fast lens images, so they throw in more bokeh to force you to look at the only sharp object. They produce bokeh so abstracted you won't look at it for more than a few milliseconds.
The Chinese lenses let you tell a much bigger and more informative story, even at 85mm. One world contrasts even as another expands. Strange times.
