Viltrox 24mm F1.8 for Nikon Z - My personal Review

 

I had the Viltrox 24mm F1.8 for Nikon Z mount for a while, but returned it. Don't get me wrong! This is actually a nice lens, but its shortcomings make it not the right choice for me.

Some reviews complain about the lack of sharpness in the corners wide open. I actually do not care about this. I cannot think of a situation when I needed F1.8 as well as sharpness across the frame. For reproduction of flat art, I'd use a tripod and a higher F-stop. For architecture, I'd use a higher F-stop too to get reasonable DOF. The lens is sharp in the center wide open at F1.8, and that's all that is needed.

The contrast and the color fringing are not perfect, but good enough. If you need a smooth Bokeh in low light situations, wide open and at night, this lens may not be for you. Small spot lights in the background can be reproduced nicer by other lenses. For everything else, the Bokeh is okay. A strong vignette is present, but can be fixed easily or does not hurt.

The reason for the return of the lens is the distortion in the corners. This cannot be completely fixed by the camera profile. Lines at the sides become indeed straight for almost the complete length, but with the exception of the corners. There, the lines bent outside quite drastically. Since I like to have my pictures straight, I have to crop the corners.

I get the impressions that this is really a 28mm lens stretched out to cover a 24mm angle. 

That would explain the corner sharpness and the vignette. If Viltrox sold this as 28mm, everybody would be happy with the optical quality. As it is, I prefer the Nikon Z 28mm because it can focus a lot closer (19cm vs 30cm), and is a lot lighter.