Viltrox AF 14mm f/4 Air: Seriously. What The Heck, Viltrox?
Subtitle: This Lens Is Far Better Than It Has Any Business Being.
This is not my first Viltrox Air series lens. That would be the 50mm f/2.
A fantastic lens. No qualifiers. A great lens.
Not a great lens for $199.
A great lens full stop.
Finally I found the nifty fifty Sony FE lens I had been looking for after years of searching.
This did make me look at the other Viltix Air lenses for Sony FE.
But as hard as I tried I could not make a case for either.
20mm f/2.8
Already have that focal length and aperture covered.
40mm f/2.5
See lens above. And that lens above already replaced a Sony prime lens of the same spec that I briefly thought was the lens I had been looking for…
…but nope. Looked the part. But it lost out the more practticle/flexible Tamron 20-40mm above.
So. Why the 14mm then? I am glad I imagined you asking.
First up a picture at a wedding.
Used the 20-40mm above. I got the pic. But I was literally backed up into a corner and could gp no further. Something wider would be nice. But I really like this lens so I put that thought away. Then Tamron did the thing. They release the 16-3omm f/2.8 as a replacement for the 17-28mm… Both a bit wider and longer. But…
I really like the smaller 20-40mm and having both makes no sense.
Even if I did make the trade I would be out hundreds of dollars.
So I stood down.
Other wide primes make no fiscal or practical sense. Both more expensive that what I want to pay for something I will not likely use often and larger enough to take up too much space in my camera bag.
And the Viltrox 14mm Air w/ AF manages to be less expensive than manual focus options.
So, on to the perceived downside some may point out.
The f/4 aperture.
Some. Not me.
There are far too many positives that offset this. But mostly important there is this.
Modern cameras easily churn out acceptable images at sky high apertures.
With such a wide lens, subject isolation is not a real concern But…
Approach close enough, taking advantage of this lens’ ridiculously close minimum focus distance and background blur is accessible.
Plus, this humble aperture spec allows for a lens that occupies the same compact housing as the 50mm f/2.
So, like the 50mm f/2, it makes for a perfect lens for the A7C series.
Better than larger, heavier, and far more expensive manual focus wide-angle lenses I have owned before with the same aperture.
I would much rather have the Viltrox 14mm f/4 Air than either of those lenses. And I really liked those lenses.
So, what some see as a weakness I see as a fair trade-off for other strengths. Moving on. While I admit a day one post risks being overly optimistic, I am going to call it.
This is another winner.
- Sharp as a tack from f/4.
- Sharp corner to corner.
- Well controlled vignetting.
- Well controlled distortion.
- Well cntrolled aberrations.
- Pleasing sunstars.
- A USB port for firmware update.
- Ridiculous close focus distance.
- Fast, silent, and accurate AF.
- In a wide scene, it picked up my daughter’s face/eye without issue.
- Great colors.
- And while not fancy, similar to the 50mm, it is also easy on the eyes.
And all of that without mentioning the most amazing thing about it.
$199.
These are good times.
Day one sample pics.
Had run low on color film, and this had to be addressed.
Final thoughts.
A fantastic lens.
Sidebar: Updates via the USB-C port are done differently than what I have seen before. There is no app needed. You do not use the camera or the SD card. You cannot see the lens firmware version on the camera. The lens is self contained software wise. You download the update to the computer, unzip the folder, copy the DAT file to the lens’ root folder and the lens updates itself. Different, but quite easy.
And finally, a question I imagine being asked.
Do I recommend this lens?
Yes.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 
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