Late last year, Viltrox announced that it was bringing its 35mm F1.2 Lab lens to Nikon’s Z mount. Given that the company pitches its Lab lenses as including “flagship optical design,” we’re happy we got the opportunity to test one out in a variety of conditions.

Image quality

Nikon Z8 | Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 Lab | F1.8 | 1/125 sec | ISO 64

Wide-open, we found that the 35mm F1.2 Lab has good levels of sharpness in the center, and does a decent job at maintaining that to the edges. It’s not quite as sharp as the best F1.2 optics we’ve seen, but for the price, it’s hard to complain about the performance of our copy. Vignetting is also around what we’d expect for an F1.2 lens, almost entirely clearing up around F4.

I find the lens’ out-of-focus rendering to be quite pleasing, but at F1.2, the cat’s eye effect on the specular highlights outside the center of the frame can be a bit lopsided and uneven in a way that can be distracting if your background only has a few bright lights in it (the effect is less noticable if the bokeh is made up of several light sources blending together). By F2 the bokeh is closer to circular, but past that it becomes a bit more geometric.

F1.2	F1.4	F2	F2.8	F4	F5.6

We found that the lens maintained contrast well, even when shooting with bright backlight, and that it resisted flare in all but the most intense conditions.

If you go looking for chromatic aberration, you’ll definitely find some, but it’s typically not distracting in all but the most challenging scenarios.

Usability

To start with the elephant on the camera, this is a large, heavy lens. However, that comes with the F1.2 territory, and it’s not unduly so; it’s actaully lighter than Nikon’s own 35mm F1.2 S (though around 23% heavier than Sigma’s second-gen 35mm F1.2). While it wouldn’t be my first choice as a travel lens, I never felt particularly burdened by it as I carried it around Japan while I was there for CP+.

The Viltrox AF 35mm F1.2 Lab Z isn’t big and heavy for a F1.2 lens, but it is still big and heavy. I also don’t find the top display to be especially useful or aesthetically pleasing, but your mileage may vary on that. Photo: Becky O’Bryan

While we don’t make it a point to test gear’s weather sealing, I did end up shooting in light rain for an hour or two with this lens, and it didn’t miss a beat, and has continued to work afterwards with no issues. I’m not saying that you’ll definitely get the same results, or that this lens is capable of withstanding any weather, but it did at least hold up well when I got caught in a drizzle.

The control ring is a bit of a mixed bag. It’s nice that it can be clicked or declicked, especially for controlling aperture, but the control is inconsistent. Sometimes I would turn the ring one click, and the aperture wouldn’t change at all, and I’d have to turn it a few more clicks to get it to go up or down 1/3 of a stop. Sometimes, though, one click was enough. This inconsistency basically put me off using it entirely, though I’d be interested to see if it performs the same way on a Sony body.

It can take several clicks of the control ring to get the aperture to change at all.

The lens’s autofocus motors are relatively quick and responsive, though it doesn’t quite seem capable of immediately snapping from minimum focus to infinity like other lenses with linear motors we’ve tested. It’s hard to say how much of this is on the camera, though. I also found that my Z8 was hunting for focus or slightly missing it more frequently than I’d expect, based on my experience using it with other first-party or officially licensed lenses.

While the lens was still very usable, this issue was prevalent enough that I checked to make sure there wasn’t a firmware update available that might improve it; at the time of writing, there is not, though the company did just release one for the E-mount version of the lens.

Summary

Pictured: my friend ogling the Leica Noctilux M 35mm F1.2 Asph., a lens that costs around $8500 more than the Viltrox. While I’d certainly rather carry the Leica around, I’m not sure I actually liked the images it produced that much more (though the Lab’s slightly odd bokeh is highlighted in this picture). Nikon Z8 | Viltrox 35mm F1.2 Lab | F1.2 | 1/30 sec | ISO 3200

While you can certainly find things to complain about with the images it produces, it’s worth remembering that the Viltrox 35mm F1.2 Lab for Z mount costs $1000. That’s substantially less than F1.2 lenses typically cost, especially the ones from first-party companies like Nikon. The Nikkor 35mm F1.2 S may have nicer bokeh, sure, but it also costs three times as much, so it had darn well better.

With that said, we’d typically urge anyone thinking about picking up this lens to at least consider how much benefit they really expect to get from the extra 1/3 or 2/3 EV it provides compared to its F1.4 and F1.8 rivals. If you’re willing to give up the extra speed, you can get a lens with fewer compromises, and that will be significantly smaller and lighter, a proposition that I personally find very tempting. Many will also be cheaper, too.

If you absolutely need F1.2, this is one of the most affordable ways to get it

However, if you absolutely need F1.2, this is one of the most affordable ways to get it (at least, if you want modern amenities like autofocusing, which, believe me, is very nice to have if you’re shooting such a fast lens). And while I’ve gone over some of my complaints with it, it’s still a very competent lens capable of producing great images. It does a lot of things reasonably well, especially given its price.

The final wrinkle is, of course, that Nikon is currently taking legal action against Viltrox, so the future of the company’s lenses on Z mount is a bit up in the air at this point. That may be something worth keeping in mind if you’re looking at spending what is still a fair chunk of change on this lens.

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