In this blog I will share my first impressions of the Viltrox 85mm f1.4 Pro prime lens for the Sony E-Mount system. For full transparency Viltrox has sent me this lens to test and write a first impressions blog, so this isn’t a review

Purpose

This is a niche lens that won’t be suitable for most people, and I can only think of two use cases where a lens like this would be worth considering. The first one is portraiture if you like the classic headshot style look. You get the compression of 85mm and the bokeh of f1.4 to achieve that look. The second more niche use case is street photography at night if you’re looking for details. While most of my street photography is between 35 and 50mm, an 85mm focal length can allow for capturing small details, creating negative space, or shooting abstract photos. f1.4 is overkill for most street photography, so I only recommend it if 90% of your time you’re shooting in low light conditions where you need to maintain a higher shutter speed.

Build & Size

This lens is large and heavy. There is no getting around physics and the fact this lens is chunky. Straight off the bat, I will say that it is not suitable for smaller bodies such as the A7C, and even on the bigger A7V body it feels front heavy. This isn’t a travel lens, nor is it something you can throw round your neck for the entire day. For me, this is a lens I would bring out for specific use cases. The build quality seems good, with premium feeling materials and a nice finish. The aperture ring feels well damped with solid sounding clicks.

Features

The 85mm Pro comes with all the features one would expect in a premium lens. You get a solid aperture ring, which is essential for many street photographers. A custom Fn button is invaluable, and it can be directly customised from the Sony menu. I use mine for manual focus hold. A de-click switch which allows smooth aperture adjustment for video. Finally an AF/MF switch completes the feature list. Overall a great set of features for the price.

Image Quality

I feel we are reaching a point where image quality is already so good that it’s almost meaningless going into fine detail and digging into the weeds for the smallest differences. The image quality is very good. It’s sharp, the colours render well, and there are minimal issues even at f1.4. Below are some sample photos to give you an idea.

AF

The AF is good enough for most applications, and certainly for my use case it was never too slow. I’ve used it extensively in AF-S and AF-C for both photo and video, and not once did I experience any focus hunting or other issues which resulted in out of focus photos. Overall the AF performance is good. If you want the absolute best AF performance, the Sony 85mm GM II still wins out by a little, but it’s also 3 times the price.