Review on 📸 VILTROX 85mm F1.8 Mark II STM Lens: Auto Focus, Large Aperture Telephoto Portrait Lens for Fuji X-Mount Cameras by Micael Casillas

Viltrox Review Let's start by saying I have to be careful when looking at the lens, not the focal length. I don't normally use my X-T3's 85mm focal length, which is about 130mm on a full-frame camera, and I usually use my cameras for video content (or sometimes photos for Instagram) in a small studio. Ambient lens is a very "long" lens for someone like me and NOT a macro lens and is not advertised as such. I usually live in the 16mm to 35mm range. That being said, I've been wearing this lens on my X-T3 for a few weeks now and have been challenging myself to create some videos with it. Again, consider the lens, not the focal length - it's not stabilized (nor is my Fuji 16-55mm 2.8). So if you're doing long exposures or video work, you'll need either a very strong tripod or a very strong gimbal. Without it you'll have a hard time getting sharp photos at 1/120 shutter speed, but that's common with lenses of this focal length without stabilization and depends on technique and experience and what you're getting into. The lens itself is mostly surrounded by a focus ring - it focuses by wire, so the electronic one turns forever - thankfully the focus is repeatable thanks to the settings available on the Fuji X-T3 (set the focus to linear in the settings) . I found the Viltrox 85mm to be very accurate when it comes to repeatability, unless you're constantly and very quickly shifting focus back and forth at different speeds many times. but I'm just pushing the limits. With normal use, linear mode focusing repeats perfectly. The effort required to rotate the focus ring is very high. It takes far more force to rotate the focus ring than any other lens I've worked with on any system. It's not "heavy" - it rotates very smoothly, it just takes a lot more effort than I expected (even more than other lenses' zoom rings). The only problem I see with this is that if you fly a gimbal and want to use Follow Focus with it, the focus motors on less expensive gimbals will slip if you try to focus too quickly. The "hard" focus ring is actually very handy when trying to use the lens for manual focus. It allows you to adjust focus back and forth very quickly without a lot of manual "yaw". But I don't really care, I only got this lens because it has autofocus, and the Fuji X-T3 has amazing autofocus capabilities. To my surprise, the Viltrox 85mm does the trick. Fast, quiet and accurate - Eye AF and all the features you've come to expect from the X-T3 work flawlessly. Which brings me back to the "NO MACRO LENS" point. The minimum focusing distance is about 1 meter (3 feet). If you try to focus to the minimum focus distance you may have some problems (you can jump in and out of the minimum focus distance if you try to focus closer than the lens will allow) - so you have to be aware If you are within "range" of what you are trying to photograph, you are probably too close. The Fuji 90mm can focus a little closer (2ft) but is twice the price. After all, this is one of the most important factors. Picture quality. I bought this lens because of 1st focal length, 2nd autofocus and 3rd speed. I wanted a fast lens to create more bokeh. So if I'm paying for an f1.8 lens, I want to use it at f1.8. Many photographers will tell you that a lens in the mid-aperture range (e.g. f4) is sharpest - and they are right. but I'm not a professional photographer - I want to shoot frankly with razor-thin depth of field when it pleases me, and I don't want my perceived image quality to suffer as a result. I'm not a pixel artist either, I don't zoom in to 8000% to check something - I'm a videographer. If it looks good when cropping to 250% when shooting in 4k, I'm happy. And let me tell you. I am happy with this lens. All in all, this lens takes BEAUTIFUL photos and videos, has great focus, great build quality, and costs under $400 - there's no better investment you can make in a lens if you want to. Dip your toes into the focal length like this. I've also used a Viltrox EF-M2 (m43 speed booster) on my GH5 for the past few years and have had no problems with it, their $200 Metabones speed booster alternative for $200 (and the optical quality of this product) has my Confidence in Viltrox was greatly strengthened and thousands of others were also convinced to forgo expensive Metabones products. I feel like the Viltrox 85mm 1.8 is following the same path as people who are giving up expensive native Fuji glass. Save some money, you won't be disappointed. This lens rocks. The attached video was shot entirely with this lens for vertical social media sharing.