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Autofocus

The autofocus of the tested Viltrox is completely noiseless but also a tad sluggish. After pressing the shutter-release you can even start to wonder whether you are not accidentally in the MF mode. At the beginning there is simply no reaction whatsoever. The mechanism eventually moves forward, but slowly. As a result, running through the whole distance and confirming the focus takes even 0.8-0.9 of a second. It's hardly impressive.

In the AF-C mode, the lag is a bit shorter and the autofocus moves a tad faster, so the focusing time is shortened to near 0.6-0.7 of a second. It's a bit better but still far from perfect.

The accuracy of the autofocus didn't provide you any reasons to worry, but we have to admit in this category the Viltrox fared weaker than the Nikkor and the Sony.

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When it comes to front or back focus tendency, the lens didn't cause us any problems no matter to what testing camera it was attached to.

A7R IIIa, f/1.8

A7R V, f/1.8

Focus breathing

Focus breathing tests show reframing images as you oversharpen them. We conduct the test by manually passing from the minimum focusing distance to infinity with the aperture stopped down; then we check how the field of view of the lens changed as a result.

A frame change ranging from 0 to 5%, we consider to be low. Between 5 and 10%, you can speak about medium levels. Usually such values also constitute the maximum efficiency level of any breathing compensation algorithms, present in some bodies. Between 10 and 15% focus breathing is high; above 15%, its level can be called very high.

Below we present the test video of the Viltrox lens:

Based on this video, comparing freeze-frames before and after oversharpening, you can estimate that focus breathing of the tested lens amounts to about 9% in the frame centre and 13% on the edge. Such differences stem from the fact that the tested lens, with sharpness set at infinity, has barrel distortion and after passing to the minimum focusing distance – pincushion distortion. This kind of performance is a result of moustache distortion, mentioned by us earlier; it also makes it difficult to directly compare images we produced at both extreme focus settings.

Overall the focus breathing of the Viltrox AF 35 mm f/1.8 EVO oscillates around a borderline between high and medium level of this aberration. It could have been even a tad better.