Viltrox PFU RBMH 20 mm f/1.8 ASPH review - Introduction

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Viltrox PFU RBMH 20 mm f/1.8 ASPH

20 May 2019

Arkadiusz Olech

1. Introduction

Lately we've observed a real crop of new, independent companies on the optics market which have been offering mainly manual lenses, often produced in Asia, designed both for reflex and mirrorless cameras. The lists of such producers is really long, including but not limited to such companies as Samyang, IBE Optics, Irix, Meike, Mitakon, Sain Sonic, SLR Magic, Laowa or Yongnuo.

From time to time we find out about another producer that tries to conquer the market with their products and Viltrox might be an example here. They presented their company during the Photokina 2018 with two new full frame lenses designed for mirrorless cameras. The first was a manual 1.8/20 construction with the Sony FE mount. The second one was even more interesting as it was a 1.8/85 autofocus lens which came with two mount versions, Sony FE and Fuji X. The company informed us that they were planning to show a version designed for mirrorless Sony cameras with an automatic autofocus mechanism as well.

It is rare that an independent producer launches autofocus lenses at the very beginning, small wonder we were very eager to check how the 1.8/85 model might fare in practice. Unfortunately we had to wait because it was unavailable in Poland. The Viltrox PFU RBMH 20 mm f/1.8 ASPH was sent to our office as the first and we started testing it without further delay.

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We would like to thank the Prolite company a Polish distributor of Viltrox products, for lending us one specimen of this lens for testing purposes.

You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.