- Viltrox has announced its new AF 26mm F2.8 EVO lens
- It’s available in Sony E and Nikon Z-mount versions and costs $299 / £279
- It is 23.8 mm thick and weighs 130 g
Chinese lens maker Viltrox is having a productive year, and it’s now followed up a recent pair of medium-telephoto primes for APS-C cameras with a brand new 26mm f/2.8 pancake lens.
Part of the same mid-range range as my recently tested AF 90mm F2.2 EVO, the AF 26mm F2.8 EVO is available for Sony E and Nikon Z-mount cameras at launch. It costs $299 / £279.
Compact size and light weight is the goal here – the 26mm F2.8 is just 23.8mm thick, tipping the scales at 4.6oz / 130g. I can see it pairing nicely with a Sony A7C / A7C II or Nikon Zf as a casual, everyday lens that offers surprisingly sharp image quality.
It’s not the smallest autofocus full-frame lens in Viltrox’s range, mind you – that distinction goes to the AF 28mm F4.5. But given the bright f/2.8 aperture and onboard features, the new 26mm lens seems impossibly small.
These features include a dust- and splash-resistant machined metal construction, dedicated aperture and focus rings, a rear metal mount with a USB-C port for firmware updates, and an STM focus motor for fast autofocus.
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And there’s more: the AF 26mm F2.8 EVO comes with a magnetic lens hood that snaps into place, eliminating the trickery that comes with traditional clamp-release lens hoods.
It is part of a lens hood system that includes a magnetic lens hood that also works with magnetic lens filters. Alternatively, traditional screw filters also work via 43 mm thread.
I hope other lens manufacturers follow Viltrox’s lead – lens caps can be a real pain to remove and put back on, but a magnetic type simplifies the process.
Optically, we have a simple construction of eight elements in six groups, with a minimum focus distance of 0.2m, resulting in a 0.2x maximum magnification, for reasonable close-up.
The Viltrox AF 26mm F2.8 EVO is available immediately in Sony E and Nikon Z versions from Amazon USA and the Viltrox official store. No word yet on whether L-mount or Fujifilm X-mount versions are on the way.
Yes, the Fujifilm X is APS-C format, but I can see the full-frame Viltrox lens working well with these crop sensor cameras, even for Sony and Nikon, where it would offer an equivalent 39mm focal length.
It’s another new Viltrox lens available for Nikon Z cameras, suggesting that the Nikon vs Viltrox case from earlier this year has been quietly resolved. I hope so, because Viltrox has consistently produced excellent optics, and the AF 26mm F2.8 EVO looks like an impressive addition. Stay tuned for my in-depth review coming soon.
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