On Sunday night in anticipation of another random generated lens trip, I spun the virtual wheels and it threw up the Sony A7R IV and the diminutive Viltrox 28mm f4/5. The first thing I did when attempting to attach the lens to the camera was drop it, quite badly, but luckily mostly onto carpet. I tested the AF in the low light of my office and it struggled. It struggled a lot – pulsing in and out with the red AF box staying resolutely red for nah nah. I feared the worst; that the drop had done irreparable damage. I focused on something bright rather than something dark and et voilà the focus popped into life and I was able to take a really terrible photo. But at least it was in focus and sharp across the frame. The lens lived.

The next day I went to see if any of my updateable lenses had firmware updates. Since I last checked Viltrox have added a handy little piece of software that more or less automatically checks whether your lens is up to date, firmware wise, and updates should you wish (A couple of my lenses it didn’t seem to want to know and I had to update them the old school way). This little lens had been updated at least twice since I bought it last year on Indiegogo launch day, when I paid just under £70 for it, and it had another update to improve the autofocus performance. I updated the firmware and checked the autofocus performance. It was similar to as it was before, as in not great, but in daylight it was at least focusing most of the time.

The lens’ USP is its tiny size and its tiny size and ability to autofocus. Ironically for the lens I have that struggles the most to autofocus, it offers no ability to manually focus. It also comes with more advisory notices regarding performance limitations and suggestions on how the camera should be set up than any lens I own. Unintentionally but actually advised, on my trip with the lens I set the camera to electronic shutter mode – which I later think may have been a mistake, but more of that later.

The great thing about this very inexpensive lens is it’s tiny size means that on many a day out where I have taken several lenses, this one comes too as it is almost literally as small and light as a lens or body cap, so can be carried with basically no weight or size penalty. And although it is somewhat limited with its fixed f/4.5 aperture and a focal length that I find I struggle with a bit, it can produce a decent enough photo. It isn’t though a lens I would or have carried or used exclusively on a photoshoot.

The trip was once again into Grantham town, off for an afternoon performance of The Running Man which had been released that day. It would begin in a wet day in November gloom and end in darkness – not exactly playing to this lens’ strengths.

The alley is looking a little less resplendent now the trees have mostly lost their leaf. The shot was decently shop, lacking a little clarity and resolution compared to my best lenses, but acceptable and understandable when you consider the tiny size of the lens and the glass it contains.

In the cinema and a quick photo before turning the camera off when the film started. The AF really didn’t want to work, it ended up running up and down the red/white/black line in the middle left of the frame. I did end up quite liking this though – the lights producing little stars that would portend this little lens’ unique party trick later on in in the day.

Leaving the cinema at around 4:30pm, I only had a few minutes before the darkness fell completely and the sky would be pitch black. As you can just about make out the lens aperture has a star shape that produces quite dramatic sun stars. It can also flare like crazy, so care had to be taken.

The above may be my favourite of the evening, The Guildhall lit nicely, the dark sky still just about blue with the trees in the foreground just about lit. I managed to hide this with darkening and a little crop, but most of the images taken in darkness had some unpleasant electronic banding, mostly on the right hand side of the frame. I’m not sure if this is an issue with the lens, or the camera, or a combination of the above, but it made a few of the images almost unusable, which was a shame. I would like to test it with the mechanical shutter on to see whether the electronic shutter was to blame.

This van owner is a WEC fan! I imagine I was one of the few in town who recognised that they are!

This was a big old crop too, but I quite like this cool shop in the dark. I had dialled back the exposure to -2 to preserve the highlights. The electronic banding issue meant I couldn’t recover the shadows.

A real benefit of the A7R IV and its 61 MP sensor is that I could crop this quite heavily to create something that is okay with me. I was struggling with the 28mm focal length…..

This hairdressers looked about sixty years old with it’s net curtains covering the windows. I like the way it looks when converted to black and white, the ugly lens flare in the corner becoming a feature rather than just a flaw. The image stabilisation is working well at 1/20s.

This shot of a pub window suited the 28mm lens very well. I’d not noticed them in the daytime, they popped out once night had fallen.

No issues with the sharpness of the lens – which is impressive when you consider the tiny size of the thing!

I took some close up shots of the reddened trees and they mostly looked quite harsh, but from afar they held up quite well. Once again there is some weirdness in the blue flaring on the left.

Some radiator steam coming from a school building in front of a light made for an interesting shot. ISO 12800 actually came out quite clean once denoised.

Waiting in the school playground, I liked the red bin and the lights that became long star spears with this little lens.

A similar shot to what I took with the Panasonic last week. I actually think I prefer the Panasonic, I think the limitations of the little pancake lens are apparent here.

And finally again here I think the Panasonic shot I took of the same shop had far more pop – then again this was taken an hour later, so the light may have been slightly more conducive.

So a short trip for a lens that I don’t think many would use as their every day carry, but is great as an all the time carry with, either on the camera in transit, or in a bag or a pocket if you want a different perspective. It’s capable of producing some great sun stars, it’s fixed aperture limits its practical night time use. Image quality is adequate, focusing is problematic at best: very poor when trying to focus on dark subjects in the dark; better in good light but not quick or particularly confident.

As shown above I took this lens with me on holiday this year, but I only actually used it once – on the first morning of the holiday when it was still attached to the camera as a surrogate body cap before being replaced by one of the other three lenses I took with me, one of which was a 20mm lens which saw more use – with cropping if required, and my RX100 VII which saw quite of lot of photos taken around the same equivalent focal length.

So this was the first time I’d used the lens exclusively and I generally enjoyed the experience despite the lens’ limitations. What it lacks in image quality or overall usefulness is its undisputed wow factor in how a lens so small can perform actually so well for so little money. For a stealth street photography camera it could also actually be quite useful as I doubt many who saw it actually believed it was a lens capable of taking pictures! So I am glad I have it, despite it’s limited use. Thanks Viltrox!