I checked the firmware on my 55 EVO yesterday with the app and it was up to date so maybe shipping with 1.04. Sorry to hear your lens hood isn’t going on smoothly. I now have 35/55 EVO and 50/85 Pro lenses and no issues with the hoods. I’ll consider myself lucky. Although Amazon sent me two used copies of the 85 before I finally got a new one in a sealed box. No such issues with B&H.
RoamingScott wrote:
I don't think they pulled it, the app still reports that 1.02 is the latest version.
The 55 shipped with 1.03 and 1.04 shows as the new version in the app. I'll test on 1.03 and hold off for now.
It seems like Viltrox simply hasn't made entries on the Z side of the site to reflect available updates for either lens.
jrscls wrote:
I checked the firmware on my 55 EVO yesterday with the app and it was up to date so maybe shipping with 1.04. Sorry to hear your lens hood isn’t going on smoothly. I now have 35/55 EVO and 50/85 Pro lenses and no issues with the hoods. I’ll consider myself lucky. Although Amazon sent me two used copies of the 85 before I finally got a new one in a sealed box. No such issues with B&H.
Thanks Scott for your discussions/reviews on the EVO lenses. I've been shooting exclusively with my Voigtländer 50mm lenses for the last year and a half. Based on your discussions/reviews, I bought the 35mm and 85mm EVO lenses to broaden my horizons.
theopwildebeest wrote:
Thanks Scott for your discussions/reviews on the EVO lenses. I've been shooting exclusively with my Voigtländer 50mm lenses for the last year and a half. Based on your discussions/reviews, I bought the 35mm and 85mm EVO lenses to broaden my horizons.
Got out today for big car show with PLENTY of light.
The 35 is going back. Swapped around between it, the V 14 air and the Z 24-120. AF is just not good and it contrast is lacking. The search for the right 35 continues.
Superscroll wrote:
Got out today for big car show with PLENTY of light.
The 35 is going back. Swapped around between it, the V 14 air and the Z 24-120. AF is just not good and it contrast is lacking. The search for the right 35 continues.
Possible that your sample was defective. I received mine a few days ago. The contrast is high, especially micro contrast, like with its sibling the 85 EVO. But it flares more than the 85 EVO. The images really POP especially with Capture One/levels, auto levels.
Not so sure about distortion. Lightroom already got a lens profile for the Z 35 EVO. Not so sure the lens already has a manufacturer lens profile. AF will certainly become better with firmware updates.
I'd have to guess there is something out of whack with it given the positive reports I see elsewhere.
edit- just read Scott's comment about a hot spot in the middle....that kinda rings a bell, will have to go back and look to see if that is partially the source of my missing contrast feeling.
Superscroll wrote:
Got out today for big car show with PLENTY of light.
The 35 is going back. Swapped around between it, the V 14 air and the Z 24-120. AF is just not good and it contrast is lacking. The search for the right 35 continues.
In case you have a Z8, the Z8 has the possibility of AF calibration.
One poster did this with his Viltrox 85/1,4 PRO and got a new lens
Pete thanks for that, I've posted over there to see if he can share a bit on the process. Assuming this calibration only applies to one specific lens (I guess Z8 would know to adjust when a particular lens is mounted?) I'd be willing to give it a shot.
I haven't had much time to get out and about with the 55, but some early tests show a far less frantic bokeh than the 35. Interesting to occasionally see some nonagonal bokeh shapes appearing as early as f3.5 or so (the bright highlight), though this shot is at f5.6 to better show it off.
The bokeh circles also seem to have less "ringing" around the edges than the 35 as well. I figured the 55 would be a sweet spot between the 35 and 85 in terms of rendering, and so far, it seems to be.
A quick smattering of f1.8 photos SOOC that I took to try and challenge the rendering in ways the 35 fell short to me. The 55 comes across much more flattering, even in harsh background conditions.
Also happy to report still no fringing detected wide open, just as the 35 impressed me.
Starting to put my finger on why I think I'm not a huge fan of the 35's bokeh, and that is how it handles hard lines passing through cat eyes of various orientations. Since the 55 doesn't cat eye as hard, the bokeh appears smoother over all.
An attempt to get roughly the same FOV between both lenses wide open. And yes, of course at similar FOVs the 55 will have significantly more shallow DOF, but it's more about use cases if you were going to take this shot from a particular FOV, and how the 55 might be better for that.
Superscroll wrote:
Pete thanks for that, I've posted over there to see if he can share a bit on the process. Assuming this calibration only applies to one specific lens (I guess Z8 would know to adjust when a particular lens is mounted?) I'd be willing to give it a shot.
My Viltrox lenses have no sharpness problem, with one exception. I have to use hyperfocal distance to get the corners sharp on my Viltrox 20 mm. The corners are not sharp at infinity. The center is perfectly fine. Kind like an adapted range finder lens, e.g. ContaxG Zeiss Biogon 28mm, when the rear lens element comes to close to the sensor at infinity, and the corners become unsharp.
I was not aware that I could finetune the AF of my Z7 and Z5II.
I continue to be VERY impressed by the 55 in a way that the 35 just doesn't match. Where the 35 has an obvious hotspot in the center of the frame, the 55 does not. The 55 also seems to perform at spec where the 35 seems to actually be closer to something like a 33.5mm/f2.2.
I shot a few A/B with the Voigtlander 50/2 APO-L, another lens with a very hot center wide open thanks to heavy vignette. The 55 significantly outperforms the 50 at close distance with a much more even exposure across the frame and smoother bokeh.
No corrections applied to either shot, both lenses at f2.
More observations: while the 55 EVO has a bit of barrel distortion, the 50 APO-L has more significant pincushion distortion. I feel that composing with the 55 EVO is easier as a result, as the CV's distortion is readily visible in the viewfinder and obvious if you have a grid overlay on.
Interestingly, where I noticed the 35 EVO metering warmer by about 200 kelvin in every scenario, I'm finding that the 55 EVO and 50 APO-L are usually metering within about 50 kelvin of each other.
This example is at f4 on both, and clearly shows the variance in distortions and shows that the APO-L is still a bit darker in the corners.
55 EVO
50 APO-L
I was curious how each lens would render a very flat scene that featured a largely desaturated subject. These are usually a good test of how much microcontrast a lens has.
The 55 EVO metered a half stop below the CV, which is something I've seen across the entire EVO line at this point. These shots are both at F8 to see which lens renders the most details out of a soft scene. The 55 EVO wins by a pretty obvious margin in the center of the image, while the CV held details and sharpness farther towards the corners.
