Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 Z DX – A new nifty fifty prime lens for the Nikon DX system

If you grew up in the analogue age, chances are your first 35mm camera came with a fifty millimeter “kit” lens. These “nifty 50s” were reasonably small, reasonably bright, reasonably priced and ensured you could take pictures right out of the box. Experts told us that the 50mm focal length on a 35mm camera came closest to emulating a “normal” point of view. That claim was reinforced by the millions of 50mm family pictures working their way through one hour photo processing kiosks and into family photo albums. If it wasn’t a normal point of view to begin with, it became normal over time.

From the early 1930’s era Leica’s all the way though the heyday of SLRs, cameras came with a 50mm lens, and any photo taken with a wide-angle lens, or a super telephoto or portrait lens stood out as being the work of a professional or some sort of serious camera nerd.

But times have changed. Family photos are probably taken with a smart phone, and new cameras are typically paired with some slow zoom lens. Nowhere is that truer than in Nikon’s DX (cropped frame) camera line: The Z30, Z50, Zfc and the new ZF50ii. So it’s a fair question to ask; do we still want or need a nifty fifty?

For personal context, I prefer full frame cameras, and already shoot paid work with everything from the Z6 to the Z9. But when I’m traveling or just shooting casually for fun, I wanted something smaller lighter and frankly, cheaper. I ended up with a Zfc, paired with Nikon 24 1.7 and Viltrox 56 1.7. When Hamish asked if I wanted to do a review of the new Viltrox 35 1.7, I jumped at the chance. That would give me a travel kit of the Zfc with the equivalent of 35mm, 50mm and 85mm lens choices. The camera and all three lenses will fit into a child’s lunch box with room left over for a sandwich and juice box.

About the Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 Z DX

The lens arrived beautifully boxed and includes a bayonet style lens hood and a cloth lens pouch. With an expected price of somewhere around $175 you would expect, and find, a lot of plastic in the lens. Somewhat surprisingly you also get a metal bayonet mount, a nice touch for a product in this price range. From the outside, there isn’t much else to say. The name of the lens is printed on the barrel, most of which is taken up by a textured manual focus ring. There is no function button or added function ring, but a USB-C port is tuck into the lens mount for future software updates. The included hood snaps confidently into place, so I mounted the lens to the Zfc and went off to take some pictures.

Without any crazy events or exotic travel scheduled, I used the Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 in the same way I probably used my first camera and 50mm lens. Walking the dog down to the creek, a couple of Christmas parties in Dallas’s Deep Ellum music district, and anything else that caught my eye.

Handling and results

There is not much to say about how the Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 handles beyond it works as expected. Autofocus grabs the target and the manual focus ring has a good feel. I have the AE-L button set up for 50% zoom, allowing for some focus adjustment on close objects. At the time of this writing, I didn’t have official lens specs from Viltrox, but minimum focus distance seems reasonable, somewhere around the one-foot mark by my nonscientific measurements. Sharpness wasn’t an issue, chromatic aberration didn’t rear its ugly head, and vignetting was minimal to unnoticed, even wide open. In another pleasant surprise, I found the lens was already profiled in Lightroom, so some of this performance might be software assisted. Colors were well produced, and close enough to what I’m used to with Nikon that I didn’t have an issue getting the look I wanted.

Update:  The full technical specifications of the the lens have now been posted here.

At the end of the day performance must be measured against cost. The Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 Z DX is one of the least expensive lens I have. Having said that, if it had obvious problems, I wouldn’t use it. I have an entire drawer of vintage lenses with “character” but that isn’t what I was looking for in a lens made in 2024.

Some photos

Closing thoughts

Another factor making the Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 Z DX a purchase option is the fact that Nikon doesn’t seem interested in making small fast primes for their DX lineup. This is a shame with the new Z50ii now available. With its Expeed 7 driven performance, the Z50ii is almost begging for the addition of some high-performance DX primes. Viltrox and other 3rd party manufacturers are stepping into this void. Viltrox also has a series of slightly higher priced Z mount lenses featuring faster apertures and harder, more metallic builds, and while most of the Nikon Z lineup are excellent performers, Chinese manufacturers like Viltrox are catching up in a hurry.

So is the Viltrox AF 35mm 1.7 Z DX a “nifty fifty” that you should consider? Well, if you like shooting with prime lenses (like I do) the answer is absolutely. I initially defined a nifty fifty as being reasonably small, reasonably bright, reasonably priced and honestly the lens meets and exceeds all these parameters.

More on Viltrox’s website

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