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"A great budget lens for astrophotography, the sharpness produced at f/1.8 and f/2.8 is exactly what you want." Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE lens review
Excellent image quality, even in the corners of the frame, with minimal distortion. The Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE is well built and comes at an attractive price you can’t ignore.
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As you know, prime lenses come in a wide range of sizes and focal lengths, and every once in a while, one comes along and seems to grab you by the scruff of your neck. One such lens is the Viltrox AF 16mm f/1.8 FE, which is an impressive and useful lens for astrophotography thanks to its wide-angle field of view and fast maximum aperture.
This lens is one of the wider prime lenses that are available and could be one of the best third-party lenses for astrophotography. With a price of just $464 (£533), this is one of the most cost-effective wide-angle primes, but rather than being a second-rate lens, its build quality and image quality are fantastic. It’s not the best, but it’s undoubtedly a lens you would enjoy.
Image quality is excellent overall, with no need for lens corrections, except for vignette removal when shooting wide open. With near-perfect sharpness and minimal distortion and aberrations straight out of the camera, perhaps the weight of the lens is a small price to pay.
The lens is made up of 15 elements in 12 groups and is built like a tank, with an all-metal body. It is pretty heavy, though, weighing in at 19.4 oz (550 g) despite its relatively compact size. Attach this lens to one of the best Sony cameras and you will have a formidable combination. The 16mm f/1.8 is also available in the Nikon Z-mount.
With a focal length of 16mm and a maximum aperture of f/1.8, this is clearly a great lens for astrophotography from a technical point of view. The light-gathering capabilities are excellent, to say the least, and during testing it was possible to shoot at a range of ISO levels with a moonless sky. Even ISO 800 was often high enough for a correct exposure.
The image quality produced by the 16mm f/1.8 is great, with excellent levels of sharpness across the frame. What’s most important here is that even corner sharpness is fantastic when wide open at f/1.8. This is the aperture setting where vignetting is at its strongest, but it reduces drastically when you stop down to f/2.8 and is completely gone by the time you stop down to f/4.
Luckily, though, there is a lens profile in Adobe Camera Raw and Adobe Lightroom that completely removes vignetting. There’s also only minimal chromatic aberration and a tiny amount of barrel distortion, which is impressive given the wide field of view produced by the lens.
As mentioned before, sharpness is great wide open and improves incrementally as you stop down up to the sweet spot of the lens, which is f/8. Sharpness drops slightly at f/11, and it’s at f/16 where diffraction begins to soften the image overall. This increases further when you stop down to f/22.