Photography News Issue 33

Photography News | Issue 33 | absolutephoto.com

40 First tests

First tests Focus your thoughts on this bumper crop of lenses

– should one be on your wish list? And don’t miss part 2 of this lens special next issue

Reviews by Will Cheung and Kingsley Singleton

SPECIAL LENS

Laowa 15mmf/4 £400 The first question that raises itself with the Laowa 15mm f/4 Macro is ‘why would you need such a wide-angle lens for macro work?’ Well, mount this optic on your camera and the answer will become clear pretty quickly; it gives a fantastically ‘different’ look to your close-up shots, allowing a broad field of view, while still filling the frame with tiny details. Away from its macro specification, it’s a very handy option for landscape and architecture. setting is just behind the front element, which feels a bit odd to start with, but you soon get used to it. The deeply grooved aperture ring is stepless and turns very smoothly, and while this darkens the viewfinder, it does give a good indication of depth-of- field and adds greater precision, letting fractions of an f/stop to be used. It also benefits videographers in changing these settings mid-shot. The manual focus ring is similarly smooth and very nicely weighted; a real joy to use. For a macro lens it has a shortish 90º turn from near to far lens, but performed very well on test.

f/4 centre

f/4 edge

Specs

Format Full frame and APS-C Mount Canon, Nikon (tested), Sony A, Pentax K (Fuji, Sony NEX and Micro Four Thirds with adapter) Construction 12 elements in 9 groups Filter size 77mm Aperture range f/4-32 Diaphragm 14 bladed Minimum focus 12cm Depth-of-field scale Yes Dimensions (lxd) 83.8x64.7mm Weight 410g Contact venuslens.net

f/5.6 centre

f/5.6 edge

f/11 centre

f/11 edge

Adding to this it has a ‘shift’ option, like that found on a tilt-shift (TS) lens, meaning the optic can be slid up to 6mm parallel to the sensor. This helps correct converging vertical lines, but it’s also a pretty handy feature if you need to reframe your macro image slightly and don’t want to change the position of the camera body or the tripod. The shift function is activated via a small lever by the mount, but as it doesn’t have a dial, it’s not as accurate as the sort you’d find on a proper TS lens, and it only locks at the extremes of the shift, so it’s not all that versatile either. It’s rather fiddly, in fact. Away from that, the lens’s design and construction is mostly good. There’s lot of metal used, which adds to the sense of durability, and it’s pretty dinky in size, feeling like a stubby prime from the 1980s. Unlike the other Laowa lenses reviewed, it wouldn’t fit onto my D800 without depressing the lens lock button, but after that it handled pretty well. The focus ring sits towards the rear and the aperture

The lens is entirely manual in design – manual focus and manual aperture setting – so again it takes some adjustment if you’re moving from lenses with AF and AE. There’s no image stabilisation, but on such a wide (and macro) lens, that’s arguably not an issue. The closest focusing distance is 12cm, meaning that the practical working distance is even shorter, at around 4.5cm from the lens front. This is great from a visual point of view, but it does mean you’re getting very close to the subject, which risks physical impact on the front element. What’smore, with suchawide angle of view it’s easy to cast a shadow on parts of the scene, especially when the included lens hood is fitted. Exposures weren’t perfectly consistent, but they weren’t all that far off either; perhaps +/-0.7EV at the maximum.

f/22 centre

f/22 edge

Twinning such a short focal length with macro focusing puts a lot of pressure on the optical performance of the lens, but the Laowa 15mm does pretty well considering. As you’d expect, sharpness is best in the centre and while it’s a bit soft wide open at the f/4 setting, it’s much better by the time you stop down to f/5.6, improving to f/11 and is well held until f/22. Edge sharpness is best at f/16. There is quite obvious vignetting at the extremes of the aperture range and noticeable barrel distortion, which along with the vignetting, increases a lot when using the shift function. KS

Verdict

Original image

Given its corner softness, this lens is a lot more appealing on APS-C DSLRs, where those problems will be cropped out. For full-frame it’s a unique offering, with good centre sharpness and great handling. Pros Handling, centre sharpness, build, unique view, circular bokeh Cons Close working distance, poor shift control, edge sharpness

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