Art and Photography

New one-of-a-kind lens: Laowa 15mm UWA for crop sensors with 1:1 macro and shift

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  • Sep 3rd, 2015 10:47 am
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Deal Addict
Aug 30, 2007
2002 posts
1465 upvotes

New one-of-a-kind lens: Laowa 15mm UWA for crop sensors with 1:1 macro and shift

[IMG]http://www.venuslens.net/wp-content/upl ... Shots1.jpg[/IMG]

I am normally not the person to order something brand new and untested, especially from a Chinese company, but this new unique 15mm f4 lens from Venus did it to me (you can pre-order it here for 455$ US with free shipping if you use the 5% discount code SGMACRO; the shipping should start at the end of July). Multiple mounts are available. The lens is purely mechanical (no electronics inside).

Apparently this is one-of-a-kind lens in at least two capacities:

1) The first true UWA lens for a crop sensor with shift capability, and also by far the cheapest shift lens available; great for architectural photography, when you can compensate for severe perspective distortion effects without loosing resolution at the corners. (Korean Samyang recently came out with 24mm tilt/shift lens - good for full frame, not really an UWA for crop; also it costs double - 850$ US; Canon makes T/S as short as 17mm, which is still not too wide on a crop, and it will cost you a kidney).

2) The first UWA lens with 1:1 macro capability. (To be honest, at 1:1 the distance from the front element to the subject is an impractical 5mm, but if you use it 1:2 you can still produce very unique shots, at much more usable distance).

Other goodies:

- The lens allows usage of filters (with a very common 77mm thread) - not a common thing at such extreme focal lengths. Great for landscape.
- The lens has a large number (14) of aperture blades: great for out of focus blur.

In addition, it apparently has very good optical qualities, as judged from the MTF charts and sample shots from this Chinese thread (translated to English):

https://translate.google.ca/translate?s ... edit-text=

In particular, the following shot is pretty amazing, as it is using all the three capabilities at once: it is an UWA macro shot using a shift (spider alert!):

https://t.williamgates.net/image-5E45_5562E80D.jpg

One review in English is also available:

http://sgmacro.blogspot.dk/2015/06/revi ... f4-11.html

EDIT: I finally received my copy of the lens (end of August; it only took 5 days to ship it, over a weekend). My detailed review of non-macro qualities of this lens can be found here:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... ?t=1439325

My overall conclusions there:

[QUOTE]
From my tests it does appear that the new Laowa 15mm f4 lens was primarily designed for its unique UWA 1:1 macro feature; and it should be mostly used as such. Its qualities as a general purpose UWA lens were obviously sacrificed for that primary goal. [/QUOTE]
5 replies
Deal Fanatic
Jul 13, 2009
5244 posts
3529 upvotes
Might want to put a spider warning in your thread title.

That thing is huge!
Deal Addict
Aug 30, 2007
2002 posts
1465 upvotes
Anyone else pre-ordered this lens? I pre-ordered it on June 30th, it was finally shipped 3 days ago, and is already in Canada on the way to my (newly installed) community mailbox. I ordered it directly from Venus, with the 5% discount code (see my OP.)

My main interest in this lens: the shift feature (this is the first shift UWA lens for crop cameras), and the fact that it appears to have a very good optical quality (at least judging from the published MTF charts) - much better than anything else I compared to (Canon 10-22mm, 14mm f2.8L etc.). Of course real life performance can be quite different, so the very first thing I'll do after receiving the lens is to thoroughly test its optical quality on real life subjects (cityscapes), using my other UWA lens - Sigma 10-20mm - as a comparison. I'll post a mini review at some point.

Finally, this 1:1 macro UWA feature is also quite interesting, though very challenging . True 1:1 is achieved at the minuscule 5mm distance from the front element, and so not surprisingly this is my first lens I ordered a transparent protective ("UV") filter for, for very good reasons. (Chances of touching something with the front element while exploring the macroworld are extremely high.)
Deal Addict
Aug 30, 2007
2002 posts
1465 upvotes
I finally received my copy of the lens (end of August; it only took 5 days to ship it, over a weekend). My detailed review of non-macro qualities of this lens can be found here:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/sho ... ?t=1439325

My overall conclusions there:

[QUOTE]
From my tests it does appear that the new Laowa 15mm f4 lens was primarily designed for its unique UWA 1:1 macro feature; and it should be mostly used as such. Its qualities as a general purpose UWA lens were obviously sacrificed for that primary goal. [/QUOTE]
Deal Addict
Jun 29, 2008
1897 posts
557 upvotes
North York
Damn! Spider warning next time!

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