by Klaus Schroiff, published January 2019
Introduction
Laowa is one of the many small manufacturers that emerged over the recent years. By today, they’ve established themselves as China’s most significant player albeit they still got some distance to go until they reach the global mainstream. They released many interesting if not ambitious new lens designs – mostly ultra-wide prime lenses. While most established players are pushing quality to the max – accompanied by a recent trend of super-sizing every lens – Laowa is trying to balance size and performance. A good example of this philosophy is the Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D for Sony E-mount cameras. By ultra-wide standards, it is very fast, yet it weighs merely 500g combined with a compact size of just 66x82mm. That’s quite an achievement for such a young company. Whether this can translate to a good performance is something to be seen later in this review.
In terms of mechanical qualities, there are both positive and negative aspects. On the positive side, the lens body is made of metal. Everything is tightly assembled and gives you a high-quality impression. The focus ring operates smoothly and is slightly dampened – typical of fully manual lenses. On the negative side, you will have to live without an electronically controlled aperture, EXIF info and also no AF. On Sony FE cameras these aren’t massive drawbacks though. You can easily use focus magnification for accurate manual focusing. The aperture is directly changed on the lens. Unlike on DSLRs this isn’t accompanied by a darker viewfinder image when stopping down. Instead, the camera will amplify the viewfinder image accordingly.
As far as focusing is concerned, it is worth mentioning that the Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D can focus down to just 15cm or a max. magnification ratio of 1:4 which is quite unique in such a lens. Of course, don’t expect the performance of a macro lens here but at least you have some flexibility in this respect.
| Specifications | |
|---|---|
| Optical construction | 12 elements in 9 groups including 2xAspherical & 3x ELD elements |
| Number of aperture blades | 7 (rounded) |
| min. focus distance | 0.15m (max. magnification ratio 1:4) |
| Dimensions | 66x82mm |
| Weight | 500g |
| Filter size | 72mm |
| Hood | petal-shaped (bayonet mount, supplied) |
| Other features | – |
| Mount | Sony FE |
Distortion
Laowa advertises the 15mm f/2 as “Zero-D” or “Zero Distortion” lens. That’s not quite true but at just 1.4% the amount of barrel distortion is very low indeed in this lens class.
Vignetting
Ultra-wide lenses tend to produce a lot of vignetting on full format cameras thus it’s no surprise that the Laowa is also affected with a max light falloff of 3.3EV (f-stops) at 15mm f/2. Stopping down helps a bit but it remains a visual issue even at f/8. Due to the lack of electronic coupling (no EXIF data), there’s also no way to use digital auto-correction to compensate for this.
MTF (resolution)
The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D can produce good sharpness but it clearly has its issues as well. These are most obvious at large aperture settings. The center quality is excellent at f/2 already and the near-center performance is also perfectly fine. However, the outer image field is soft. The improvement at f/2.8 is rather marginal in the corners. Stopping down to f/4 does finally boost the quality. The broader center zone is very sharp and the borders are lifted to good levels. The corners are still not great here but usable at least. The peak performance is reached between f/5.6 and f/8 with good to very good borders and, finally, good corners. Diffraction has a higher impact from f/11.
The centering quality of the tested sample was Okay. The field curvature is comparatively low.
Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!
Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH) which can be taken as a measure for sharpness. If you want to know more about the MTF50 figures you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations
Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)
Lateral CAs (color shadows at the image borders) are quite low with an average CA pixel width of 1.3-1.5px at the image borders. While you may notice traces of CAs in certain situations, it’s usually not overly disturbing.
Sample Images
Competition
There are several alternative lenses available in this segment albeit none that does exactly match the specs of the Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D (shown to the left below). There’s the Zeiss Batis 18mm f/2.8 (2nd to the left) which is, obviously, not quite as ambitious in terms of field of view as well as speed. However, it is clearly superior (and more expensive, of course). Somewhat more similar is the Sigma 14mm f/1.8 ART HSM DG – that’s the huge brick in the center below. Performance-wise it is somewhat better. Whether you really want to mount much such a lens on a tiny Sony camera is a different question though. The Tokina Firin 20mm f/2 FE (MF/AF) – to the right below – isn’t quite as wide but just as fast. Further options include the Samyang FE 14mm f/2.8 as well as the Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 III FE.
Visual comparison courtesy of camerasize.com.
The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D is a capable lens … within certain limits. As mentioned in the introduction, Laowa tries to find a "better balance" between quality and the size of the lens than other manufacturers. That already provides a hint that there's no free lunch here and the necessary compromises hit the lens at large aperture settings. While the broader center zone is perfectly fine even at f/2 the outer image field is soft and it doesn't really improve much at f/2.8. However, the quality is fine from f/4 onwards albeit without reaching greatness. The best quality is available around f/8. The amount of lateral CAs is good. Unsurprisingly, the vignetting is very high at f/2 and it remains visible even at smaller apertures. Laowa does promise very low distortions - hence the "Zero-D" in the lens name. While not actually "zero", the low amount of barrel distortion is certainly a highlight.
If you really want to you can push all ultra-wide lenses into producing heavy flare effects. However, the Laowa does a quite decent job here - probably because the front element isn't bulb-like and as such not quite as vulnerable to stray light.
The build quality of the lens is very high when just looking at the mechanical aspects. It's a tightly, assembled, all metal construction with a smooth focus ring. If you like old school, you will also enjoy the manual aperture selection on the lens. However, others may not like the idea of a fully manual lens without electronic aperture coupling and without AF.
The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D is not a cheap lens at around 800USD/1000EUR. To be honest - relative to the performance of the lens, this is stretching things a little. For a few bucks more you can get the Zeiss FE 16-35mm f/4 OSS and the Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 FE is more affordable - and both support AF. Still, the Laowa is faster and the corner weakness will not show up in shallow depth-of-field scenarios. If you are aware of its limitations and manoeuvre around them, it's actually an Okay lens - more so on an A7(S) x rather than an A7R x. That being said - there are better alternatives out there.
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Optical Quality
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Build Quality
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Price / Performance