First Hands On Review of the Venus Optics Laowa 15mm F/4 1:1 Macro Lens

Hey everyone, thanks for visiting! I’m Will Chao, a wedding photographer in Melbourne. When I was first asked to review this lens, I didn’t believe such a lens existed and thought it was a low quality toy lens. I mean, how could I? A lens of this type has been unheard of until now, and suffice to say I was very pleasantly surprised.

First let’s look at the specs, 15mm Ultrawide, metal barrel (at least I think it’s metal from the way it feels), takes 77mm filters, that’s already spectacular, considering most lenses this wide is either very bulky or cannot take conventional filters.

Secondly, this lens features 6mm perspective shifting, either up or down, allowing you to correct perspective lines for architecture shots. Usually this is a feature reserved for high end specialty lenses such as the amazing Canon 17mm F4.0 TS-E, but that lens is beyond most people’s reach in terms of price.

Not only that, this lens also features 1:1 macro capabilities! The first of its kind, although be warned – The focus distance is next to zero, so be prepared to have quite a challenge if you wish to photograph moving insects with it! If achieved however, the results are very unique and the kind of perspective you get really makes you feel quite small.

Here’s a sample of the perspective control in action: (Note all pictures shown are straight out of camera RAW converted in Adobe Lightroom).

Here’s the 100% crop of the above image, the lens currently doesn’t support electric aperture control so it shows up as F00 in camera, I can’t remember what aperture this was taken with but I think it was around F8.

But high quality optics? Boring! Perspective control? Done before! That’s not what everybody’s talking about, because this is..

How about a ring shot for wedding lovers? (shot at ISO 6400 under very dim light, brightened and converted to black and white to hide the poor image quality..shhhh)

As this is a rather rushed review, as I am just so overly excited to get the information out there, I haven’t yet explored any further macro opportunities out there, stay tuned and expect a comparison with Canon’s very own 16-35 and 14mm soon! (along with much more macro shots! once I can find a decent enough subject).