Laowa finally releases their OOOM 25-100mm T2.9 Zer-D cinema lens

It’s been a while since we first (and last) heard anything about Laowa’s OOOM 25-100mm T2.9 cine lens. We first found out about it early last year, and got to get our hands on one for a quick play during NAB 2019. It’s a mighty impressive lens, but it’s taken a minute for it to come to reality. And finally, it’s here.

Laowa has now officially announced their new OOOM 25-100mm T2.9 cine lens, an “all-in-one zoom lens with a blend of vintage and modern characters”, they say. It offers a 4x zoom range with a parfocal design and Super35+ coverage that lets you shoot 4K UHD on the Alexa Mini and 8K on Red Helium or 5K on Red Gemini.

This 2.5kg monster of a lens is built to be a heavy-duty daily workhorse. Offering a range of focal lengths from 25-100mm with a wide T2.9 aperture, it offers the versatility to cover a lot of scenarios. Being a parfocal lens, you can zoom in and out without having to constantly refocus, and allows you to hook up motors to the focus, zoom and aperture rings for remote control.

Looking at the footage examples provided, it seems to produce a very pleasing image with some nice bokeh and very little focus breathing throughout the range (look for the clips that rack focus). This first sample was created by DP Weston WAlker at Ascending Works.

And this one from Bob Gundu shows that it can stand up to those bright and light commercial tasks rather well, too.

Such a lens does not come cheap, however – although it’s a little less expensive than first predicted last April. Initially, it was expected to come at a launch price of $6,500, however, it’s significantly less than that at $5,000 for the lens alone. If you want to bump the price up to $6,500, though, you can get it in a kit with a 1.33x anamorphic adapter (it doesn’t give the oval bokeh and the lens flares, sorry JJ) and a 1.4x Full-Frame Expander adapter  – which are normally a $999 separate purchase. So, getting the bundle saves you 500 bucks.

If you want to find out more, and maybe order one for yourself, head on over to the Laowa Cine website.