Laowa 15mm f4 Macro Shift Lens

[Dazzajl]

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A very odd lens that, not unsurprisingly doesn't seem to get mentioned at all, so I thought a little info and a few pics might be of interest to someone. My SL is not something I consider to be work kit but when I saw this lens at MPB last year, I thought it might be interesting for the odd social media image. Most of what clients want is crisp, high resolution, richly detailed photos but in this "content creation" world, obscure eye catching and abstract has a value too.

Anyway, this little lens has sat in the bag since then, until yesterday. I had some time to kill, waiting for the sun to come around to the west side of a building and thought I'd have a little play with this on the SL 601. And the upshot is, I like it! What it is not, is a top notch Leica lens, it's not for pixel peepers and it's not for people who want a clearly premium object.

It is well built, it's decent quality metal and the focus and aperture rings are smooth and easy to work. The tab to allow shift movement could easily draw blood though. None of the good and bad points really matter though, I've never seen a lens with this peculiar mix of skills. First of all, the IQ. It's good enough and no more. It's not a 'HiFi' lens but it doesn't render horribly. Look at the whole image and it's attractive. Zoom in to judge per pixel and it won't bowl you over. At all. But the compositions that you can make with the combination of a 15mm outlook and macro power that focus within millimetres of the front element is really interesting. Throw in half a sensors worth of vertical shift, up and down and you have some amazing creative possibilities. It's quite prone to flare but in a very usable way and the bokeh is quite busy vintage looking but I'm definitely going to make some time to take it out and get to know it a bit better.

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For reference, in this shot the little red leaves are a few centimetres high and about a centimetre from the front element.

 

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[Richardgb]

Close-up and wide-angle are not usually happy bed-fellows. I'd be interested to know what the lens IQ is like at distant objects, e.g. buildings.

The lens was reviewed on DP Review TV in 2020.

Edited March 22 by Richardgb

[PhotoCruiser]

That is a interesting lens what makes on the first sight no sense but opens a lot of creative possibilities doable only in post editing.
In underwater photography we call such lenses CFWA (Close Focus Wide Angle) and i used this many times, also on land with the Sigma 15mm Diagonal Fisheye.
I did also some tests using my Sigma 14mm f1.8 and it worked also, but obviously not in macro and that makes this lens interesting.

Using the shift function when in macro mode you should be able to do hardware tilt-shift effect but i guess it will take some experiments to tame this combination.
Have you tried that?

I think the flare can be a nice additional effect as in the second photo and i like flares and sun stars while i am not a fan of the Bokeh in the first photo, but with some experiments you may find a setting to make the Bokeh less confused.

Chris

[Dazzajl]

31 minutes ago, Richardgb said:

I'd be interested to know what the lens IQ is like at distant objects,

I will go and get a range of shots and update, for the interested but I’m going to take a guess now at ‘distinctly less than average’

[Richardgb]

2 hours ago, Richardgb said:

Close-up and wide-angle are not usually happy bed-fellows. I'd be interested to know what the lens IQ is like at distant objects, e.g. buildings.

The lens was reviewed on DP Review TV in 2020.

I forgot to say, too, that the circular field which the lens covers increases as you stop down, so large apertures combined with large amounts of shift will result in soft(er) results. (In the days when large-format lenses were common, lens makers would publish tables to show how much shift could be applied to cover a particular film size at a given aperture.)

[Dazzajl]

28 minutes ago, Richardgb said:

I forgot to say, too, that the circular field which the lens covers increases as you stop down, so large apertures combined with large amounts of shift will result in soft(er) results. (In the days when large-format lenses were common, lens makers would publish tables to show how much shift could be applied to cover a particular film size at a given aperture.)

It’s really not rendering fantastic detail in the centre of the image circle slightly stooped down, I certainly wouldn’t be looking to get great architectural images from it. It might yet prove me wrong but I suspect it’s a lens that’s only really for quirky or atmospheric shots where content outweighs pure IQ. 
 

I remember those tables but I can’t say ever payed too much attention to them. Always lead with optimism over information in such cases ☺️