Laowa 15mm f/4 Macro Lens Field Test: Super wide & super close lens is tricky to use but worth the work
posted Friday, July 28, 2017 at 10:07 AM EDT
Click here to read our Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 Macro Field Test
Interested in shooting macro photographs? Cool! What about ultra-wide angle images? Nice. What about wide-angle macro photos? Huh?
In traditional macro photography, the specialized macro lenses tend have longer focal lengths, somewhere between 50mm all the way out to 180mm, but it turns out there's a whole sub-genre of macro photography done at wider angles. And it turns out that Chinese lens maker Venus Optics has a rather unique and powerful wide-angle macro lens: the Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 Macro.
On the market for a few years now, this interesting lens is currently the widest angle lens that also offers true 1:1 macro magnifcation, and it works for full-frame DSLRs. An inexperienced macro photographer, but a big fan of the style nonetheless, I was thrilled to get the opportunity to test out this unique lens. As it turns out, the Laowa 15mm is a fairly tricky lens to work with; manual focus, manual aperture and its working distance at 1:1 is insanely short. But...when you nail it, you can come away with some excellent photos!
For all the details as well as various real-world photos, head over to my Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 Macro Field Test!