Laowa AF 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO Review

You’ve heard of autofocus lenses, and you’ve heard of manual focus lenses, but what about lenses that are a little of both? Laowa’s new 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO is a first for me – it’s an autofocus lens from 1.5m to infinity, allowing you to use it for things other than macro…and with autofocus, but in the close focus range from 1.5 meters down to 30cm, it is a manual focus lens only. It’s an interesting approach, as many people prefer manual focus when doing macro work for the extra precision, but macro lenses are much more useful for general purpose shooting when they have autofocus. Laowa is giving us some of both with their most recent lens, while also giving us the rare longer focal length for macro (and thus a longer working distance) along with higher-than-average 1.5x level of macro (1.5:1). And all of this for a price tag of under $500? Sound interesting? Either read on or watch the video below to get my thoughts.

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Thanks to Laowa for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses. You can find the product listing page for the Laowa 180mm F4.5 Macro here.

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AI Summary: The Laowa 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO offers a unique combination of autofocus functionality for general shooting and manual focus for macro work, providing versatility that traditional macro lenses often lack. Its longer focal length allows for a greater working distance, which is beneficial for photographing living subjects without disturbing them. This lens delivers high image quality through its apochromatic design, providing sharp and colorful images with minimized aberrations. While it excels in many areas, it falls short in terms of autofocus speed and sharpness compared to other macro lenses, particularly at macro distances.

Strengths:

Versatile focus mechanism allowing both autofocus and manual for precision work.
Apochromatic design ensures high-quality images with minimal distortions and aberrations.
Longer focal length provides a greater working distance, ideal for certain subjects.
Reasonably priced under $500, offering solid value for quality optics.

Weaknesses:

Autofocus isn’t as fast or reliable, especially in macro range.
Sharpness at macro distances could be improved compared to competitors.
Lack of lens stabilization may be challenging for handheld macro photography.
Flare resistance is not great, potentially affecting image quality in strong light situations.

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It seems like most of what I have reviewed from Laowa has been either macro lenses or wide angle…and sometimes both, but I like this change of pace for focal lengths. Canon had an 180mm F3.5L Macro lens back in the day, though it was big, heavy, and expensive – none of which is true for the new Laowa APO 180mm. I mostly use macro lenses in my daily work for product photography, capturing the details of cameras and lenses.

180mm is a little long for that kind of work, as I find that I like being able to get closer to the gear to help me visualize the shots I want. I prefer macro focal lengths anywhere from 60-100mm for product photography. But where a longer lens is really useful is for having a longer working distance with living subjects, like this bumble bee buried deep in a milkweed thistle.

You can hit 1:1 macro with a 36cm working distance, which is a full 13mm longer than the working distance for my Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro, which is my currently daily use macro (see my review of the Tamron here). That could make all the difference for not scaring your subject off.

The APO 180mm does give you higher-than-average macro performance, as while most macro lenses can deliver 1:1 magnification, which looks like this:

This lens can deliver 1:5:1 macro, which looks like this:

What’s more, this is an Apochromatic (APO) optical design, which often pretty much guarantees pristine image quality. That’s certainly true here, as this is a lens with a beautiful optical performance.

So is this unique lens the one you’ve been looking for? Let’s dive in and find out.

Build and Handling

I’m doing this review on a Sony E-mount with AF (after 1.5 meters), but there are similar versions available for Nikon Z and Canon…EF. That’s right, EF. Laowa’s workaround for Canon not opening up RF is to release an EF version of the lens, which can of course be easily adapted to RF. The unique design of this lens makes this possible, as the manual focus portion of the lens is not focus-by-wire like almost every other mirrorless lens. There will be manual focus only versions for Canon RF and L-mount available as well.

So, let’s start by dealing with the elephant in the room. I’m ashamed to say that I had this lens for weeks before I figured out that it had AF. It was a bit of an enigma to me at first, as I saw a custom/Fn button on the side, a USB-C port for firmware updates, and I thought, “great, an AF lens!”. But then I mounted it on the camera and got no AF. I tried adjusting settings in the camera, and still no AF. Manual focus only. I was perplexed as to why these AF specific features seemed to be on the lens. The manual focus ring is a typical true manual focus ring, with hard stops and fixed distance markings. That’s great, because you can focus with more precision than you can on a focus-by-wire lens.

But if you rotate the ring all the way to the left (the focus throw is a little over 280°) you will go past infinity and a little gap to a marked position that says “AF”. Rotate to that position, and all of a sudden you have an autofocus lens, though one with a minimum focus distance of 1.5 meters.

It’s actually pretty genius, as you get a better manual focus experience for macro work but also an autofocus lens for the zone where manual focus is typically a pain on a macro lens.

There is not aperture ring here, as the aperture is electromagnetically controlled on Sony (I’m not sure if the manual-focus-only lenses will feature an aperture ring). The aperture has nine blades, and is capable of maintaining a fairly circular shape when stopped down.

As mentioned, there is a custom/function button on the side which will perform whatever function you have assigned in camera.

There is a weathersealed USB-C port near (but not on) the lens mount.

While I haven’t seen a diagram showing internal seal positions, this is a weathersealed lens with a gasket at the lens mount along with internal seals.

The APO 180mm has a very long, slim profile that is unique from most other lenses. It is only 67.6mm (2.66″) in diameter but a full 136mm (5.35″) in length.

That gives it an extremely long, slim, profile, that only gets exacerbated when you add the lens hood on.

The front filter thread size is 62mm. A few years ago I would have called this an uncommon size, but it is has become increasingly popular over the past couple of years, making 62mm filters easy to find.

It weighs in at 523g (18.44oz) on my scale, making this an average macro lens in weight and about half what the old Canon 180mm F3.5L lens did. There is no need for a tripod collar like that lens had, as the lens is light enough to easily balance mounted on your camera.

I like Laowa’s recent design language, primarily because it is unique to them. While the distance markings look traditional, the finish is more a gunmetal blue color with a raised badge for the lens identifier and a brighter blue accent ring near the front of the lens.

The Laowa logo is imprinted on both sides of the manual focus ring, giving you a definite tactile point for gripping the ring and even (with time) the ability to know the focus zone by feel.

The body of the lens is metal, as is the hood, which is perfectly matched to the lens barrel itself.

The APO 180mm does not come with lens-based stabilization, so you’ll need to rely on either a tripod or your camera-based stabilization for handheld macro work. The latter takes some skill, but it is possible to achieve good macro results handheld, like this shot of “goat’s beard” that I shot handheld yesterday.

180mm is obviously a fairly long focal length to not have lens-based stabilization, and I will note that I think that Nikon’s camera based stabilization works better with longer focal lengths than here on Sony. Doing handheld work at macro distances isn’t always going to give you excellent results.

Minimum focus distance is 30cm (12″), giving you an excellent working distance at at 1.5x macro levels. Here’s a look at the maximum magnification you can achieve.

You’ll see from the chart later in the review just how high this magnification level is. While the lens profile is a little odd, and while it took this reviewer longer than it should to figure out how to use autofocus, I’m left with positive feelings about the build quality and the unique handling from this lens. It’s very interesting.

Autofocus for Stills

Laowa is relatively new to the whole autofocus game, but thus far I’ve been fairly impressed by how smooth their focus motors are and how well they’ve worked. There wasn’t any evidence that I often see in early autofocus attempts from new lensmakers. Laowa has clearly been working on this for a while and has ironed out the kinks in advance rather than “beta-testing” on the public. This is an STM (steppping motor), but moves with good precision and is very quiet in operation. I had no problem nailing focus even on very slim subjects.

As mentioned, you won’t have autofocus in the macro range, but what you will have is a very well damped manual focus ring with a long focus throw to allow for a lot of precision in up close work.

Focus speed is not incredibly fast when making major focus changes, but in smaller (normal) focus adjustments I found speed adequate. I shot a number of images of Nala rolling around and got beautiful results, like this:

I wouldn’t recommend this lens for shooting fast action, but should work well as a general purpose or portrait lens. I’ve used some great manual focus lenses in the past that had beautiful optical performance (the Irix 150mm F2.8 comes to mind) and wished that they were more useful for portrait work. The AF on the APO 180mm really helps with that.

Video AF

You won’t have autofocus in the macro range anyway, so video autofocus will be confined to situations at 1.5 meters or longer. I found that doing forced pulls of significant focus changes wasn’t a quick process, though the damping is fairly good. Focus breathing is well controlled for such a long focal length.

There is some minor visible steps as focus fine tunes on the subject. That fine tuning takes a few seconds, too.

My hand test where I alternately cover and the uncover the camera’s view of my face was actually quite good, with solid transitions back and forth helped by the low focus breathing.

Autofocus isn’t necessarily top tier, but I think it is good enough to do what most people will need the lens to do.

Laowa 12mm Zero D Lite Image Quality Breakdown

Macro lenses need to be incredibly sharp, but Laowa definitely knows how to do that. This optical design is 12 elements in 9 groups, with 2 of those elements being ED (Extra Low Dispersion) elements and one Ultra High Refraction element. This is an Apochromatic design (APO), which tends to produce very special lenses when done right. The MTF shows excellent consistency in sharpness with just a bit of astigmatism in the corners.

Macro lenses need to be sharp, high contrast, and have excellent control of aberrations in order to reproduce fine details at high levels of magnification…where all of the fringing could become much more obvious. The APO 180mm can do just that.

Some people use macro lenses for reproduction of documents or negatives, and the longer working distance is both a blessing and curse for that. Let’s take another look at the maximum magnification from my test chart:

Note how completely flat and undistorted the image is even at 1:5:1 magnification levels. That’s fantastic, and, as a result, the plane of focus is very flat, with great detail right off to the edge of the frame. That’s the blessing. The curse is that if you are going to fit something larger (like a full page of text) into frame, you’ll need quite a long working distance. That can become impractical for reproduction.

That led to a great result for my vignette and distortion tests.

Distortion is essentially non-existent, so I corrected nothing. The smaller maximum aperture of F4.5 also pays off here, as vignette is quite low at +44 to correct. It will probably be higher on Nikon Z-mount, but not bad at all here. There are no corrections to the image below; it is straight out of camera.

Image quality is definitely pristine out of this lens. I found that I could use many images without feeling the need to process them at all.

APO lenses tend to be exceptional in their ability to completely eliminate fringing. That’s very true of the APO 180mm. I see no LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations) before and after the plane of focus. You’ll note that this allows blacks to be very inky and clean.

Exceptional.

LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations) typically show up along the edges of the frame with high contrast transition points. There is some fringing there, but nothing particularly obvious.

I didn’t notice issues with lateral aberrations in real world shots.

We’ll move on to inspecting our test chart. This test has been done on a 61MP Sony a7RV sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine, with crops being shown at a very high 200% magnification. You’ll also note that the minimum focus test is of that ship in the middle of the test chart.

If we take a look at crops (at 200%) at F4.5 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, the primary thing that stands out to me is consistency. The center is good, but not exceptional, but there isn’t much fade in the mid-frame or even the corners.

This lens doesn’t have a particularly bright maximum aperture, so stopping down to F5.6 (a mid-range aperture), is actually less than one full stop. Stopping down to F5.6 mostly shows a deepening of contrast. This allows the detail to pop more, be it in the center:

…or in the corners, which look brighter and more detailed.

Sharpness consistency seems to peak at F8, with results looking good everywhere on my test chart.

Detail is good but not exceptional. I didn’t feel like sharpness ever quite met the level of the Tamron 90mm F2.8 Macro VXD that I regularly use, and so I wasn’t surprised to find that was the case when I pulled up a comparison image from my archive. You can see that the Tamron is considerably crisper in the details and contrast.

By F11 you will start to see a mild regression due to diffraction on my high resolution a7RV body, and that diffraction will become more pronounced by the minimum aperture of F22.

At macro levels I would call performance good but not great. I didn’t feel like I could get detail and contrast at quite the level I expect from the best macro lenses.

Images still look good, but I found Laowa’s 90mm F2.8 2x APO Macro sharper.

My typical complaint about APO lenses is that while they have exceptional sharpness and contrast, the bokeh is sometimes negatively impacted because that contrast remains in the defocused areas, making them less creamy. The longer focal length seems to help with this, however, as backgrounds are often more strongly defocused and the end result is often very special.

These are the kinds of optics you often pay big money to get. The fact that you can get such nice optics for under $500 is really impressive. Not only does the image above look beautiful on a global level, if you crop in tight you can see the great detail in the very shallow depth of field. The little bits of pollen caught in the fine hairs of the bumblebee look good.

You can see these little flowers stand out from a strongly blurred background.

At macro distances you can completely compress and blur away backgrounds.

I also felt like the foreground bokeh was really nice. The long focal length is great for isolating a subject between layers.

It’s a good thing this isn’t a wide angle lens, as flare resistance isn’t great. At wide apertures there is some veiling (lost of contrast) along with some ghosting. Contrast is better stopped down, but ghosting gets worse. The worst is when the light source is right out of frame, as there is pronounced flashing.

Laowa’s APO lenses always produce excellent color, and that’s true here. Color rendition is rich but natural.

Colors looks rich at macro levels as well.

Outside of the flare issues, there is no real optical flaw here, though I did expect the lens to be slightly sharper than what it is. Perhaps this is while most macro lenses have a shorter focal length. Still, it is easy to produce great looking images with the Laowa 180mm F4.5 1.5x APO macro. Here’s a mini gallery of additional images to enjoy.

Conclusion

We have seen a lot of 90-105mm range macro lenses, and a number at 50-70mm as well, but very few longer focal lengths. The Laowa 180mm F4.5 1.5x Ultra Macro APO is an interesting addition, providing a longer focal length for those who need additional working range, and utilizing a unique blend of manual focus for macro and autofocus for other type shots. It has a nice build quality, an inexpensive price, and is functionally effective.

I love the colors and the nice bokeh from the lens, though I wish it were a little sharper and higher contrast at macro distances. Autofocus isn’t super speedy, either, but it is a whole lot easier to nail a shot like this:

…than it would be with manual focus only. Keeping this lens right under $500 USD is smart, as it undercuts some other alternatives. The additional level of magnification (1:5:1) is useful, giving you greater ability to fill the frame with small subjects. This isn’t a perfect lens, but it is a lot of fun and worth considering if you’ve really been wanting a true macro lens with a longer focal length.

Pros:

Unique manual focus/autofocus hybrid approach
Love Laowa’s new design language
Manual focus ring is great
1.5x macro
Solid autofocus performance
Low distortion
Low vignette
Weather sealing gasket
Consistent sharpness across the frame
Longer focal length than most competing macro lenses
Low fringing
Nice bokeh
Great colors
Very competitive price

Cons:

Could be sharper at macro distances
Flare prone
Autofocus speed isn’t snappy

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