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Laowa AF 10mm F2.8 Review: Laowa's First AUTOFOCUS Lens!
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Feb 20, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a thorough, real world review of Laowa's first autofocus lens - the Laowa AF 10mm F2.8 Zero D. | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - intro 1:30 - Fantom Wallets
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0:00
It's Laowa's 10th anniversary and to celebrate they have launched their first autofocus lens
0:17
But in typical Laowa fashion this is an extreme instrument. A rectilinear 10mm f2.8 full frame lens which makes it the first of its kind
0:27
So if you're the kind of photographer that loves extreme angles of view and the creative
0:32
options that you can form through that then you're probably going to love this lens
0:37
Particularly since it is reasonably priced at $799 US dollars. So the question is how well did Laowa make the transition from manual focus only for
0:47
their first 10 years to autofocus here for their anniversary. Well we're going to find out right after a word from our sponsor
0:54
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So the first thing to know about this lens is that this is an extremely wide angle of view
1:46
It's 130 degrees in fact so you're really going to have to be careful to make sure that
1:50
your feet don't end up in the shot. It allows you to get a whole lot in the frame and allows you to make very small spaces look
1:59
considerably bigger. Takes some creative work to use it well but it's the kind of lens that can reward you
2:05
with some very unique pictures that really nothing else can afford. Now it comes in autofocus guise in both E-mount which I'm testing here and it will come in
2:15
Nikon Z-mount. Because Canon RF mount remains closed and Laowa is not a part of the Leica L consortium
2:24
it means that on RF and L this is going to continue to be a manual focus only lens to
2:29
get around those protocols unfortunately. But the good news is that here on Sony and then coming on Nikon Z it is a full autofocus
2:38
lens and as we're going to see it's actually a very good autofocusing lens
2:42
Something new here is completely different design language than what I've seen from
2:46
Laowa in the past and I actually really, really like it. Everyone that I've shown the lens to is very, they just immediately like it
2:54
It's kind of a cobalt blue type color and has just a great looking modern finish that
3:00
looks very clean on the camera. This is a bit of a squat looking lens
3:06
It is 82mm in diameter or 3.23 inches but only right under 71mm or around 2.8 inches
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in length and so it is quite short and wider than what it is long and so it has a squat
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look that frankly often looks quite good on camera. Pretty amazing to me in that they have retained the ability to use 77mm thread on filters
3:32
You don't have to use any kind of filter adapter here. You can use traditional filters which is pretty incredible considering that it's f2.8 and
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10mm so a big kudos to Laowa for being able to pull that off
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That's something that I've not really seen a lot of brands be able to accomplish in the past
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Obviously none of them if you're talking about going as wide as 10mm
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Now obviously in going to autofocus on mirrorless that makes this a focus by wire lens
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However Laowa shows their expertise in manual focus in that while there are a few limitations
4:02
that come with focus by wire this really is a pretty perfect simulation of manual focus
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Everything feels just about right and one unique thing is that there is a beveled portion
4:13
on the sides, each side of the lens that has the Laowa brand imprinted there and what that
4:20
allows you to do is that obviously you're never going to have hard stops on focus by
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wire lens but what you do have is those two areas that at least give you something to
4:29
hold on to to kind of at least set a distance for and so if you're trying to do manual focus
4:35
pulls it at least allows you to have a little bit of flexibility on that
4:39
So anyway it is a nice implementation of that. The lens weighs only 420 grams which is impressive because you can definitely tell that it's
4:49
still metals in its construction. That's 14.8 ounces so lightweight and I will note it's a couple of hundred grams lighter
4:56
than what their 12mm f2.8 lens is. So impressive that that lens being manual focus only not quite as wide that this lens
5:04
undercuts it so much in weight so that is nicely accomplished. We now have an AF-MF switch on the side of the lens
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That's a first for Laowa because it's their first autofocus lens and I'm really glad to
5:15
see that implemented in their design. There is a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount though I asked Laowa and there are no
5:23
other internal seals. Still having a gasket is a step forward for Laowa
5:30
Weather sealing is something they've never had in the past. Now you have a very shallow lens hood here at the front and while it bayonets on very
5:39
tightly with some force it is removable. It can be reversed for storage but frankly you're only saving a few millimeters because
5:46
it's so narrow already and so I would just leave it in place and I think its primary
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purpose is less to protect against sun and more to protect anything from bumping up against
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the front elements. Anyway, I am glad that it is removable. We have a traditional pinch style cap which is also nice there
6:06
Now inside the aperture is now of course electromagnetically controlled. No aperture ring
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You control aperture from within the camera. Again Laowa first. And they have chosen to go with 5 straight aperture blades which on a lens like this
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worrying about circular bokeh is really kind of a non-issue because you're just not going
6:25
to have very few, almost no situations where you can create defocused specular highlights
6:31
And so this is I think the better choice here because this allows you to achieve really beautiful sun stars and also to start to achieve them quite early on
6:38
By about f4.5 to f5 you're already seeing really nicely defined sun stars and they look
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beautiful so I think that was the right choice here. Now you have a minimum focus distance of only 12cm or 4.72 inches and remember that's
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not from the front of the lens. That's from this midline of the camera body where the sensor lies
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That means as you can see here by the time you get to minimum focus distance you are
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almost on top of your subject. And so while technically you can achieve a very high 0.24x magnification you have to
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get so close to your subject to accomplish that that there's some question in my mind
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whether or not in most real world situations you'll be able to pull that off
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I think a more practical value is that if you're doing video work with the lens you
7:25
really don't have to worry about getting inside of the minimum focus distance
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If you do that you're basically going to be hitting the subject which is another good reason maybe to keep that lens hood on
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Now one interesting thing is that while we have electronic contacts and full XF communication
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the lens designation shows up in Lightroom, all of those things, what isn't here is seems
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to be in camera corrections. And you can see side by side a RAW image and a JPEG image and you can see that the vignette
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looks identical on both of them. I really hope that that's something that is addressed in the future because as we're going
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to see when we get to our image quality breakdown that vignette is a very serious issue for
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this lens which unfortunately is a very typical Laowa wide angle weakness
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And so it would be great to be able to actually have automatic corrections for the first time
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for that. Overall however, I am really impressed with the overall build and handling of this lens
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It is beautifully accomplished. Also really, really well executed is the transitioned autofocus
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I have reviewed most in the last, at least in the last decade, most all of the debut
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autofocusing performance for various brands. And most of the time you can tell that it's the first attempt at autofocus
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That's really not the case here. This feels like a very seasoned lens like Laowa has been doing autofocus for a long time
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Now to be fair, 10mm f2.8 means that even at f2.8 if you focus about a meter out in
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front of the camera, you're basically have everything in focus. The nature of that very wide focal length means that a lot is in focus all the time
9:04
So no, the autofocus system is not being tasked in the way that a 135mm f1.8 lens would be
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tasking an autofocus system. That being said, I've reviewed a lot of wide angle lenses before, even from seasoned
9:19
brands that don't autofocus as well as this lens does. The autofocus motor is very smooth
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It's quiet as you can see here. It is fast. You can see there's not a major focus change taking place, but that focus transition happens quickly
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I think the highest compliment to Laowa is that I almost immediately forgot that they
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don't typically make autofocusing lenses. I didn't really think about the autofocus because it just works so well and so normally
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And so a huge plus to them for accomplishing that. Likewise, when it came to the video side of things, I found that my focus pulls were smooth
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And as you can see here, again, it's not a major focus transition, but there's no visible
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steps or any kind of jitteriness. Also with my hand test, it did fine in that transition
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You can see in these clips that there is very, very little focus breathing, which has
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helped of course, because very little focus change is going to take place there
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I think the most important thing to me for autofocus is not only that autofocus was just
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intuitive and got the job done, but more that in doing shots at smaller apertures, I didn't
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see pulsing in and out, which I sometimes see with wide angle lenses
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Likewise, when I was shooting video clips, that focus just stayed locked in place
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There was no hunting or pulsing. It just was perfect in that regard
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And so that's huge because it means that this is a lens that's actually going to be usable
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as an autofocus lens and it's not autofocus in name only. So again, I have to give a lot of credit to Laowa
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They took their time getting here, but they executed it well in this transition
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And I'm really interested to see what they're able to do in the future when it's a little
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bit more of a challenging focal length aperture combination in the lens
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But as far as this lens goes, they did a great job
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So how about the image quality? Now I will do my detailed image quality breakdown at the end of my conclusion
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And so if you want that deep dive, you can either jump ahead to that or stay tuned for
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that following. But here's a quick overview for you. Optical formula is 15 elements in nine groups
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There are some special elements there, a couple of aspherical elements, and I believe three
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extra low dispersion elements as a part of the design. What you're going to find is both typical Laowa strengths and Laowa weaknesses
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So if we look at vignette and distortion, even though this is an extreme wide angle
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of view, there's almost no distortion there. I only used about a plus three, plus four to correct what tiny bit of barrel distortion
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is there. That is incredibly impressive. I don't know how Laowa does it, but I just know this, that is very few other brands are
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able to pull that off. But it seems like what gives in their optical designs is there is a huge amount of vignette
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In fact, with this lens, I maxed out the sliders in Lightroom and I still could have corrected
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a little bit more. So that tells me that there are over four stops of vignette in the corners
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So very extreme. One thing I did notice, maybe it's something that can be solved via firmware in the future
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but on both my A7R5 and my Alpha 1, particularly on my Alpha 1, if I made the mistake of leaving
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shading, peripheral shading correction on, vignette correction on, you can see that there's
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this little white patch in the extreme corners. It's not actually correcting the vignette, but unfortunately what it's doing is creating
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a kind of a glitch there in the corners. So you're going to want to have those corrections, at least for now, turned off
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Hopefully a firmware update in the future can solve that. Now the nature of a focal length like this means that there is almost no longitudinal
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chromatic aberration because there's no tiny depth of field. There is a little bit of lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame, much
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more common for wide angle lenses, but it's mild here and easily corrected for
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When they were talking about resolution, even at a 61 megapixels and at a 200% magnification
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I saw very good performance in the center of the frame and in the mid-frame with the
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corners being a little bit softer. Corners never sharpen to the level of the middle two-thirds of the frame, but they do
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improve as you stop the lens down. The most consistent sharpness across the frame is going to be found at f8 in my test
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After that, diffraction will start to soften the image a bit. As I already mentioned, there's not much to talk about in terms of bokeh
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Here's what it looks like. That's the most that I could create, but you're going to be very rarely in situations where
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you can make that happen. When it comes to coma performance, now the vignette is going to be an issue for shooting
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night sky, but coma is actually not. Star points are nice and crisp in the center of the frame
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There's a little bit of stretching near the edges of the frame, a little bit of a tail on there, but not bad at all
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This certainly is a viable option if you want a really wide look at the heavens and a lot
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of stars on frame, then it's going to be interesting for that
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Also pretty impressive is the fact that they pulled off really quite good flare resistance
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on this lens. There are minimal artifacts, but no loss of contrast
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You can see even panning across either wide open or stop down that everything really looks
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quite good. There's a very mild flare pattern, but it's not disruptive and there's no weird kind of
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glaring or burst effect there. Overall, it's really well handled. In conclusion, I would say that Laowa has had a very impressive transition to autofocus
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in my mind. I really love the new design language here. It is unique
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It is something that doesn't look like every other lens out there, but not in a poor taste
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or garish way. It's really well executed. It looks modern, but not overblown in any way
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I really like the design language. There are, if you're just looking for a wide angle prime, there are sharper wide angle
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options out there like the Viltrox 16mm f1.8 that even cost a little bit less, but nothing
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that is this extreme in terms of focal length that is outperforming this lens optically
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This is actually a really strong performance for such an extreme focal length
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The fact that it is very usable at f2.8 is impressive when you're talking about something
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that is just so incredibly wide. Being autofocus makes it a more accessible lens
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I will point out that just the nature of this focal length means that it takes practice
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and skill and you have to kind of reorient your compositional brain when you're viewing
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scenes because you're going to have to get much closer to things than what you would
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expect because otherwise they'll just seem really far away. So it takes some practice, but with that practice you can create some really, really unique images
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And I think the price point of $799 is very reasonable when you consider that's $50 less
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than the less extreme 12mm f2.8 that is a manual focus lens
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So bravo to Laowa for giving us a really cool and unique lens that is at an accessible
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price point. Most zooms that will cover this focal length will run into the thousands of dollars
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So this is really one of the most accessible ways to get 10mm, particularly with an f2.8 aperture
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I did a search on B&H Photo and there are no other full frame alternatives out there
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and so that is great. So if you want more information, stay tuned here as we do the deep dive
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There is more information in the description down below. It will take you to my text review, also some buying links if you'd like to purchase one
16:37
But if you want more information, let's jump into it together. All right, let's start by taking a look at just the nature of this focal length
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So here, this is only f2.8. You can see I got down really low, it was very early in the morning at the hotel I was
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staying at and I was doing some lens tests. I was able to get really low here and take a few shots here at these escalators
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You can see that you got a little bit of motion blur here in the foreground
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But my actual focus point is somewhere here. But you can see that pretty much everything throughout the frame is mostly in focus
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So that's obviously going to be really useful in some situations and also you can get a
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lot in the frame. Likewise, here in tight spaces like this stairwell, you can see it really creates the sense of
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space. You know, it's not a huge area and yet it looks quite vast on camera
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Getting a shot like this is pretty much impossible with a lens unlike this
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I mean, we're talking about a horizontal composition. I was shooting through a window and I was not only able to get the kind of curve of
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the conference center portion of the hotel but then the room block that goes up 18 stories
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from that all easily within the frame. So you know, an impressive performance there
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Likewise here, this is the Eternal Flame monument that's outside of the Canadian Parliament buildings
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And so here I was basically right on top of this. You can see that not only is the monument in the shot and by the way, this flame might
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have been four or five feet away from me and it looks like it's triple that
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But you can also see that there are multiple buildings that also get included in frame there
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So if you want to, if you're working in a tight space and you want a lot to be in frame
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this is your lens. Now as noted earlier, you can see that the amount of distortion here is impressively low
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There is very little there for such a just extremely wide angle of view
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And also what little bit is there is magnified by the simple fact that I'm have to be almost
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right on top of my test chart to do these tests. So very impressive that they managed to pull off such low distortion
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Now to take that distortion out into the real world, you can see here in just a typical
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shot of a hallway in my home. You can see just how straight the lines are, how little distortion is there, even though
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there are, there's a ton that's included in that shot. Likewise here, you're going to be want to be careful though, because if you're shooting
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upwards like towards buildings, you get that natural key stoning effect that has nothing
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to do with distortion and just kind of the physics of the thing that everything will
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feel like it's leaning away from you. And so you're only going to solve that with a, with a shift of shift lens
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So you can see if you've got people composed in the corner, as I've got here, they're going
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to get look really weird. It's not that they're distorted. You could see that they're not stretched, but that key stoning effect does really affect
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shots like this with a wide angle lens. But as noted, the vignette is a whole other story
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I maxed out the sliders here and you could see there's still a little room for correction
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And that does make sometimes metering a little bit of a challenge because the center is going
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to be so much brighter than what the edges are going to be. And so if you've got something that should be uniform, you're going to really see that
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vignette and you can see it's really kind of concentrated towards the corners
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Thus the center looks a lot brighter than what the edges does. We're looking at a JPEG here and the raw on the right
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You can see that nothing is happening in camera in terms of correcting for that
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Now fringing is not a real concern. We've already talked about how the longitudinal chromatic aberration just hardly happens on
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a lens like this because depth of field is so large. Now you will see some lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame and you can see
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some of that fringing in these transition points. Fortunately, this is the kind that clears up very easily with one click and your favorite
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editing software. So here's a look at the overall test chart and you can see that the center looks, you
20:32
know, it looks over bright and of course the corners, even after some correction, they
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look much dimmer and probably proper exposure is somewhere like in this zone here
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It's just, it's very hard to nail exposure with this because of that extreme variance
20:47
from the heavy vignette. So we'll just have to plow through it here. Now if we crank that magnification up to 200% and again, this is a 61 megapixel sensor
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Sony a7R V. You can see the center of the frame is very, very nice and impressively
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sharp, very good contrast that is there. The midframe is not as crisp, but still looks quite good
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Good detail that's there. And as we pan down, as we get towards the corner, contrast doesn't look bad here, but
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you can see that it just lacks the fine detail that we saw elsewhere
21:19
To put that in perspective, however, here's an interior shot, shot at ISO 1600 handheld
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at F 2.8 and you can see that throughout a lot of the frame, the detail looks really
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nice and crisp. Now you can see it's not as sharp over here in the corners as what it is in this area
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where, um, you know, it's, it's more in the sweet spot. But if, even if we're looking here, there's some natural stretching effect taking place
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but it's not like there's no resolution there. There's still resolution remaining
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Now we can see from F 2.8 to F4 on the right, there's not a significant improvement there
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neither in the midframe. It doesn't look a whole lot better. We can look at the other side as well
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You can see that they look roughly similar with a little bit better contrast for the
22:05
F4, but not a significant improvement there. There's a much more significant improvement from F4 to F 5.6 and you can see now that
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F 5.6 has very good contrast in detail. That's true up here and even as we start to work into the corners, you can tell that there's
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a lot of contrast in detail working into the corners. Now that gets very slightly better at F8, which I consider to be kind of the pinnacle
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of optical performance for the lens in terms of the consistency across the frame
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You can see down here that between F 5.6 and F8, there is a significant improvement
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At the same time, however, if you're just looking for a really sharp wide-angle lens
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the Viltrox 16mm is sharper. You can see that that's true in the center of the frame, though not by a huge margin
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But as we pan over here towards the corners, you can see that the Viltrox is much more
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impressive near the edges of the frame. That's just kind of the nature of the beast here
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16mm is much easier to engineer than what 10mm is. And so you really need to want this extreme wide angle
23:07
And if you do want that, then this lens is actually performing at a high level. Now after F8, F11 still looks fine
23:13
But as you get towards the minimum aperture of F22, you're going to see a significant
23:17
drop off in the contrast due to the effects of diffraction. So as noted previously, this is your minimum focus distance
23:25
Obviously, you're so close to the subject that you are going to see a little bit of
23:29
field curvature here, though I think that Laowa has done a pretty impressive job of
23:33
controlling that. At the same time, however, it's hard to get enough light on your subject when you're
23:39
that close to it. But in other kinds of shots, I was actually very, very close to these needles here
23:45
And so you can see that it's good detail that's there. Aberrations look fine here
23:51
And you can see that the bokeh quality is fine. I mean, it's going to be very rare situations where you can create it, but it is fine
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Here's a look here. You can see that there is definitely going to be some stretching towards the corners
24:04
because we're even nowhere near them and you can see them starting to look like eggs there at the top of it
24:09
But I just can't get close enough to actually have anything. If I got closer to where this filled the frame, nothing would be out of focus any longer
24:17
So it's kind of the nature of the beast. Now real world shots, I think look nice
24:22
Color looks fine. You can see that detail looks really, really good in the center portions of the frame and
24:28
then not quite as crisp in the corners. But there's a lot of information there
24:34
And frankly, some shots look a little better than others. For example, in this shot here, I felt like the foreground looks pretty decent, really
24:42
It's stretched, but the detail looks fine there. And you can see that there's a good, you know, as we look towards the area where I'm really
24:49
focused, detail looks great. You can get a lot in the frame
24:53
Now for coma, we'll take another quick look at this. You can see in the center of the frame, star points are nice and crisp
25:00
And then as we move off towards the corners, you can see there is that little bit of stretching
25:06
but at the same time, there's not any kind of extreme coma. So it's perfectly usable for that
25:11
Just know that if you want nothing in the shot, like in terms of trees, you're going
25:16
to need to be in a really wide open space because there is always a lot in the frame
25:21
Finally, flare resistance. You can see in this shot, there's a few little tiny ghosting artifacts
25:26
Mostly what you're seeing here is reflections in the window. But here's another shot here that shows, you know, very minor ghosting artifacts, but
25:33
nothing big. And you can see, look, I wanted to show you a little closer look at the sunburst effect
25:39
That's just a really, really lovely effect. I love the very crisply defined 10 different blades coming off that
25:45
That looks fantastic. So overall, outside of that extreme vignette and a little bit of softness in the corners
25:52
this really is quite an impressive lens optically. Thanks for hanging around to the end
25:56
And as always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in