Laowa 28mm F1.2 Argus Review + Detailed IQ Breakdown

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the Lawa 28mm F1.2 Argus lens
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This is, I believe, the third lens from the Argus series that I have reviewed, and it is Lawa's premium lineup of large aperture manual focus prime lenses
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To this point, Lawa has been exclusively a manual-focused company, and that continues on here as well
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I haven't had an opportunity to review a lot of 28-millimeter lenses. It was in times past, a very popular focal length, but is less popular in the modern era
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I've been maybe spoiled by the two 28-millimeter white aperture lenses that I've reviewed previously
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were really exceptional lenses, including the Zeiss Otis 28-millimeter F-1.4, and then also the Sigma Art Series 28-millimeter F-1.4
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4. Both lenses were really, really fantastic, also fairly expensive. Here in this Argus 28mm
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F1.2, it is the largest maximum aperture that I have reviewed at this focal length, but of course
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it is manual focus only. It's also by far the most compact and discreet of the lenses that I have
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reviewed. This is a lens that in my mind is going to appeal most to probably those that do street
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or city photography, in that it is very discreet. It gives you that large maximum aperture and the
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versatility that comes with that. However, at a small size, and of course it is for those that don't
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mind being a little bit more deliberate in their photography. We're going to break things down. I'm
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going to give you a quick overview, and then if you want to stick around for the detailed
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image quality to break down, we'll throw that in at the end of the review here today. As noted, this
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is a discrete lens, and it is a compact lens. It is only 68 and a half millimeters in diameter
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leaving us a 62mm front filter thread. More on that in just a moment
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And the lens is 106.31 millimeters in length. And so obviously it is long and slender by its profile
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It is available in a variety of full-frame lens mounts, including Sony E, Canon RF, which I've reviewed here
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and Nikon Z or Z, also like an L-mount. So four different mounts that it comes in
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which covers basically the range of the most popular full-frame mirrorless cameras out there. It can of course also be used on APSC. However, it's probably going to be most
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interesting on its native full frame platform. It weighs in at 562 grams. And so, you know, a moderate
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amount of weight, but it, you know, points to the fact that Lawa's build quality is all metal and glass
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They build their lenses very, very nicely. Now, I mentioned that there's a little bit of a quirk when it
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comes to the front filter thread, and that has to do with the fact that this is the second of these
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lenses in this series that I've seen with this kind of quirky lens hood, which almost gives it
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kind of an anamorphic look to it and in kind of that rectangular framing. It gives you a really
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weird front lens cap that has to clip on on the outside and has kind of a faux leather texture
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to it. It gives it kind of a retro vibe, but unfortunately it isn't fully functional. Because of the
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nature of that inconsistent shape, it means that you can't have both the lens hood on and have access
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to the filter threads. So a less than fully functional design, it also means you cannot reverse it for storage
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However, because it is so shallow, it means that you probably won't have to worry about that aspect of it
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It's just, I don't really understand what the upside of this particular design for the lens hood is
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Maybe your mileage may vary with it. As far as the features here
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there's really only one significant feature, and that is the fact that we do have a switch
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that allows you to declick the aperture, So you have a choice of controlling through the aperture ring
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It is fully manual everything, not just manual focus, but manual aperture
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There are no electronics in the lens. And so you have the option of actually being able to have clicks there, although they're not strongly pronounced
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And by the way, they're only at full stops outside of F1.2 and F1.4
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You do get additional detent there. But after that, it's F2, F2.8, the full stops
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And so you can declick it, and so that will be useful for those that would like to use this lens for
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video work and to be able to do aperture racking. And as you can see, you can see the aperture
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smoothly opening and closing. And it is a beautiful aperture. There are 13 blades there. And so it retains
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a nice circular shape when you stop it down. So good things on the aperture front there. Outside of that
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you have just the manual focus ring. And folks, fortunately, it is a very good manual focus ring
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Lawa does a beautiful job of damping these. There's a great feel to it. Good precision there
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Not a huge focus throw however I think I estimated at about 125 degrees And part of the reason for having such a short focus throw is the fact that this lens has a very very poor magnification and minimum focus distance You can only focus as closely as 50 centimeters and the magnification level is one of the lowest that I have ever seen
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It is 0.073 times magnification. That's about half of what I consider to be poor already
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and so not great at all. And as you can see on my test jar, doesn't even look like I'm testing for an up-close performance
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and if, for example, with a shot of a guitar, that's as close as I could get in trying to do magnification
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So not at all my favorite aspect of the design here. Other than that, the build quality is good
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There is no weather ceiling, no electronics, as mentioned, but if you just like well-built, good operating, you know, mechanically tight, manual focus lenses
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then this is going to appeal to you on that front. So a quick overview of the image quality before we break it down
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The lens is very good on the distortion front, but it does have a lot of vignette
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It has good sharpness in the center and the mid-frame, wide open even at F-1.2, but contrast is a little bit lower
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And we don't start to see a contrast boost until about F2, and we don't really see the corners get really sharp
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until about F-4 and F-5.6. However, windstop down, the lens is extremely sharp
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It has low instances of chromatic aberrations, very little of low. longitudinal chromatic aberration, just a little bit of lateral chromatic aberration
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And I also found that flare resistance was fairly poor at large apertures, but got
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reasonably good when you stopped the lens down to smaller apertures. If you want a detailed breakdown of that performance, I suggest that you stick around
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for image quality breakdown that will come in just a moment. This lens at a price point of $599 US is definitely the much cheaper than the last full frame
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Argus lens that I reviewed, which was more like $900 U.S. dollars
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The 28 millimeter focal length is an intriguing one, and I think, again, I would consider it to be
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very useful for someone that wants to do street or city photography, because there's a lot of
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interesting things about the focal length and also the lens for that application
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I find that the very low minimum focus distance robs me of a lot of my creative options that
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I would like for a lens like this, so I wouldn't consider this a lens for me, however, your
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mileage may vary. And at that price point, there aren't really a lot of 28mm lenses to choose
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from. And so if you've been looking for a large aperture, 28 millimeter lens, this is definitely
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the most reasonable price point that you're likely to find a premium option like this at
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Now, if you want even more information, stick around as we jump into our full image quality
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breakdown. So first of all, in our image quality breakdown, we see when looking at vignette and
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distortion, we see both a typical Lawa strength and also a typical Lawa weakness. The strength is the
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fact that there is basically so little distortion here that it is basically not worth correcting
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Now, it isn't entirely linear. You can see that there is a slight bit of bulge there
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but just the nature of it is I really couldn't dial in correction either for pincushion
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or barrel distortion and produce a better result. And so, you know, no issue there when it comes
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to the distortion. The vignette is obviously a whole other thing. And you can see extremely dark
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corners and then, you know, a pattern moving out from there where it gets towards the center
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it's lighter, but quite strong throughout a good portion of the frame. You can see that I had to
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maximize, max out the vignette sliders to get a good correction here. So that's plus 100 and
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moving the midpoint all the way over. That's a very significant amount of vignette, and unfortunately
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it is vignette that lingers for a while. Now, there's two ways to look at heavy vignette. In some
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situations, it can be a, you know, a feature rather than a bug. It can, as in this shot, which kind of
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works, it will focus the eye in towards the subject and gives kind of a specific look to an image
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In this image, however, where you have a more uniform background and a lighter background
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obviously much less desirable. You don't necessarily want to see that vignette. And so, you know
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it doesn't just focus your eye in towards the subject. It actually detract from the image
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I did my review during the winter, and when you have heavy snowfall, it is kind of worst-case scenario for vignette, because it almost never looks good, as you can see here
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One thing I did find that I just wanted to point out in this image where you have F1.2 on the left, and then about F4 or F5.6 on the right, as you can see that the vignette is heavy enough that it actually does affect white balance
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And so I found that images wide open with heavy vignette, they tended to, uh, bad
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balance a little bit cooler than what images that were, you know, obviously have less vignette
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Though you can see that vignette does persist some, even at smaller apertures, but not as severe
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And what it does is it plays that impact on the white balance
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And so you have a cooler and then a warmer you know exact same setting exact same time of day The only difference is is the amount of vignette that is there at a wide aperture Now I actually found that longitudinal chromatic aberrations were pretty well controlled here
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So I shot light up through this glass camera, and so you have a lot of transition areas that could be places where that fringing would show
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Also, in the background, we have windows with the transition to the outdoors
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You can see just very faint amounts of fringing. of that. So actually quite a strong performance when it comes to the longitudinal chromatic aberration
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There is a bit of lateral chromatic aberration that you can see here from my test chart
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Fortunately, this is the kind that's the one-click correction, but you can see a little bit of green and purple fringing that is there. So there is some chromatic aberration. I wouldn't
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call any of it an extreme amount, however. Now, my sharpness and contrast test are shot on the 45
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megapixel Canon EOS R5. And this is shown at 200% magnification, which is the way that I do these tests
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So you can see that in the center of the frame, there's actually a good amount of detail
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a lot of detail that's there, but you do see that there's kind of some spherical aberrations
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that rob some of the contrast from the image. And so contrast, not top-notch
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Likewise here in the mid-frame, again, there is a good amount of detail for F-1.2
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but contrast is fairly weak. If we pan on down to the corner
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we can see that both the contrast is low, but also we don't have that same kind of
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really high-powered resolution that has been lost there as you get towards a frame
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So essentially we have a sweet spot here that is in the center of the frame
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and moving out here towards the edge, but you can see even from one side to the other
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that we're starting to lose that resolution as we go over here towards the edges of the frame
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it really starts to drop away. So here's a rule. world image shot at F1.2, obviously kind of blue hour at night. And so you can see that basically
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we see this kind of the same pattern that we saw on the test chart, namely that there is a lot of
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detail here in the kind of sweet spot of resolution on this frame. We can also see that contrast
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is taking a bit of hit. There's a little bit of fringing here on some of these really bright
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lights, but really not bad. I think that that's actually pretty well controlled for a lens
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like this, and I would say looking at this kind of a real-world performance, I'm not at all disappointed
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at this for F-1.2. Overall, there's a lot of information on the screen, considering this was shot
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on such a high-resolution body. Now, if we compare shooting at F-1.2 to shooting at F-1.4
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we can see that, first of all, they have metered the exact same. If you take a look at the histogram
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though, as I panned from the left to the right, you can see that the histogram shifts a little bit
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to the right with the F1.4. So it's not that we are getting the exact same exposure value
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There is a bit of difference, but basically what we're ending up with is just a little
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less exposure value on the F1.4 shot. It wasn't enough for it to actually change the metering
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It's also not enough to really shift the conversation very much when it comes to resolution
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or contrast. There's a slight bit more contrast here in the center of the frame
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If we look at the mid frame, however, again, a slight bit more contrast, but nothing is
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really picking up as far as detail. The same is true here in the corner of the frame. A slight
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bit more contrast, but that's about it. Now we have F1.4 on the left and F2 on the right. You can see
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that there's a much bigger jump when it comes to contrast in the center of the frame here at F2
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Much crisper looking result, higher contrast. Same is true here in the mid frame where you can see
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some of that haze is dissipating, and so it is getting just more sharply delineated. Down in the
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corner we haven't seen a similar jump basically what we've seen just just some vignette lift but not a lot of
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additional resolution same as true here there's a small improvement but as we can see as we look all across the
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frame it's still not really a consistent jump yet in that corner we can see from f2 to f2.8 again
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progress in the right direction nothing significant yet however we can see in this midframe you can
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see where this falls here that we're really starting to see an improvement that is starting to just
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kind of travel further and further out. Look at the five pounds compared to on the left side at F2
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And so definitely making progress, even if that resolution hasn't fully impacted the corners yet
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From F2.8 to F4, we can just see how that the corner is starting to improve and getting
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stronger and stronger. And by F5.6, we're starting to see really crisp results there
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If I dial down to here, we can see a very strong result, very good contrast. This bottom right corner
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is better. It's still not exceptional. However, if I look up in the upper left corner, it's looking quite good. And so we can see we're making serious progress
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Returning to this same setting a few hours earlier in the day and we can see at a smaller aperture here at F5 there is lots of detail here I mean just really crisp resolution You can see all of each one of those bricks is finally delineated We can see lots of good textures on the bridge and down underneath here
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You can see the snow that's kind of falling there. But just everywhere that we look across the frame, you can see that there's very good detail
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This lens is actually very crisp at landscape apertures. Here's another landscape result
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And so if we look at the area of focus, which is across this ice and the snow over the
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rocks. We can see the rocks very crisp, lots of detail there. Then if you look in the textures
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of the snow right out to the edge of the frame, you can see there is good information, good detail
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good contrast that is there here in this bare tree on the right side. We can see again
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really good delineation in all the branches, good contrast, just a strong end result. Now as noted earlier
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we have a really unexceptional magnification level. We also really don't have all that fantastic
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of up-close performance. Like we saw before, there is detail there, but contrast, I would say, is even lower still
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at this closer focus distance. And so as a by-product, we have only a sweet spot of sharpness there
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which really starts to drop off, and basically no true magnification value, hardly at all
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That really robs me of a lot of kind of creative outlet with a lens like this
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is I do like to get up close with a large maximum aperture lens
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and blur out backgrounds. Standing where I was, this was as close as I could get
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I could even focus on anything up here beyond the neck of the guitar
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So just this is the area of focus. And you can see that contrast is quite low in this setting
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as a byproduct of it being the close focus performance. This is only at F1.4
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but you can see if I focus at a further distance, we've got much better contrast and resolution here
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And so this is a lens that prefers, well let's just say does not prefer up close performance and is much better
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when you shoot at a little bit further of a distance. Best application for this lens in my mind is kind of city and street work
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It suits the Lawa color palette quite well. It's very small and discreet
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As you can see, it produces a good end result. Another shot here, you can see that here at a smaller aperture for a good detail
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But of course, you have the option of getting, as we've already seen, a pretty decent result
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if you're shooting at large apertures as well after dark. I liked the creative option of the 28mm focal length
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and so I could shoot this shot to kind of tell the story, and then in this next shot, I could actually show off one of those dresses
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and use that shallow depth of field. You'd see there's good detail. Again, there's just a little bit of haze on the textures
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but it looks good, and it allows me to compose here, kind of blurring off and focusing, or blowing off a foreground object
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and then focusing in on the subject there. So some good creative options when used in that application
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Now, flare resistance is not a strength for this lens, at least at large apertures
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You can see here that we've definitely lost contrast. There's some pretty pronounced veiling
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If we move on and we stop down here at F11, we do have this kind of ghosting artifact that is here
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but you can see the contrast is quite a bit better. Again, though, with just window light coming through
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for this shot at F1.2, there's a whole lot going on there
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You might be able to use that creatively in some ways, but there are just a little too many ghosting artifacts here
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which is going to frankly make it kind of hard to compose without one of those being, say, on the face of a subject
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At smaller apertures, however, not really any kind of big issue here
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and so I could, for landscape type of photography, I think the lens holds up just fine
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because you can shoot at smaller apertures. Now, I've long noted that with a lot of these Lawa lenses
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the colors are just a little bit flat. coming out of the camera. You can always dial in more color saturation if you so desire
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but it is just something that is a little bit of a unique Lawa feature there
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Depending on your photography style, however, that may actually be an asset
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Slightly lower color saturation levels really does lend itself to some of these
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what they would call faded type presets that are quite popular right now
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And so this is one I believe called warm contrast in Lightroom. It just really kind of suits the overall image and the color palette
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And so, again, your mileage may vary when it comes to this aspect of lens design
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And so as you can see, it is a nuanced optical performance. However, for the right photographer, this lens is going to be an interesting one
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though I suspect for most of you, this will be a lens that you just pass on by
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and don't end up adding to your own kit. If you want more information, you can look in the description down below
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and there's link to my full text review, also to an image gallery. there are buying links there, links to follow myself or Craig on social media to become a patron or to get channel merchandise
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Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. Have a great day
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And let the light in

Laowa 28mm F1.2 Argus Review + Detailed IQ Breakdown

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Laowa 28mm F1.2 Argus Review + Detailed IQ Breakdown

Dustin Abbott