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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you a review of Laowa's most recent lens
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an autofocusing 35mm f2.8 APO macro lens. This is a one-to-one macro lens, but at a very useful
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walk-around type focal length of 35mm, giving you a lens that really in some ways reminds me
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me of some of Zeiss's macro planar lenses from the past, particularly the 50 millimeter f2
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And while that is a different focal length, and it even had a different level of magnification, both of these are really good kind of general purpose lenses that also happen to be very
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capable macro lenses. Now, of course, when it comes to a 35 millimeter focal length and doing
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macro, we're going to find that there is going to be a little bit of challenge in that you don't
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have a huge working distance. At the same time, however, this is a very capable macro lens that
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can produce very good macro images, though with one limitation that I will detail as a part of the
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review. Now, before we dive into it, I do want to say a big thank you to Lawa for sending me a loaner
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of the lens itself. It will be going back to them, and they have not seen this video ahead of release
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nor have they had any input in my findings. This is a completely independent review
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All that aside, let's jump in and let's take a look at the performance of this new 35mm lens
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that's store.fantomwallet.com and use code dustin20 for 20% off okay let's take a closer
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look at this lens first of all i'm reviewing the sony fe version but as far as autofocus versions
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they will also be coming to nikon z and then canon ef not canon rf but canon ef and i think
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that's a lot of work around you can use an adapter for an ef mount and get autofocus on rf mount
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Now, if you want a dedicated RF mount lens, it's going to come in a manual focus version
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Also, L mount and Fuji X mount versions are all manual focus only
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And so I'm not quite sure if those will have an aperture ring or how that's going to be handled, whether they'll be electronics
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But I'm testing the autofocus version here. Now, as mentioned, this is a hybrid autofocus manual focus lens
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And so you'll see here I can put it in the autofocus position. However, that is only going to provide me autofocus from basically 50 centimeters or a half meter out from there
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And so not quite two feet and out. And so anything below that, I'm going to have to access through manual focus
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And so we have an actual real manual focus ring here with a hard stop, with distance scale and markings
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We've even got hyperfocal distances. And it's a really nicely moving manual focus lens
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And you can focus all the way out to infinity. and then you can go past infinity and go into autofocus mode
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And again, once it's that limitations. To give you an idea of how different that is
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here's where autofocus is close as I can get with autofocus and then as close as I can get with manual focus
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So it's a different approach than what I've seen before, but I do love the ability to have a real manual focus ring
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when it comes to doing macro work. Now, what's interesting is that the 180 millimeter F4.5
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that I reviewed last year, it operated exactly like this. And then after my review, they did a firmware update that allowed
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there to be autofocus even through the macro range. I was surprised that that wasn't just
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this lens just didn't come with that capability right out of the box. And so we'll see whether or not they add that via firmware in the future. There, as noted in this version, there is no
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aperture, manual aperture ring. And so aperture is going to be handled from within the camera
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electromagnetic aperture control. There are nine aperture blades inside and you can see that that
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keeps a nicely circular shape early on for specular highlights. Later on, you're going to
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definitely see those blades when the lenses stop down. However, there is a function button here that
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will have whatever purpose that you have preset within the camera. It is a little bit stiff. I
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find operate. I would like it to move just a little easier than what it does. We also have a weather
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sealed USB-C port for firmware updates, weather sealing gasket here, along with some internal
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seals inside the lens itself As far as the actual size of the lens it is 79mm or or 3 inches in diameter And it is 87 millimeters or right under three and a half inches long
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So it is a little bit big for a 35 millimeter f2.8. It is, you know, the macro capability that makes it as large as what it is
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It's also not light. It weighs in at 630 grams or 22 ounces
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That's not unbearably heavy, obviously, but you're going to be able to get a 35 millimeter f2.8 lens
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It's a whole lot lighter than that. you know, again, excluding the macro capabilities. Up front, we have 72 millimeter front filter
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threads. Laowa's design language here with this kind of bluey purple finish on it. I have found
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it to be somewhat polarizing for people. I do appreciate the fact that it is different, but I
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find that the longer I look at the color, the less that I like it. And so again, your mileage may vary
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on that front. I do appreciate the fact though, that it's uniquely Laowa. They're not doing
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something just like what everyone else is doing. There is no optical steady shot or image
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stabilization within the lens itself, so you're going to have to rely upon stabilization from
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within the camera. Our minimum focus distance here is 18 centimeters. By my measurement from
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the sensor to the front of the lens, it is right under 14 millimeters, about 13 and a half, which
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means you're only going to have about 4.5 millimeters from the front of the lens. So if
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you did have a lens hood on, my review loaner didn't actually come with the lens hood, and so
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I can't test this, but most typical lens hoods, that's going to be within that. And so it's going
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to be quite easy to shade your subject. If you're going to use this for serious macro, you're
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probably going to want some decent light on the subject. And if you do that, you can get great results. Now, one thing negative that I'll highlight a little bit later on too, when it comes to the
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focus is that there is some obvious focus breathing in the macro range. And unfortunately, that is
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going to impact your ability to do effective focus stacking because the objects really do change in
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quite significantly at macro ranges which makes it harder to stack images. So let's talk about
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autofocus. Autofocus in this lens comes from an STM or stepping focus motor. Now we've already
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talked about the fact that it isn't autofocus all the way through the macro range though again that
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could change with firmware update as it did with 180 millimeter f4.5 macro lens. But for what we
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have at the moment we have an autofocus motor that works well though it's certainly not in the
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gm level of performance here autofocus speed is about average moves with decent pace back and
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forth and while i wouldn't consider it fast for any kind of real action photography for you know
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basic general purpose everyday kind of shooting it did just fine and it delivered good levels of
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accuracy it is helped a little bit by the fact that we're eliminating it basically is working
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like with a focus limiter on all the time and that we're eliminating that close focus distance
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So that does mean that there are less focus possibilities. I'm sure that autofocus would be
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slower if you were starting from the macro range and going all the way out to infinity for example
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But in general I found that autofocus worked just fine. I didn't really have any concerns in terms of
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accuracy and overall performance. I just certainly wouldn't buy a lens like this to use it for
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sports type photography which I'm assuming you would conclude that as well. Now on the video
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side of things you definitely can tell that this is a stepping focus motor and I would say that
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laowa's autofocus motors that i have tested at this point it was pretty amazing that as i was
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looking back at my review of the 180 millimeter f4.5 a lot of my same conclusions were almost
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identical when it comes to this and so it's a very similar level of auto performance and that
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there are some visible steps most particularly what you're going to see is as you get you know
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towards the focus subject there's just a couple of steps as it finalizes that and so it isn't like
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this smooth linear sweep of focus to the subject and back to the foreground. So some visible steps
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there. There is also some focus breathing and that is really going to come into play when it
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comes to anything like focus stacking. But as you can see here, if I pull focus at a macro level
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we have a pretty dramatic change of size and that almost sense of zooming as you move towards
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the macro range, move towards one to one, I should say. You actually feel like you're almost
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zooming in towards the subject and it grows. And so for those of you that like to do focus stacking
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which is a very effective macro technique, this is not going to be the best option for you
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because there is that serious limitation. Now on the upside, this for other video work
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this is a lens with really beautiful optics. And I found that I was able to get the video that
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looked really, really good from the lens. And of course, 35 millimeters is a very useful focal
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length. Now, for those of you that want to work on a gimbal, for example, it's certainly still
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possible with this lens but if you're not really wanting to use the macro app option of it this
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lens is bigger and heavier than what it needs to be for just a 35 millimeter f 2.8 it is that macro
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capability that adds on all of that but if your video work includes doing some macro work obviously
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this is going to be a very very useful tool for video capture okay let's start by taking a look
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at the optical design here we have 13 elements in 10 groups and you can see that that includes one extra low dispersion glass element and one ultra high refractive index element taking a look at the
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mtf chart we have good not exceptional good but good sharpness in the center of the frame quite
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even out to the center of the frame and then we can see it doesn't drop too far into the corners
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but there is going to be a little bit more astigmatism out towards the edge if we look at
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this image that is near one to one level here and then just a little bit further out you can see just
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how much of a shift there is in the size and almost like a zooming type effect. If you'll look
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near this area, see this wrench, this much is left in the frame and all of that, a good portion is
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removed going to the minimum focus distance. And so that is obviously going to be unfortunate for
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those of you that like to focus stack. Now, in terms of vignette and distortion, there is almost
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no distortion. I dialed in a minus one, but it wasn't really necessary. You can see it's pretty
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much neutral vignette's a whole other matter however it's a plus 97 here so i'm basically
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maxing out the slider to get this result at the edge so vignette is definitely going to be an
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issue and unfortunately at least to this point on the platforms i've tested it doesn't seem to me
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like laowa has in-camera correction support and so it's something you'll have to take care of in
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post now this is an apochromatic design which apo lenses tend to have very low fringing and you can
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see here as far as the test chart goes there's very little to see there either before or after
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the plane of focus as far as taking a look at you know high magnification of my dad's old slr
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you can see that in this writing all good there and on these shiny surfaces basically no fringing
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and looking at specular highlights basically no fringing there as well so great on that front
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likewise here even at f2.8 we can see just a picture of water droplets and so obviously there's
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lots of really shiny reflections here. There's a little bit of fringing before the plane of focus
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but what we mostly see is really beautiful contrast and all of that. It can create really
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beautiful images for macro because of that. Lateral style chromatic aberrations do exist
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There's more than what I expected in terms of my test chart. That being said, I went out and looked
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at my real world images and I couldn't see them nearly as much. And so maybe not a real world
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problem, but certainly a chart testing problem. So how about resolution and contrast? Here is the
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test chart that we're going to look at very closely. This is shot at 61 megapixels on an
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a7R Mark V, 200% level of magnification. So first of all, very good detail in the center of the
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frame at f2.8. Contrast is lower than expected for an apochromatic lens. And likewise here
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we can see that detail is really, really good. Contrast is just okay. And that's true as I pan
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down. As we get towards the edge of the frame, you know, there's definitely some drop off. It's not
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as crisp, but it's certainly not bad. And here we've got a decent level of centering as I look
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at other spots. The only thing that we do see is unfortunately some of that lateral style chromatic
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aberration. I would argue, however, in a macro lens that I care more about longitudinal style
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chromatic aberration because that's going to destroy images. And here we can see that we're
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able to shoot these really, really shiny, very reflective surfaces. And what we're mostly seeing
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is good detail and contrast. In fact, I would say that this is a lens that performs better in the
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macro range in terms of contrast than what it does at my test chart distance. Now this is closer to
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that test chart distance, a shot of Nala here, and while contrast isn't off the chart, you can see
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it's plenty for real world use. No problem there. Likewise here, this is an f2.8 shot, and you can
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see that there's, you know, pretty good contrast there. Then if we go on to f8, stopping down to
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get, you know, and I toggle back and forth. Obviously my goal here is to get, you know
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a greater depth of field, but you can see that contrast also is taking a serious bump up as well
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As we stop down from f2.8 to f4, the big thing you notice is just that big punch improvement in terms
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of the contrast. And that is definitely something that makes a difference as you stop the lens down
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you're just going to see deeper contrast. And so everything looks a little bit inkier from f4 to f5.6
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I mostly see just a little bit more contrast, but not necessarily a lot more in terms of resolution
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It largely looks the same. Again, however, it's at macro distances where I'm most impressed
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Here at shooting at f8, we can see that this is the edge of an adjustable wrench
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As you can see, you can just see that there's lots of really interesting details that are there
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Contrast looks very good. It's just a really punchy image. Now on a high resolution body like this
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diffraction is going to start softening the image by f11. And then by the minimum aperture of f22, it is significantly softer
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So unfortunately here where you can't really do focused stacking very well
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and you might want to shoot at a very small aperture, there's going to be some cost as you go past the diffraction limit
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Taking a look at the bokeh quality, we can see that, you know, good detail on the mushroom there
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And here we can see mostly good as we get out to here
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There some busyness in this frame The bokeh is what I would consider to be good but not great i mean i love the fact that i can get you know handheld higher magnification level images and so it just gives me versatility
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for a 35 millimeter focal length which i love but the backgrounds are not you know really strongly
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blurred you get closer to macro level and of course that does improve things get more strongly blurred
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out here for example i thought it did a good job in the transitions and again for a handheld macro
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I've got nice detail, particularly when the subject is moving around a bit
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In an image like this, I mean, it's not like the background really disappears or anything
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Contrast and detail look good, but, you know, the background looks fine. It just doesn't look exceptionally good
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What I did love, however, is the apochromatic punch and contrast, you know, when capturing a beautiful scene
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So here the colors look really good. Here's another image where colors are nice
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Likewise here. I really, really liked the overall look and the feel
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And, you know, again, if I look in at the details, I'm really satisfied by what I see
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Nice and sharp and crisp. Likewise here, you know, really nice, rich looking colors
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So another one here just shows that lovely, rich contrast and really nice levels of color saturation
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Now, I do wish that the review copy that I had tested came with a lens hood because there are some definitely some flare issues
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And I would hope that, at least with some of these, they would be helped by having the lens hood
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For example, here I'm getting some internal reflections. And you can see if I take the same shot and I pan up and down, there's just a certain angle where light's coming in and causing this basically like a light leak type look
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Here, stop down a bit, shooting up through the leaves. You can see that there is some ghosting artifact there
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The sun star looks fine. It's not like mind blowing or anything, but it looks fine. If I pan across the sun, you notice that there is definitely this certain angle where you get a really strong prismatic effect
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And so that definitely shows up and we'll see it in a few still images in a moment
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Likewise, if I'm stopped down, what you'll see is almost like a halo effect at certain angles where there is a there's a ring around the light source
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And then also a bit of flashing and some ghosting. You can definitely see that effect here
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As I just take a stills image, you can see that big ring around everything
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Here you can see even in a window light shot that we've got that really strong kind of prismatic halo effect
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It's, you know, an effect that maybe you like, but it's definitely very dominant in an image
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Now, fortunately, in milder scenes like this, I mean, it's a bright sun, obviously reflecting off the water
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but it's, you know, early morning, and so it's at a decent angle. And in this situation, I felt like contrast held up fine
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I don't have any major ghosting impacts here. Just trying to catch that light going through here
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Nice rich colors. I like all of that. There's a little bit of a ghosting artifact here, but this I can live with
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Definitely some of the other stuff, though, is a little more bothersome. Overall, this is a good, but I wouldn't say exceptionally good, performance
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There are a few minor issues, but for the most part, particularly in the macro range
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I felt like it did a really good job. So what's my conclusion? Well, this is a really interesting lens from Laowa
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And while the final price has not been determined as of the time of when I'm filming this review
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if I use the recent 180mm f4.5 as a point of comparison
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it's a very similar lens with just a different focal length. If I use that as a point of comparison, we're looking at somewhere probably in the $500 range
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which really offers a pretty strong value for what is essentially a dual-purpose lens
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35 millimeters is one of my favorite focal lengths for just general purpose shooting
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and then the ability to actually have very competent not just competent but very good
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macro performance out of that though with the exclusion of being able to effectively focus stack
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but outside of that limitation for just you know straight up macro shooting it's really good i mean
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very very low levels of chromatic aberrations good contrast and detail up close and while you have to
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definitely have good lighting because you don't have a big working distance that's a solvable
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problem if you want to do macro work. And so I do find it to be a very intriguing lens on that front
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And if you're someone that, you know, is interested in both doing macro and also would like to have a
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35 millimeter lens, this is a very inexpensive way to kind of get those two birds in the one stone
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so to speak here. And so I certainly have no problem recommending it for those of you that
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fit that exact criteria. For those of you who aren't really interested in doing macro, there
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certainly cheaper and lighter and even better performing 35 millimeter lenses available it's
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really the ability to do both of those things that makes this lens most compelling i would say
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and what's more it's a lens that produces really beautiful images and so for that reason it
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certainly is one that i could have no hesitation in recommending for those of you that are looking
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for that hybrid purpose if you want more information feel free to check out my full
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text review which is linked in the description down below as always thanks for watching have
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a great day and let the light in You
