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Laowa Tilt/Shift 55mm F2.8 Macro Review | The Do-It-All Lens
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Dec 17, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of unique Laowa Tilt/Shfit 55mm F2.8 Macro lens - a seriously strong performer! | This episode is sponsored by Fioboc. Visit Fioboc.com and use code DUSTIN20 for 20% off everything. | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery | 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.link/nt4zdz1goa7ql 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 Fioboc Clothing: https://tinyurl.com/FiobocDA20 and us code DUSTIN20 for 20% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept
View Video Transcript
0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the Lawa Tilt Shift 55mm F2.8 macro lens
0:19
Lawa's next lenses are some of their most ambitious yet, 55 millimeter and 100 millimeter tilt shift lenses that also have full one-to-one macro capabilities
0:29
On top of that, the 55 millimeter, which is the one I'm reviewing today, is ridiculously sharp and contrasty
0:36
I suspect the 100 millimeter is as well. As you can see, however, it is also big, heavy, and it's expensive at $1,299 U.S. dollars
0:45
So is it worth the hassle? Well, that's what we're here today to explore
0:49
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1:12
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1:19
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1:35
and use code Dustin 20 for 20% off everything. So let's start by talking about build and
1:41
handling. The first thing that I noted when I pulled this lens out of the box is that it is
1:45
basically the size and the weight of a 70 to 200 millimeter F2.8. In fact, with the downsizing
1:52
trend that we've seen of 70 to 200 F2.8, this lens is actually heavier and even bigger than
1:58
some of them. It is not a small lens. It is 168.5 millimeters or 6.63 inches long and it weighs a whopping
2:09
1,345 grams. That's 47 and a half ounces. It is 85 millimeters in diameter or 3.344 inches and it has a
2:21
77 millimeter front filter thread. Now what's interesting here is that this lens actually is
2:28
fairly versatile when it comes to the tilt shift aspect of things. It has a full 12 millimeters
2:34
of shift and then also 10 degrees of tilt. And so as far as the overall shifting capability
2:41
it actually has more room to shift than some of their other just purely shift lenses from
2:45
Lawa that I've reviewed before. What I find really interesting is when it comes to the available
2:50
mounts here. Now, I've tested it in a Nikon Z mount. It's also available in E, Canon RF, and then L
2:57
or L. Mounds. And so those are all full frame mounts, but what's interesting is that it is further available
3:03
in two medium format mounts. And that includes Fuji's GFX and then Hazelblod's XCD mounts
3:11
So that means that this is a lens, as I'm reviewing here on full frame
3:15
that's actually over-engineered for the full-frame image circle, which does help to affect the overall quality
3:21
Now, one thing you have to be aware of with a lens like this, this is a fully manual lens
3:26
And when I mean that, I mean there's zero electronics here. And so that means that your aperture is going to be controlled through a manual ring
3:34
Your focus is going to be controlled through a manual ring. And there are some limitations that come with having no electronics
3:40
Now, the upside, I would say, to a tilt shift type lens and even a macro type lens
3:46
the reality is that these are lenses that are going to work best when using them on a tripod
3:51
And as a byproduct, I find that I can put up with some of these things better on a lens
3:56
this because very likely for macro I'm probably going to manually focus most of the time anyway
4:00
and certainly if I'm doing tilt shift type work well I'm going to be wanting to work off of the
4:06
tripod it's not really a lens that you run around doing running gun type shots the aperture ring
4:12
works fine it's it's a slim aperture ring here at this point the aperture ring itself does have
4:19
light clicks but the detents are only at every full stop and so you're not going to get them at the
4:25
smaller one third stop. You can stop it obviously anywhere you want. So it's not really decliked
4:31
but there's not a whole lot of limitations to rotating it there either. And so you could
4:36
I think you could do aperture racks in a pinch. But it is a clicked aperture technically
4:42
Manual focus ring is very nicely damp. It's beautiful. I estimated at about 165 degrees of rotation
4:49
And importantly to me, there's about 35 degrees of rotation from one meter to
4:54
infinity. That can be a serious factor sometimes I find with some manual focus lenses. For example
5:00
I just was doing at the same time a review of the per gear, 100 millimeter, two times macro
5:06
And what I found with that lens is that there's only about 15 degrees of focus play at after
5:13
one meter, which makes it very difficult to achieve accurate focus because it's just even the
5:18
tiniest little movement and you're all of a sudden really off focus. That's not true here. It's a well-balanced
5:24
focus ring, I like that. Inside we have got 15 rounded aperture blades, which makes for a really
5:31
beautiful circular aperture shape. And so your specular highlights, even when they're stopped down
5:36
are going to be nice and round. If you're not familiar with tilt shift lenses, there is a lot of
5:40
complexity to them. I count about seven different adjustment or tension knobs that are present here
5:47
And so you can rotate basically three different sections of the lens itself. You can make a rotation
5:53
of the section that handles the shift portion. You can rotate around what covers the tilt portion
5:59
And then you can also, of course, rotate the fact that it comes with a tripod foot
6:04
You can also rotate that section around. And so that means you can put this lens in a lot of different positions
6:10
Now, on a positive note, I will say that all of the adjustment knobs are made out of metal
6:16
They appear to be durable. Obviously I can give you a long report on that That does tend to be a factor with these If the tension knobs are not well executed it means that making adjustments particularly if you in a position
6:28
where you're rotating up and down, can be very difficult because it just wants to fall to the
6:34
furthest position. I actually have some versatility here because I can actually control tension
6:39
more reasonably. And so I think that overall that is well executed here. And hopefully all
6:44
these knobs are going to stay durable for the long haul. That's obviously important
6:48
As mentioned, there is a tripod foot that is included. It does have arc of groove. So as you can see, it can go right onto a tripod here. There are a couple of tension screws here to where that foot portion itself can be removed. I did find that it, there is a little bit of overall sag. And even with it very firmly attached, there's a little bit of a rock there. So what I did find is when I was trying to line things up for my test chart, I had to adjust high
7:18
because invariably it would sag down low. And so it's not the best execution of a tripod foot that I've seen
7:26
but the lens is big enough and heavy enough. You're probably going to be happy that you have it
7:30
And particularly to be able to stabilize the lens there and then to move things around here, I think is going to be useful
7:37
Now, as far as the tilt shift capabilities, there is 12 millimeters of shift in either direction
7:42
And so that is obviously very welcome. That's in some cases I've seen as little as 10 millimeters of shift
7:48
shift on some of their lenses. I believe the maybe the 20 millimeter was in that range, either that
7:54
or the 15 millimeter. One of them was 10, another was 11 in terms of the millimeters of shift
8:00
So there is more range for shift. However, I don't find shift to be as appealing on a normal
8:07
lens. I mean, you're just far less likely to have enough room in a scene to where you've got a lot
8:12
of lean from buildings and where shift can really help to straighten out lines. I did find it to be
8:17
useful for doing, you know, panoramas and vertramas. You know, you can rotate right on that without
8:23
getting any kind of perspective change. And so you can get a nice, you can make up for the fact that
8:29
it's not super wide by easily getting a wide shot by just going just within the range of the shift
8:35
that you have, shifting one direction, shifting the other direction, getting the middle shot
8:39
putting those together. It's almost no loss of image and you get really nice looking result. And you
8:43
can do that either, you know, in a panorama, but also in a vertorama up and down. And I did both
8:49
and it worked really quite well. Now, as far as the amount of tilt here, tilt can go, can go 10
8:57
degrees in either direction. That really allows you to do a lot of creative things with selective
9:02
focus. For example, this shot in Toronto, you can see shooting out my hotel window. I can get a
9:08
fairly normal scene, or I can shift things around to where only one little area is in
9:13
focus, making it stand out, and you can play with it in other directions to get kind of the
9:17
miniaturized or toy effect. It can be a little bit gimmicky, but it can also be useful, and you can
9:23
create a unique kinds of bouquet with a tilt-shift lens that you really just can't do with
9:29
anything else except for software, essentially. Minimum focus distance here is 27 centimeters, so a little
9:36
bit of a working distance at one-to-one level, so that is one-to-one or 1.0 times magnification. It's a full
9:43
macro lens, pretty awesome, all of the different kinds of shots that you can take
9:48
It's a complex lens, it's big and it's heavy, but it is quite versatile
9:52
So how about the image quality itself? I'll give you an overall breakdown here, or kind of overview, and then we'll do the deep dive
10:00
in conclusion. Optical design here is 14 elements in 11 groups. This lens feels like an apricomatic lens to me
10:07
I don't see Lawa actually stating that, but it performs like other APO lenses that I've used
10:12
before. I couldn't find any frending, whether it was on my chart, and shooting text on a page
10:18
and shooting shiny surfaces. It didn't matter what I was shooting at. This lens seemed to be
10:24
wholly resistant to any kind of fringing. Neither did I see any kind of lateral chromatic aberrations
10:29
near the edge of the frame. Everything is really nice and clean. As a byproduct, the look of
10:34
images, kind of the overall contrasting and rendering, it feels very Zeiss Otis to me. And that to me is a very
10:42
high compliment. You know, for example, I really love the look of portrait type images shot with
10:47
this lens because it had that just really intense, three-dimensional pop, and color and contrast
10:53
came together really, really beautifully. Now, when it comes to breaking down some of the things
10:58
I found that there is zero distortion and very low vignette, even at F2.8, plus 42. That's really
11:05
quite a low level for that. And I think the reason for it is that this lens is engineered for
11:10
medium format, which means that a lot of the vignette is just getting cropped off on the
11:15
full frame image circle. So if you're shooting on either the Hazelblad or Fujifilm medium format
11:21
you'll probably see a lot more vignette. But if you're shooting on one of these full frame
11:25
platforms, you're going to see relatively low vignette. Frankly, I never saw anything that I felt
11:29
like I needed to correct for. Do remember with a manual everything lens here, there's going to be
11:34
no camera corrections of anything. So it's good news that there isn't anything really that needs
11:40
Experimenting. I found that detail is awesome across the frame at F2.8, that it's sharp in the center
11:47
it's sharp in the midframe, it's sharp in the corners. I found that in real world shots
11:50
they're very, very crisp. There's no bleeding at the edge of textures at all, no hazing or
11:56
veiling on anything. It just looks really, really crisp. Now, I do think that this lens is guilty
12:01
of some focus shift, because I found that as I stopped the lens down with my test chart, that focus
12:07
did move off a little bit. And so that is something to watch out for
12:12
Most of the time, you're probably going to be focusing with your aperture already preset
12:16
But if you don't, just watch out for that, just in case that is a potential factor
12:20
The lens will gain a little bit of sharpness and contrast as you stop it down
12:24
But frankly, you have everything really that you need, even from F2.8
12:29
And anything beyond that is probably going to be more about depth of field. Obviously, when you're shooting at macro distances
12:35
you're probably going to want to stop down just to increase the depth of field to it's not so razor shallow
12:42
Diffraction is going to start on higher resolution bodies at F11 and then minimum aperture of F22 it going to become more noticeable there
12:52
What I found is that the geometry from the boca is about average
12:57
You know, it's mostly circular at, and this is that F2.8, you stop down, and that's not a problem
13:03
Remember, very high aperture blade count. But wide open, you're going to find that there is some, you know, glimmon or cat eye shape towards the edge of the frame
13:11
in the center and throughout most of the frame, the specular highlights are nice and circular
13:17
What I found, however, is that in my opinion, the bouquet in a lot of situations
13:22
isn't as soft as what I would like. The problem with having an APO type design
13:26
is that it's hard to turn that contrast off. And so it's contrasty
13:31
a little more contrast than you would like even in the out-of-focus area. So I would say a little bit more outlining
13:36
just not fully creamy. At the same time, I found that I really did still
13:41
like portrait shots because the overall look was still so rich, even if the bouquet isn't
13:46
amazingly creamy, just the quality of the images was really fantastic. I also found that for macro
13:52
this is a great macro lens. And of course, having tilt shift options really just gives you a lot
13:57
of creative options of where you're going to put that narrow plane of focus. And so I actually
14:02
really enjoy it, probably enjoyed it more than anything for actually macro work for that kind of
14:07
versatility. I also found that flare resistance was quite good. Optically, this is an amazing, amazing lens
14:13
Very, very strong and certainly similar to other apricomatic style designs that I've seen
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really top-notch. And so I love the optics from it. So my conclusion is this
14:25
This is an interesting lens. There's obviously tons of versatility with a tilt-chiff lens that can also do macro
14:31
I will also say that there's a learning curve here. And if you're not familiar with this type of lens, it's probably going to be a little intimidating initially
14:39
It's not necessarily easy to use. But I do love the image quality, so much so that I would actually love to see Lawa package just the optics here and a smaller, simpler lens
14:50
You know, it doesn't have to be a macro lens, doesn't have to be tilt shift. But just to have the look that this lens, the optics produces, it's really, really beautiful
15:00
But the lens itself is also big, heavy, and expensive, which means that unless you're going to be shooting in this particular niche, it's probably not going to be a lens for you
15:10
but if you are looking for something like that, this is optically brilliant if you want a tilt shift macro type of lens
15:18
I'm Dustin Abbott. If you want more information, you can check out my text review that is linked in the description down below
15:25
There are some buying links there as well. And if you want a deeper dive into the optical performance
15:29
good news. Stay tuned with me right now and let's dive into it together. We'll start by taking a look at vignette and distortion
15:35
You can see as far the distortion goes. There's nothing to correct here, and I have corrected nothing on the right
15:40
It's pretty much flawless wide open. There is some vignette here in the corners
15:45
I used a plus 42 to correct, but remember if you're using one of the medium format versions
15:49
you'll probably see considerably more vignette because what I think we're seeing here is that a lot of the area that is heavily affected by vignette
15:56
is probably clipped off by the smaller full frame image circle here
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Now, while Lawa does not call this an apochromatic or apo design
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I find that it basically behaves just like typical APO lenses in that I don't really see any fringing before or after the plane of focus
16:14
Seems like colors are very similarly focused. You can really see it in text like this almost always
16:20
You will see some kind of fringing before and after the plane of focus in a normal lens
16:25
It's just not present here. I also often see it in these transitions from black to white in the imprinting on lenses
16:33
But you can see here it's just flawless. There's no bleeding of anything, no fringing
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it just looks perfect. And then finally, in these really shiny, reflective surfaces
16:42
there's really not anything to see. I mean, there's a little bit of prismatic haze that's coming
16:46
just from what the light is doing through the crystals, but that is an actual fringing
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And the areas where I would expect to see fringing, you know, even here where there's that little highlight there
16:56
it's just not present. Likewise, when it comes to lateral style chromatic aberrations
17:00
near the edge of the frame, again, I just don't see them. This is uncorrected, and there's nothing to correct
17:05
So like most lenses that have an apricromatic style design, this lens is extremely sharp and high contrast, even wide open
17:13
And you can see here this is a 45 megapixel Nikon Z8, 200% magnification
17:19
Contrast in detail is just flawless in the center of the frame. I move over to the mid frame
17:24
It looks fantastic, very, very crisp. As I pan down here, looks great on this side of this bill
17:30
looking still very good here. And over into the corners, it's, you know, a little less
17:35
contrast and detail, but you can see it's all extending right off to the very edge of the frame
17:40
No problems there. So in real world situations, that just is tons of detail and contrast. And so
17:46
here in a portrait subject, you can see that all of the fine detail in my wife's hair and on her face
17:52
it's all perfectly delineated. Even at F2.8, you can see the actual fabric in the jacket. All of that
17:58
detail is delineated. And again, even though it's not strongly defocused here, I do want to just point that
18:05
the contrasts and the colors that this lens produces are very, very special
18:10
Take, for example, I was also testing the Siri Aurora 85mm F1.4
18:15
In many ways, it's a very nice lens, and it's able to produce really, really beautiful
18:19
defocused backgrounds. And obviously, the background is much more defocused here. But just take a look between the left and the right image when it comes to the richness
18:27
of the color. And you can see that there is a color signature here that's just so much nicer, so much richer
18:32
so much richer than what I was able to get out of the Siri lens. on the right side
18:37
So you can see again in this image here that all of that shows up
18:41
in real world images as well, that there's just a perfect delineation
18:45
of all the details. There's no bleeding here at the edges. Everything is just really, really crisp
18:50
and all the edges are just perfectly contained. No kind of bleeding or hazing there
18:55
at the end of the textures. That's true at the macro distance as well
18:59
Here is our one-to-one off the test chart. And you can see as we go in close
19:03
in the plane of focus, you can see that all the individual fibers of the paper are there where the ink drops have gone into it It just really really beautifully executed So unfortunately as mentioned I believe that this lens does suffer from a bit of focus shift And so obviously I manually focused the result here starting with
19:21
the F2.8 result. And then as I begin to stop the lens down, you can see that focus is just not
19:26
quite as good. You can see by looking at just, if you're just looking at the contrast levels
19:31
that the darker, the darks are darker here. It's a little bit better, a little more
19:36
deep saturation of the dark areas. But detail hasn't really improved and that has a lot to do with
19:42
the fact that the focus has just shifted a little bit to where it's not flawless anymore
19:47
Most of the time in real world shots, it won't be an issue because you're focusing at the
19:51
aperture that you've selected. F11 here on the left side, you'll start to see a little bit of
19:55
softening due to diffraction. F22 on the right side, which is the minimum aperture. And you can definitely
20:00
see that the image has softened a fair bit due to the effects of diffraction. You'll also see that it didn't
20:05
meter quite as well. I find that to be fairly common, actually, with lenses without electronics
20:11
As you start to stop the lens down, it's like the camera doesn't meter as well with such a lens
20:15
attached. Now, at macro distances, the lens performs really, really well. And so here you can see that
20:21
it's able to just show all of the little roughed up areas, the wear and tear of a coin in circulation
20:28
It's really cool to see all of that in close perspective. A shot like this, I think you can
20:33
you can just see how much the subject just pops. And it's due to that contrast and detail that just really makes it stand out
20:41
giving it a very nice three-dimensional quality. A shot like this, I think, shows both the good and bad of this lens
20:47
So if we look at the subject, I mean, that is fabulous. At F2.8, all of the detail, all the contrast
20:53
The textures are just beautifully delineated. If you look at the image as a whole, however, you can see that the background is not quite as pleasing
20:59
You can't just turn off that contrast. So there's a little more hard edges than what I would like in the bark here
21:05
going towards the background here. Even in this shot that we've previously looked at, like again
21:11
I love this aspect of the image. I don't love this aspect of the image as much
21:15
It's just not as nicely defocused. One thing that this lens is exceptional at, though
21:20
is that it's very good at flare resistance. And so here I have very bright sun coming to this frame
21:24
and you really don't get a sense of it how bright it is because the lens has handled it so well
21:29
but you can see that nothing has fallen apart. Contrast in detail is great
21:33
We've got a little tiny bit of a prismatic haze down in this corner, but it's artistic
21:38
Nothing really to complain about at all. So finally, let's talk a little bit about what you can accomplish
21:43
through the tilt shift. And so as far as the shift, as you mentioned with 55 millimeters
21:48
I don't find that it's all that often that you're going to have to deal with subjects leaning
21:51
And so you can use it in that function, but what I do really like is the ability to combine
21:57
as we've just done here, three shots together, to get to kind of eliminate any kind of perspective shift
22:03
And so here you can see because the camera's not moving at all, look how little of the image has been lost here
22:09
Just little tiny bits at the edge. Because you're just shifting the lens up and down
22:14
the actual sensor's not shifting. And so you can get really kind of clean results
22:18
whether you're stacking vertically like this and getting an end result that is very clean
22:24
very, very high resolution. And so it's, I mean, there's a lot to work within an
22:29
image like that. Now you can also do the same thing with with images that are captured for panorama
22:35
And so this is not a super wide lens, but what you can do is that you can just shift left center
22:42
and then shift to the right. And once again, you can see very little of the image has been lost
22:48
And the byproduct here is you can get a very wide looking perspective here. And again, there's just
22:54
massive amounts of detail in this image because, again, you haven't created any kind of
22:59
of distortion you haven't created any kind of weird perspective it just means it all throughout the image
23:04
you can go from side to side and the amount of detail is just amazing throughout it so you can really do
23:09
some really high resolution landscape panoramic type looks by doing that now on the tilt side of things
23:17
you can really do some interesting things and so your typical shot in a scene like this would look
23:23
something like this and so you can see that to focus out that far it means that pretty much everything is going to be
23:29
in focus. However, if I use the tilt design here, what I can do is just have a very, very narrow
23:36
depth of field here that's actually in focus. And so then what I'm able to do is do something that
23:42
typically you wouldn't physically be able to do, both have something in focus that far away from
23:47
the camera, and then also to have all these specular highlights. But it allows you to be really
23:52
really creative with your depth of field and thus to create bocab, where typically it wouldn't be
23:57
possible to do so. Here's another example. example here, again, by using that tilt function in the image on the left side, I've got the
24:05
building on the right in focus, and then you can see by playing around and moving that tilt over
24:11
to the left side. Now this building's in focus, and all of a sudden, this is completely out of
24:15
focus. And so it really just draws the eye right to here, gives you some specular highlights
24:20
where again, it would be physically impossible to create them otherwise. Now, what's really
24:24
interesting is when you combine those things together for your macro performance. And so here you can
24:29
see on the left side, I've chosen to have the left portion of the image completely out of focus
24:34
And I've got this very narrow little plane of focus that's running up into the top of the stack
24:40
and down through. You can see it with the word dollar that only just the O is basically in focus
24:46
And by the time you get over here, the AR is completely defocused. On the right side, this is the
24:51
exact same aperture value, but I have played with the tilt function here to where now I've
24:57
included the left side. There's a plane of focus running over to that. And now you can see I've got
25:02
most of the word dollar in focus, whereas the top of the stack is now completely out of focus
25:08
It just gives you a lot of extra creative options on how you're going to handle macros
25:12
That really is the strength of this lens. So hopefully a look at the optics of this bad boy
25:17
has helped you to decide whether or not it is a lens that you would be. interested. As always, thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in