Review: Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D autofocus

Friday 26 July 2024, 15:51 by Nando Harmsen | 3,145 views | 1 comment

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

Laowa has an ultra-wide-angle lens with an aperture of f/2.8. It even has autofocus for a select number of camera brands. I was given the Laowa 10mm f/2.8 zero-D autofocus for Sony E-mount to try by Cameraland.nl.

If you really want to go extreme, you can choose a 10mm focal length. This gives you a diagonal angle of view of more than 130 degrees, on a full-frame camera. Enough to almost get your own feet in the frame.

There are several lenses available with this angle of view. But these are often limited to a maximum aperture of f/4 or smaller. Laowa offers this lens, which lets twice as much light through: the Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF.

The lens is also unique in another way. This is Laowa's very first lens with autofocus. If you have a Sony or Nikon camera, you have autofocus available with the Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF.

Although focal lengths like this have very strong perspective distortion, Laowa has made sure that straight lines remain almost completely straight. Vertical lines converge when you point the lens up or down, but there is barely any barrel distortion.

The f/2.8 aperture offers many advantages in dark conditions or when photographing a starry sky. It prevents excessively high ISO values or motion blur caused by slow shutter speeds. Thanks to the focal length, there is still plenty of depth of field, even at f/2.8.

The lens does have one disadvantage, which can be particularly problematic in astrophotography. At f/2.8, there is as much as four stops of vignetting. Stopping down the aperture improves this, but there are still three stops of vignetting in all conditions.

The huge angle of view of the Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF can be very useful for architecture and interiors. As long as you can handle the huge angle of view, of course. The autofocus takes care of focusing, but this is not very critical at this focal length.

The Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF is a fine and interesting lens. The autofocus is a first for Laowa, and f/2.8 is a first for this focal length. The lens has some downsides, but you can take these into account.

You can read the complete review, with a large number of examples, on the Cameraland.nl website. The lens is available for 979 euros, with autofocus for Sony E and Nikon Z. For Canon RF and Sony FE, the lens is only available with manual focus.

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