LAOWA 10mm F2.8 FF Auto Focus lens Review.

Venus Optics recently announced their first Auto Focus lens the Laowa 10mm f2.8 FF Zero D Auto Focus. I was lucky enough to get a quick loan of this lens for review in Sony mount from Laowa Australia before it was released.

Before we get into the review I would like to thank Laowa Australia for the loan of the lens and good friend Greg Thomas for loaning me his Sony A7c so I could shoot the images for this review, much appreciated, thanks!

A few details and info straight from Laowa.

Laowa Lens is proud to announce a significant milestone, Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF Lens, our first auto-focus lens! This launch represents a significant achievement and we are excited to bring you our first auto-focus lens that pushes the boundaries of what’s possible in photography.
Outstanding optics, distortion-free, compact, and featuring autofocus, this lens encompasses all the desired features for an exceptional ultra-wide-angle photography experience

Product Highlights

First Rectilinear 10mm Full-Frame Lens with f/2.8 aperture
Accurate and Reliable AF Performance
Compact & lightweight
Close-to-Zero distortion (Zero-D)
Ultra-wide angle of view of 130°
Close focusing distance of 12cm
10-Point Sunstars
⌀77mm filter thread
Outstanding optical design
Excellent performance for panorama and astrophotography

Specs

Some quick specs from the back of the box,

Format compatibility –	Full frame
Focal length –	10mm
Aperture range –	f2.8-22
Angle of view –	130.4
Lens structure –	15 elements in 9 groups
Aperture blades –	5
Min Focussing distance –	12cm
Focus mode –	Auto Focus
Filter thread –	77mm
Dimensions –	82mm x 70.8mm
Weight –	450g
Mounts –	Sony E/Nikon Z (Auto focus) Canon RF and L mount (Manual focus).

Build Quality, Looks, My thoughts and extra info.

I have always been impressed by the build quality of Laowa lenses and this is no exception. This lens is so nice, it has an all metal casing with metal lens hood and lens mount, it’s a solid lens much like their other offerings, honestly you just can’t fault it’s build quality. This is so good to see as a lot of manufacturers seem to be adding more and more plastic and making lenses that feel a little fragile.

It also looks amazing, Laowa have nailed it with this lens in the looks department. The colour with it’s blueish tone looks fantastic and it’s overall lines look modern to suit the modern look of mirrorless cameras. I particularly liked the all metal focus ring, it’s engraved logo and engraved grip is just awesome! Why don’t more manufacturers make focus rings like this rather than with rubber grips that fades, other manufacturers take note.

Something I didn’t see mentioned anywhere else and only noticed when I put the lens in the box to send back to Laowa Australia was that there is a rubber weather seal around the lens mount, nice addition. I’m really not sure how well the lens is weather sealed as I didn’t get a lot of info with this lens, but details like this gives me some piece of mind that the lens is built well with attention to detail and that there is some protection from dust, dew and water getting to the camera’s sensor when using this lens.

The lens is available in a few different versions, Auto focus for Sony FE and Nikon Z mounts, manual focus for Canon RF and L mount. There’s also different aperture blade amounts available (see Laowa for more details on this as I just had very little info given to me).

I’ll try and get a hold of a manual focus copy in the future so I can compare the two, so give this review some love and help me out, thanks guys!

The Laowa 10mm f2.8 looks great, it looks modern and it’s small size is really suited to mirrorless cameras. Mounted on the Sony A7c, one of the smallest full frame mirrorless cameras on the market you can see just how how compact this lens is.

Modern and compact design looks so good.

Auto Focus/Manual focus switch on the side of the lens.

The front of the lens with lens hood removed. There is a 77mm filter thread on the front so this lens accepts standard screw in filters that’s great news for landscape photographers and videographers!

The lens has a 77mm filter thread on the front. Here you can see my Haida M10 filter holder and 100mm square ND filter mounted to the front. Unfortunately I didn’t get a chance to try the lens with filters attached in the field as I only had the lens for a short period of time. I am getting a copy of the lens for my travel kit so will add some info here once I get a chance, stay tuned.

Performance.

No lens charts, just thoughts and some images from my real world use. I tested it’s performance for astro, it’s Auto focus, how it handles direct sun.

I also tested how durable it’s lens cap is after sliding down some rocks with it in my pocket at the Cannonball MTB festival, sorry Laowa Australia for scratching it up so bad, I’m glad it survived! It was a bad weekend for lens caps, I also lost a Canon cap from my 70-200 f2.8 RF, first cap I have ever lost.

Anyway…………stick with me, let’s look at this lens’s performance up close.

Cropped centre of the above image at f2.8

At f2.8 the lens performs well, the centre crop is really sharp, the corners aren’t quite as sharp as the centre of the frame but holding up really well for such a wide lens at its widest aperture. There is slight distortion on my Macs 27inch screen but you need to look very hard, bet no one noticed.

Next we will look at the same subject at f5.6

At f5.6 the full unedited image is just super sharp, not much else to say.

At f5.6 the centre crop is super sharp too as expected.

The top left of the frame at f5.6, that’s pretty awesome performance, sharp, no distortion.

Top right corner crop. again super sharp no distortion.

Bottom left crop at f5.6, there’s a theme here right. Sharp no distortion.

And finally the bottom right hand corner crop at f5.6. It’s showing a lot of detail all the way out to the corners.

At f5.6 the lens performs really well, it’s sharp, it’s sharp in the corners and there is no crazy distortion. Yes 5.6 is a sweet spot of most lenses so you’d expect great performance and there’s no surprises here with the Laowa 10mm f2.8 AF. Good to see how it compares at f2.8 vs f5.6, I don’t see a need to test at any other apertures.

Lets now have a look at how the Lao wa 10mm f2.8 handles stars wide open, I know this is what everyone really wants to know.

This image was taken straight above me with the Laowa 10mm f2.8, it is unedited SOOC with a JPG conversion. Shooting details – 10mm, f2.8, 20sec, iso6400. Looking pretty good so far.

Centre of the above frame. Looking good.

The top left 100% crop. You can see some star distortion/stretching I bet mostly from the 20sec shutter speed. There is also the slightest bit of coma right out at the edges. This is really good performance, pretty much as good as anything I’ve used.

Top right hand corner at 100%. You would be looking really hard and being over critical to find any problems here, it’s awesome performance.

Bottom left corner at 100%, again really good performance. The slightest coma but I’m really looking hard to find a problem here.

Bottom right 100% crop. It’s just really good, I can’t see much to be critical about.

If you are after an ultra wide 10mm for nightscape photography you really can’t go wrong with this lens, it performs really well when shooting stars. There is only the slightest coma noticeable if you look really hard and any stretching of stars is just the 20 second shutter speed I used, a faster speed such as 15seconds would minimise it. This is going to be a popular lens for Nightscape photography, not only is it a great performer at keeping stars sharp the wide angle gives some really cool dramatic effects, more on this further on.

Lets look at some other shots that I captured,

I took this shot to show how it performs with straight lines. I’m not sure I would trust just how straight these lines are but you can see some mustache distortion here. I did nothing to straighten these and it’s just how the shot came out of camera, in post I feel you would be able to straighten these lines up more. Having said that this is ok performance for a 10mm lens.

More straight lines at the Federal, Nimmitabel. This place is sight for sore eyes and relief for bike packers trashed legs, have I ever mentioned I like bike packing? This is a favourite stop for racers on the Monaro Cloudride 1000.

This lens does pretty well at keeping those lines straight.

This lens is just so good for getting in close for nightscapes, creating dramatic effects and getting all your subject in. To capture this shot I was only a metre or so from the base of the tree, down really low to the ground using my tripod, I love shooting this style of shot. Single image 10mm f2.8, 20sec, iso6400 and a couple of Lume cubes 2.0’s for lighting.

I wanted to test how the lens handles being pointed at the sun. Wide angle lenses really have a tendency to do some pretty weird things with lens flare, it’s just hard to stop sun hitting the front element. In this shot you can see the sun star and some flare in the centre of the shot. I found every frame from this location to show similar flare regardless if the sun was in frame or not.

Auto focus performance

I found the auto focus to work well, in general use it had no problem acquiring focus and I also found when shooting Mountain bikes I could also acquire focus fast. I’m really not sure if auto focus is high on my priority list for a 10mm lens as you can set a small aperture and get everything in focus pretty easily but the Auto focus works well and as intended.

Here’s a few shots from the Cannonball Mountain bike festival, Thredbo, using the AF system to grab focus.

As you can see the Auto focus worked well but it was really hard work for me keeping up with the Sony A7c, I’m so used to my Canons that just shoot sport so well.

I was literally only a few meters from the subjects, Cannonball is a big festival and these riders are all fast, so the lens did well. I wish I used the lens during race day in some of the tight berms GoPro style as this lens would produce some really dramatic shots used this way, next time!

Conclusion

The Laowa 10mm f2.8 FF Auto focus lens has been a lot of fun to test out and review. I really like how small this lens is on the Sony A7c, the combo is just a really powerful compact set up for nightscapes and close up dramatic shots. The performance in all areas is good but I was particularly impressed by how well it handled shooting stars, a lot of lenses just fall down here but this lens did the job well.

I was also super impressed by the build quality, as I said earlier other manufacturers should be taking notes. Really the only negative I had with the lens that I haven’t actually touched on is when it’s mounted on the Sony A7c there is not a lot of room between the grip and lens for your fingers, I don’t usually shoot Sony so this could just be me on this particular body.

Would I recommend the lens? Yes, If you are looking for an ultra wide 10mm f2.8 auto focus lens for your Sony or Nikon mirrorless camera it’s a pretty decent option and I’d imagine if the lens design is the same on the manual focus lens for Canon RF and L mount they would be equally as good.

In Australia the lens will retail for around $1449 and is available now on the Laowa Australia website .

Feel free to share. Sharing, subscribing, reading more of my tutorials/reviews and your general support is much appreciated, it really goes a long way with organising reviews like this. Why not also subscribe to the Nightscape Photographer YouTube channel while your at it, thanks in advance!

If you found this review useful and you would like to buy the lens or any other lens from Laowa Australia use the code NSCAPEOZ on the Laowa Australia website, it gives you a discount and helps support Nightscape Photographer through commissions, thanks for your support.