Venus Optics Laowa 14mm f/4 FF RL Lens for Leica L

The Venus Laowa 14mm f/4 lens is being used on a Canon R5. Manual focus and manual aperture were understood from the start and the lens accommodates those functions well. The lens is quite sharp in the center from wide open and just gets better as it is stopped down, making it easy to focus with the camera's image magnification feature. Edge/corner sharpness is a bit lacking at wide apertures, but the lens gets much better by about f/8 and f/11. At that point, it will be a very good landscape lens with huge depth of field. Size and weight are very nice: The lens is pleasantly compact and not heavy although it does feel decently solid.

I bought this lens for hiking and landscape shots and had high hopes it would be my new favorite. The positives are it is well built, all metal construction, smooth focusing, very small and lightweight, no color fringing, no noticeable distortion, manual focus with markings and can be very sharp in all areas of the frame if focused properly (more on this later). But there are a few negatives - it has significant vignetting which is fixable in post. And as another reviewer noted, the markings on the lens are not very accurate (but at least it has them to use as reference points). Lastly, and the reason I did not ultimately keep it, is that it doesn't seem to have as much depth of field as other lenses I own. To explain, it is pretty sharp in the middle wide open and gets even better stopped down. I found f/11 to be the sweet spot in terms of sharpness and depth of field. At f/16 diffraction softens the whole image too much. On my copy, setting the focus at 1m mark put everything in focus from about 3-4ft to infinity (in the middle of frame). The edges and corners are sharp at close distances, but not at moderate to long distance unless focusing farther out more towards the start of the infinity mark. But when you focus for the edges, everything from near to infinity in the center of frame goes soft. So the only way for me to get the best performance out of the lens was to shoot for the foreground/infinity at center and then take a second shot focused for distance at edges and combine the two. Too much of a pain for me. It was not a problem with any particular edges/corners since all were sharp at closer distances and at far distances when focused properly. The problem was getting everything in frame sharp in one shot. For comparison, when focusing at the same point and using the same aperture, my 16mm, 20mm and 24mm all achieved good results from near to far, edge to edge. The 16 and 20mm actually had more of the frame in focus closer to the camera as well as the edges at longer distances. In fairness, the Laowa edge performance is really good and better than some of the lenses I compared, but only when focused for those edges, sacrificing everything else in frame. I'm not sure if it's the nature of such a wide angle or if it has something to do with lens design, but it did not work for my purposes. If the intent is for indoor use, it is fine since nothing in the edges or corners is farther than 20-30ft.

Got a nice used copy from (thank you!) and proceeded to do some hyperfocal testing on my Canon RP. I intend to use this lens as a point-and-shoot with aperture set at f/11 and auto ISO. Here's the bad news - the engraved distance scale is completely useless. The infinity mark is sort of OK, but the rest is not. After much field testing I settled on a sweet spot on the distance scale just between the 1-meter and 2-meter marks. This gives me infinity focus and near focus to about 18-inches or so. Just what I want for my style of shooting. Absurdly, the infinity mark at f/11 hyperfocal on the lens barrel is 3/8-inch off where it should be. Appears as if the focus throw is quite steep, so small rotations result in large focus points. So I will leave the focus ring at the 1-2m marks and fire away and adjust from there as needed. The good part is that this lens is quite sharp at f/8 and f/11, with very little linear distortion, and so small it can fit in a small pocket and carry everywhere. Build quality is first-rate. And it takes 52mm filters! Get one only if you can deal with the distance scale issues. Mine's a keeper.

If you're on the fence about Laowa lenses, I can assure you, you will not be disappointed. As a person who normally buys strictly manufacturer lenses, Laowa is right on par with them and the Sharpness from this lens is unbelievable!

Get Those WAPs ( wide angle photos ) This is my first laowa Lens and I am not Disappointed. From all of the testing I've Done all the edges are straight and legit no Distortion on this bad boy. at f/4 there is slight vignetting but disappears at f/5.6, IF you're like me and using this for Real Estate this is the lens for you on Photos, f/4 for Video is a little low for Aperture in Video but if you're using a Full Frame System you should be able to push your ISO a bit more in low light situations but maybe not the best lens for Small Homes.