Laowa 15mm f/4.0 Wide Angle Macro

A topic was started 5 years ago, but no one really brought answers. Phil Rudin mentioned he wanted to try one but not seen anything.

I am talking about the Laowa 15mm f/4.0 Wide Angle Macro which can provide 1:1 Macro capabilties with an angle of view of 110°. Sounds amazing for wide angle macro.

https://www.venuslens.net/product/laowa-15mm-f/

BUT, manual focus and manual aperture. This can be worked with gears 3D printing notz a proble,

But which dome? 

Also 1:1 Macro comes at 12cm focus distance... Not that room for lighting. Subject might stick on the glass of the domeport

Does someone has any experience?

Eric

Hi Eric,  First of all 1:1 or life size on a full frame camera is an image area of apex. 36 X 24mm the frog photo is way greater than that, I would guess at least 1:3 or greater. With this lens to get to 1:1 the lens needs to be within 1 or 2 mm of the subject which just will not work with a dome port. The thickness of the port glass alone would prevent using it at full life size. With FF and a lens as wide as 15mm you would be best served with a 230mm or greater port diameter.  Even if you were to use the lens for its excellent wide angle qualities by the time you added the gears it would not be cost effective. Rokinon/Samyang makes a 14mm F/2.8 AF lens for Canon, Nikon and Sony FF mirrorless which is also an excellent lens. This lens focuses to 20 cm which is a usable distance behind a 230mm port. You will find my review of that lens in back issue #112 jan/feb 2020 at uwpmag.com, this is a free PDF download. The Rokinon FE 14mmF/2.8  is now on sale in the US for under $500.00. This lens is a much better choice as a budget ultra wide (weitwinkel) rectilinear. 

Out of the water the Venus Laowa 15mm works quite well using focus peaking. 

Phil

Thanks  a lot for your insight.

I already have the lens you mentioned, the Rokinon 14 f/2.8 which works very well with my Sony A7rIII and behind the 230mm Dome.

I also have the WWL1 (used with the 28mm). Also a 15mm Fish-Eye (Sigma)

But i was attracted by this 15mm not for the wide angle (as said above, i am fully all set) but for the Macro aspect.

None of the above mentioned lenses are even capable of 1:5 or 1:6 aspect ratio, at the minimal focus distance.

I wanted to come back to the very old days of the Nikonos WACF...

Of course not something for every dive, but to do the same as with this frog.

Eric

Phil

And what about the new Tamron lenses with 1:2 ratio such as Tamron 20mm f/2.8 Di III Osd. 

I have not seen or tested the Tamron lens so have no comment regarding that lens other than to say it should work in a smaller port like Nauticam 180mm or ZEN 170mm with the proper extension. I am in the process of testing the new Sony FE 20mm F/1.8 with minimum focus distance of 18cm (the Tamron is 10.92cm). My lens will focus all the way to the glass with the 170 and 180mm ports.

Photo touching the port glass, zen 170mm.

In the past I have some interesting experiments with a 30mm macro lens together with a fisheye adapter (SEL30M35 lens combined with the fisheye adapter (VCL-ECF1) with APS-C (sony ))

Unfortunately I never had a chance to try it underwater but on land it gave quite interesting CFWA results.

I have some very old blog post might be interesting for this topic:

http://fiberstrobe.blogspot.com/2014/08/sel30f35-vcl-ecf1-lens-combo.html

http://fiberstrobe.blogspot.com/2014/08/praying-mantis.html

http://fiberstrobe.blogspot.com/2015/09/freelensing-versus-30mm-macro-with.html

http://fiberstrobe.blogspot.com/2014/09/put-sel30m35-lens-into-perspective.html

Cheers

Marcell

@lambee01 i'm getting the Laowa 1:1 macro 15mm f/4 tomorrow. For top side mostly, but I have a 4.33" dome with my D500 (unfortunately crop!).

Did you do any experiments with this? I'd love to hear about your thoughts between something like:

Fully manual Laowa 15mm

Rokinon (manual focus unfortunately but aperture can be set)

Fully automated tokina 10-17mm

I'm dying to get some awesome close focus macro wide angle shots, but not sure which way to go...

The issue remains that to get high magnification the focal point is 12cm from the sensor plane which will be inside the dome and you are still dealing with dome port optics so the corners will be mushy even stopped down to f16 in a 4.33" dome.  The Tokina 10-17 in your 4.33" dome would be the winner for CFWA as it'll focus on the dome with decent corners because it's a fisheye lens.  It won't get huge magnification but I expect it would be similar to my Panasonic 8mm on m43 which fills the frame fairly well with a 6cm long subject.  If you go to the link below and scroll down to find Don Silcock's image of a white's seahorse, that is taken with a D500 and a Tokina 10-17, the sea horse would be about 8cm  high more or less.

My Favorite Underwater Portraits: Contributors' Picks | X-Ray Mag (xray-mag.com)

@sinetwo  I have been able to do some testing underwater with the Loawa 15 macro 1:1 as I could adapt one of my rings as a focusing ring. That worked well (with of course a fixed aperture at f/11). That behind the Nauticam 140 FE port (keep in mind that the lens is quite long) 

However I was very disappointed with the results. Not about the quality that was OK. But you can achieve 1:1 macro almost only when your subject is on the front lens. 

With the port, in the housing, you have inevitably a distance between the front lens and the front part of the dome. Hence no way to achieve better than 1:3 macro. Very disappointing for CFWA. 

I have better results with the Tamron 20 macro 1:2 behind a N100 100mm diameter dome. 

Eric 

It's an awesome lens. I use it a lot for topside nature and wild perspectives. I have the Outex protective bag system with a flat port and still can get nowhere near to the full potential of the lens though. This is due to the distance created by the hardware in front of the lens, flat port etc.