In all honesty, I did not know what to expect from the Laowa 9mm f/5.6 FF RL, the worlds widest fullframe rectilinear lens. Prior to this, I hadn’t gone beyond 15mm (with the Voightlander Super-Wide Heliar III). After the hands-on review of the Tokina SZX Super Tele 400mm Reflex lens, I felt compelled to take things to the extreme opposite end…
My thanks to Laowa Australia for arranging a demo unit.
Compact in size but uncompromising in image quality, perfect for modern mirrorless cameras.
(Lego Ant-man for scale.)
Available in Sony E, Nikon Z, Leica L and Leica M mount (with rangefinder coupling) with fullframe sensor coverage.
Whilst not part of the Zero-D range (Laowa classes this as a W-Dreamer), I was more than impressed by the close focusing distance, negligible distortion and sharp corner performance at f/5.6 wide open, especially when mounted on my 42.4 megapixel Sony A7rIII.
Without further ado, here are five frames from the Laowa 9mm f/5.6 FF RL W-Dreamer running through a gamut of tests demonstrating its strengths in architectural photography, close focusing, sun stars, as well as flare resistance! (All shot hand held with the exception of the obvious long exposure.)
FINAL MUSINGS
Keeping this post short and sweet… going this wide is a bit out of my range (pun intended?) but alas, one of the more invigorating and inspiring shooting experiences I’ve had in a while. As I believe the Laowa 9mm f/5.6 FF RL W-Dreamer is the only lens of its kind in the world, based on image quality alone, $799 USD/ $1349 AUD is a reasonable price for a spectacular field of view, and quite frankly dramatic rendering upon a scene.