Laowa 7.5mm f/2

Before I send the Laowa back to Andreas – MANY THANKS again for the loan – here is the conclusion. The lens is sharp right into the corners. (As I’ve already written several times, there are occasionally misaligned lenses, but it’s actually sharp.) You can also see this in panos like this one of Salzburg, for example:

The houses in front and behind are sharp, the trees on the horizon are sharp, everything is great. This is also no problem for the lens:

All the branches on the left are crisp. No CAs, no color edges. Perfectly clean. Bright backlight and yet strong contrasts and no disturbing flares. There’s nothing to criticize.

But, as already written several times: f/2 is no guarantee for sharpness from front to back, even at 7.5mm.

Here the chess piece is sharp, but the fortress in the background is blurred. f/2. So be careful with stopping up. Out of focus doesn’t necessarily mean cool bokeh – because the Laowa can’t really do that:

This is the bokeh on the left edge. It’s more like potato bokeh and you have to make a lot of effort to get larger diffusion slices. The strength of the Laowa is sharpness from front to back. How this affects stars at the edge is a matter for astrophotographers. I’m not and after taking a “beginner’s course” on the subject – I’m not going to become one. To get something really good out of it, it’s a material battle with tracking motors and hundreds of photos – not my thing. If you want to know more about it, here’s the specialist.

I’m more in favor of such gimmicks. This is aperture 8, and with aperture 2.0 you can see what blurring is possible:

So far.