You may remember back in March this year we reported on a pretty “bokehlicious” telephoto lens from Asian optics makers Venus Optics called the Laowa 105mm f2 for Sony E-mount; the lens uses a special apodization optical element enabling the lens to produce some lovely and creamy bokeh to enhance portrait photography or give you a more filmic look when shooting video. According to Mirrorless Rumors Venus Optics are getting ready to announce their latest lens – the ultra-wide Laowa 12mm f/2.8 “Zero-D” or in other words – a “distortion free” wide angle lens that is set to make a lot of architecture, event, and landscape photographers and videographers alike very happy. The company already has another specialty wide-angle lens – the Laowa 15mm f4 1:1 Macro, which is actually the world’s fastest wide angle 1:1 macro lens with full-frame coverage.
Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Details and Specs:
- Image circle: 24 × 36 Full-Frame 35mm coverage (Sony A7s II, A7RII, Canon 5D Mark III, 1D X II)
- Field of view: 121.96°
- Optical formula: 16 elements, including 2 aspherical elements and 3 elements made of glass with anomalous dispersion, in 10 groups
- Number of aperture blades : 7
- Aperture range: f/2.8 – f/22
- Manual focus
- Minimum focusing distance: 0.18m
- Maximum magnification: 0.2x
- Maximum diameter: 74.8mm
- Length: 82.2mm
- Weight: circa 570g
It looks like the lens will be announced this Saturday 30th July and be available in a variety of mounts including, Sony E-mount, Canon EF, Nikon F, Pentax K and Sony A mount.
Here are some sample images shot with this lens:
For raw files and large resolution images check them out on Flickr. Once the Kickstarter campaign launches we’ll have more details for you guys.
The Laowa 12mm f/2.8 looks like a god send at least on paper with Venus Optics making some pretty bold claims of “distortion free” optics, which is to be tested and possibly won’t be such a huge problem for photographers (as I am sure the lens will display at least a slight form of distortion due to its extremely wide field of view), but this is easily corrected for stills and not so much in video.
It would be great to see some actual video samples shot with with this lens, which I am sure we’ll see very soon, and until then – start saving for it. If it is as good as they say it is – this will be a very popular lens for video IMHO.
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