Laowa 10mm f2.8 AF Sample Images

There are a number of ultra-wide lenses available, especially with the growing number of third-party manufacturers jumping into the fray.

But the Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D stands out for a few reasons.

For one, it’s wide. Very wide. 10mm isn’t unusual on an AF-C cropped-sensor lens, but this is designed for full-frame lenses.

For another, it has autofocus. That’s quite unusual, because nearly all of the other full-frame ultra-wide lenses close to 10mm are manual-focus. The big manufacturers make 14mm and 12mm AF, but 10-11mm AF is unusual.

And for another, it has very effective aspherical elements. What that means is that lines stay straight rather than that bulging, distorted look you get with a fisheye lens. You still get a type of distortion that stretches the edges and corners of the frame, but it still manages to look somewhat more natural than a fisheye because things that you expect to be straight are straight.

Package all of those into a relatively compact and relatively inexpensive lens, and you’ve got something interesting and fun to shoot with.

I’ve posted an in-depth review separately, but the purpose here is to provide a larger collection of sample images I’ve taken with this lens (the Nikon Z version on a Nikon Z8).

Sample images

So, a few things worth mentioning about these. They were all shot handheld with a Nikon Z8.

They were shot in RAW. I’ve lightly processed them in Lightroom Classic, but I haven’t put them through any extra optical corrections. I have, however, left the default lens profile active under the rationale that my objective here to test real-world use, not technical lab tests, and that that is how probably most users will shoot with it.

You can click on each image for a full-size version for a closer look.

What I would not use it for

As much as I enjoy shooting with this lens, it is not a jack-of-all-trades lens that you can just use anywhere. It’s not just that it’s super wide — it’s what that, and its aspherical elements, can do to certain shots.

In particular, it stretches anything near the edges and corners of the frame. It’s by no means alone in that, of course–it’s just a byproduct of such a wide perspective. And it can be fun. But it can also be distracting if you put certain things in that part of the frame.

And many times, it’s because it distorts people in distracting ways.

So I wanted to include a few images to illustrate times I wouldn’t use this lens.

It’s not necessarily a lost cause, though, because you can dial back the distortion in post using lens distortion correction tools such as Lightroom Classic. You’ll lose some of the field of view, but you can reduce the disproportionate distortion.

Hands-on review

I’ve posted an in-depth hands-on review separately.

Price & availability

The Laowa 10mm f/2.8 Zero-D FF autofocus is available in its autofocus version for Sony FE and Nikon Z (I’ve been using the Nikon Z version). It has an MSRP of $799.

Prices on imported goods are pretty volatile at the moment, especially coming from China, so it’s possible that Venus Optics might adjust the pricing at some point.

Check the current price and availability at:

• B&H Photo

There are also manual focus versions for Canon RF and L-mount (in addition to manual-focus versions for the Sony FE and Nikon Z). Drilling down further in the manual focus versions, there are two flavors: one with a 14-blade aperture and another with a 5-blade aperture. You can find the various configurations on the Venus Optics website.