Sample Images from the Laowa 8-15mm f/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye

I’ve been shooting with the Laowa 8-15mm f/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye on my Nikon Z8, and here’s a collection of sample images to show what it can do. I’ve posted a more detailed review separately.

This manual-focus zoom fisheye sells for $699. It’s available in native Z-mount (along with Sony E, Canon RF, L Mount, and others), which is handy since Nikon doesn’t make its own Z-mount fisheye yet, though they do make an F-mount fisheye zoom.

The zoom range gives you flexibility. On a full-frame camera, you can shoot rectangular fisheye (frame-filling) at 15mm or circular fisheye at 8mm, or anywhere in between. On APS-C, the 8mm end works as a frame-filling fisheye.

It’s a non-CPU lens, so there’s no electronic communication between lens and camera. Everything is manual — focus, zoom, and aperture. That takes some getting used to on modern mirrorless cameras, but it’s workable.

What I’ve found: The lens is sharp overall, though I’ve struggled to get consistently sharp shots at f/2.8 wide open when shooting handheld. Part of that is the challenge of manual focus with the busy, distorted perspective of a fisheye. I’ve had better results at f/4. With more care on a tripod, it’d likely be less of an issue.

The sample images below were all shot handheld in RAW and lightly processed in Lightroom Classic. Most were shot at either f/2.8 or f/4. I haven’t applied any lens corrections.

You can read my full hands-on review of the Laowa 8-15mm f2.8 here for more details on build quality, handling, technical specs, and alternatives.

Sample images

Here’s the gear I used to shoot these photos.

These were all shot handheld on a Nikon Z8 in RAW and lightly processed in Lightroom Classic. I haven’t applied any of Lightroom’s optical distortion corrections here. Because the lens is a non-CPU lens, it doesn’t report any aperture information back to the camera to embed into the image EXIF, but most of these were shot at either f/4 or f/2.8.

If the missing EXIF bothers you, Nikon Z bodies have a partial workaround: Setup Menu > Non-CPU lens data lets you enter a focal length and maximum aperture that then get written into the metadata. It won’t record the aperture you actually shot at — it just writes whatever maximum aperture you entered — but it does make the files much easier to sort later, and the focal length you enter is also used by the in-body stabilization.

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

Price & availability

The Laowa 8-15mm f/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye is priced at $699 and is available in Nikon Z, Sony E, Canon RF, L Mount, Fujifilm GFX, and Hasselblad XCD mounts.

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