Got the Laowa 10mm f/2 -- Few Notes

I got the Laowa 10mm f/2 and just wanted to note a few things for other's benefit:

• Ordered from B&H, came with the 0.5 firmware which, I believe, contains the fixes for the newer Panasonic camera incompatibility (previously attached lens corrections not clearing, causing them to distortion the Laowa's output, you had to ship it to Laowa for a firmware update).
• If barrel distortion exists I cannot see it. CA is very well controlled.
• The vignetting is apparent even without peeping at f/2. It is controlled at f/2.8 and gone at f/4.0.
• Filters without step up ring makes vignetting mildly worse, but only at f/2 to my eye (using a B+W 46mm UV Haze MRC 010M). It may be detectable at f/2.8 under test conditions.
• The aperture motor, and lens/focal length identification are a nice quality of life improvement.
• The build quality is fantastic. Focus ring is smooth and hood attaches firmly. Cannot really use focus ring with the hood inverted, but that's a limitation of the lens size.
• I replaced the included Laowa Lens Cap, pinching it is too shallow and obnoxious. Got the Sensei 46mm Center Pinch for $4 from B&H, which is a big improvement.
• With Focus Peaking and Focus Assist on the GX7 focus is a breeze.
• The focus scale printed on the lens is wrong/pointless. Even infinity isn't marked correctly. It looks nice though, so there's that...

SooC JPG. Keep in mind I'm still on the 16 MP sensor. Focused to infinity, mostly going for a CA and distortion test here.

Got mine last week for my birthday. Thanks for the lens cap hint.

I put it on my GM5. With the hood reversed the set up is TINY!! Agree with your other comments. Use it at f/4 and it's smashing.

I really wanted the new 8-25 Pro zoom, but that wasn't in the budget. Got this instead. Maybe get the zoom someday, but for now, this really extends my 12-40/2.8.

mring1 said:

I really wanted the new 8-25 Pro zoom, but that wasn't in the budget. Got this instead. Maybe get the zoom someday, but for now, this really extends my 12-40/2.8.

Click to expand...

That's exactly the role mind plays, except with my Panny 12-35 f/2.8 mkII. And I have the PL8-18 as well. The 12-35+10mm makes a brilliant, versatile, high quality, compact little kit, with a great range, and not much weight.

KarmaAndLies said:

I got the Laowa 10mm f/2 and just wanted to note a few things for other's benefit:

• Ordered from B&H, came with the 0.5 firmware which, I believe, contains the fixes for the newer Panasonic camera incompatibility (previously attached lens corrections not clearing, causing them to distortion the Laowa's output, you had to ship it to Laowa for a firmware update).
• If barrel distortion exists I cannot see it. CA is very well controlled.
• The vignetting is apparent even without peeping at f/2. It is controlled at f/2.8 and gone at f/4.0.
• Filters without step up ring makes vignetting mildly worse, but only at f/2 to my eye (using a B+W 46mm UV Haze MRC 010M). It may be detectable at f/2.8 under test conditions.
• The aperture motor, and lens/focal length identification are a nice quality of life improvement.
• The build quality is fantastic. Focus ring is smooth and hood attaches firmly. Cannot really use focus ring with the hood inverted, but that's a limitation of the lens size.
• I replaced the included Laowa Lens Cap, pinching it is too shallow and obnoxious. Got the Sensei 46mm Center Pinch for $4 from B&H, which is a big improvement.
• With Focus Peaking and Focus Assist on the GX7 focus is a breeze.
• The focus scale printed on the lens is wrong/pointless. Even infinity isn't marked correctly. It looks nice though, so there's that...

SooC JPG. Keep in mind I'm still on the 16 MP sensor. Focused to infinity, mostly going for a CA and distortion test here.

Click to expand...

Yes... V0.5 is the latest FW supposed to fix the issues. I have been in correspondence with Laowa and they confirmed that.

They also said that at the moment, only they can update firmware but they are working on providing an online service.

That vignetting concerns me as a major incentive for me to get the lens is to have a compact and fast ultra wide for travelling and astro. I usually spend some time when travelling away from the light pollution I normally live with. Reviews show a really bad hot spot... anything away from a small central image circle is dark... 3 stops in the corners and 2 stops on the edges. I would probably get similar results with astro and my Panaleica 8-18 (which I always travel with anyway) as although the PL is slower, the much lower vignetting will compensate and noise/ detail with astro would be similar. If it were not for my astro exposure concerns, it seems like a great lens.

I wish Laowa had made it a little bigger as that would probably allow better vignetting control. I don't mind some vignetting, up to 2 stops in the corners and 1.5 stops on the edge is acceptable to me. Oly Pro primes tend to go the other extreme with amazingly low vignetting, but at a cost to size... Panaleica primes strike a good balance. Budget OlyPana primes have a bit more vignetting and I wish Laowa had done an Olympus 12mm f2.0 technically, but in 10mm.

--
Addicted To Glass
M43 equivalence: "Twice the fun with half the weight"
"You are a long time dead" -
Credit to whoever said that first and my wife for saying it to me... Make the best you can of every day!

I bought a used Laowa 10mm f2 but only used it on one outing before I sold it. Even though I had a GX7 and GM5 at the time but, I only used it on my GX9. For me, 10mm was much wider than I expected and decided I preferred my Olympus 12mm f2. That was my only reason for selling it. I agree with most of what you said but I really didn't see the vignetting you did. I rarely use hoods and left the 10mm's hood in the box. Also I put a brand new Hoya NxT Plus 46mm UV filter on as soon as I got the lens.


Shot at 16:9




Center crop of the first image




Portrait angle and right on top of those trees




Landscape shot cropped to 1:1 square.




Gold Course shot at 16:9



--
Bill S.
www.flickr.com/photos/wrs1946
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson -

bs1946 said:

I bought a used Laowa 10mm f2 but only used it on one outing before I sold it. Even though I had a GX7 and GM5 at the time but, I only used it on my GX9. For me, 10mm was much wider than I expected and decided I preferred my Olympus 12mm f2. That was my only reason for selling it. I agree with most of what you said but I really didn't see the vignetting you did. I rarely use hoods and left the 10mm's hood in the box. Also I put a brand new Hoya NxT Plus 46mm UV filter on as soon as I got the lens.


Portrait angle and right on top of those trees

--
Bill S.
www.flickr.com/photos/wrs1946
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Click to expand...

The shot above is at f2.0 (others at f8.0) and looks good. Did you have in camera "shading compensation" vignetting control switched on or did you correct vignetting in processing?

--
Addicted To Glass
M43 equivalence: "Twice the fun with half the weight"
"You are a long time dead" -
Credit to whoever said that first and my wife for saying it to me... Make the best you can of every day!

glassoholic said:

bs1946 said:

I bought a used Laowa 10mm f2 but only used it on one outing before I sold it. Even though I had a GX7 and GM5 at the time but, I only used it on my GX9. For me, 10mm was much wider than I expected and decided I preferred my Olympus 12mm f2. That was my only reason for selling it. I agree with most of what you said but I really didn't see the vignetting you did. I rarely use hoods and left the 10mm's hood in the box. Also I put a brand new Hoya NxT Plus 46mm UV filter on as soon as I got the lens.


Portrait angle and right on top of those trees

Click to expand...

The shot above is at f2.0 (others at f8.0) and looks good. Did you have in camera "shading compensation" vignetting control switched on or did you correct vignetting in processing?

Click to expand...

Until you just told me about the "shading composition", I didn't know it existed. I just checked my GX9 and it's set to Off and would have been the same when I took those shots. I didn't see any vignetting and so did not need to correct any in post. Also I stopped shoot raw and only shoot jpegs for the past two or three years. Based on what I was doing at the time, Photo Style would have either set to Standard or Natural.

If I understood the OP correctly, the vignetting is caused by using a filter or the hood. No hood, and the 46mm Hoya NxT Plus UV filter I had on the lens has a thin ring designed to prevent vignetting with ultra-wide lenses.

--
Bill S.
www.flickr.com/photos/wrs1946
“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept”
– Henri Cartier-Bresson -

Is it just me but when viewed at 100% most of these shots look horrible with nothing sharp in the picture.

dlinney said:

Is it just me but when viewed at 100% most of these shots look horrible with nothing sharp in the picture.

Click to expand...

Not sure what you consider horrible, the composition or the level of sharpness demanded by the pixel-peeping generation. If it's the latter, perhaps you need to visit your optometrist, get a new monitor, or remind yourself that many have commented how crappy their images look after being uploaded to DPReview.

I review everything I download on my 49 inch Sony monitor and toss anything that looks like crap. My Flickr address is in my tag line and they do a much better job.

dlinney said:

Is it just me but when viewed at 100% most of these shots look horrible with nothing sharp in the picture.

Click to expand...

You've got a point, I think. Maybe f8 is a bit too small, and using f4 would slightly improve things. It may also just be a bit of missed focus. Adding a bit of pop/contrast/micro-contrast can mimic more sharpness.

But, Bill is right, in that DPR does some nasty things to images, and judging sharpness by looking at the original size is fraught with peril.

I had that (same) lens and did a review with more images here , but honestly, they don't look much sharper, while on the good monitor directly from the harddrive, they are looking fine.

Not sure if there is a trick to prevent DPR from re-re-re-compressing the images. Maybe it's a way to protect personal property.

I just downloaded the DPR "original" from my OP and compared it to the SooC JPG and they're identical (size/pixels). I then ran Get-FileHash on both, and they're byte-to-byte identical too. So I'm not sure this can be blamed on DPR (at least if you click on the original).

I will say though that it is a manual focus lens, so very easy to get slightly wrong.

KarmaAndLies said:

I got the Laowa 10mm f/2 and just wanted to note a few things for other's benefit:

• Ordered from B&H, came with the 0.5 firmware which, I believe, contains the fixes for the newer Panasonic camera incompatibility (previously attached lens corrections not clearing, causing them to distortion the Laowa's output, you had to ship it to Laowa for a firmware update).
• If barrel distortion exists I cannot see it. CA is very well controlled.
• The vignetting is apparent even without peeping at f/2. It is controlled at f/2.8 and gone at f/4.0.
• Filters without step up ring makes vignetting mildly worse, but only at f/2 to my eye (using a B+W 46mm UV Haze MRC 010M). It may be detectable at f/2.8 under test conditions.
• The aperture motor, and lens/focal length identification are a nice quality of life improvement.
• The build quality is fantastic. Focus ring is smooth and hood attaches firmly. Cannot really use focus ring with the hood inverted, but that's a limitation of the lens size.
• I replaced the included Laowa Lens Cap, pinching it is too shallow and obnoxious. Got the Sensei 46mm Center Pinch for $4 from B&H, which is a big improvement.
• With Focus Peaking and Focus Assist on the GX7 focus is a breeze.
• The focus scale printed on the lens is wrong/pointless. Even infinity isn't marked correctly. It looks nice though, so there's that...

SooC JPG. Keep in mind I'm still on the 16 MP sensor. Focused to infinity, mostly going for a CA and distortion test here.

Click to expand...

Looks like a wonderfully compact lens. I have the 8-18, but have been eyeing this and the 7.5 mm lens for quite some time.

[No message]

KarmaAndLies said:

I just downloaded the DPR "original" from my OP and compared it to the SooC JPG and they're identical (size/pixels). I then ran Get-FileHash on both, and they're byte-to-byte identical too. So I'm not sure this can be blamed on DPR (at least if you click on the original).

I will say though that it is a manual focus lens, so very easy to get slightly wrong.

Click to expand...

So I played around a bit and noticed that when I click on "original size" underneath my image, it actually displays it upsized to a larger size than how I had it uploaded. Then clicking on the + magnifier, it enlarges it further, and makes it look even fuzzier.

My original upload was 2100x1600, but for some reason DPR blows it up via "original size". May need to use a higher resolution, or maybe that's how it is on my 4k screen, not sure.

Very happy with mine