Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift Review

The specifications of the Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift make it an excellent lens for architecture photography and other situations which require an expansive field-of-view while avoiding keystoning. This review analyzes the optical performance, ergonomics and build of this lens. All tests were performed using the Sony E-mount version using a 61 Megapixels Sony Alpha A7R IV
Sony Alpha A7R IV. Expect the performance to be representative of all other Full-Frame mounts since this is the highest resolution of the format to date. Medium Format models are slightly more demanding of the periphery of the imaging circle.

Construction & Ergonomics

Venus Optics built this lens with an all metal barrel. It is quite solid and it is covered by a durable smooth black finish. Its 770g weight feels dense without being heavy. The lens barrel remains a fixed 11cm long. About 1cm from the mount, it is split in two to implement its Shift mechanics. Much closer to the lens mount, there is another split to allow the rest of the barrel to rotate 360°. This makes it possible orient the shift movement in any direction. While most of the barrel is 72mm wide, the front flares out to 93cm to accommodation a standard 86mm filter-thread and a unique rotating lens hood.

Along the lens barrel of the Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift, there are four rings, the most of any lens. Every ring feels solid and rotates quite smoothly. Three of these have fine ribs to improve grip, while the other is attached directly to a locking knob. There is one more knob attached to a fixed part of the barrel plus an unusual spring-loaded latch that works with the rotation feature.

The widest ring is the focus-ring which is located at the front of the barrel before it gets wider. It has a 90° throw and focus distance markings from ¼ to 5m plus infinity and the equivalent in imperial units. On the barrel, below the focus ring, there are depth-of-field markings every other full-stop from F/4 to F/22. This is very traditional and frequently seen on modern lenses. For a Manual-Focus only lens, these are useful to have. The focus-ring rotates smoothly with hard stops at 25cm and slightly past infinity.

Right behind the focus-ring, there is a mechanical aperture-ring. Since the Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift has no electronic contacts, the only way to select the aperture is via this ring. A crucial consequence of this is that the iris is always stopped down to the selected aperture. This makes it harder to confirm focus in low light since the extra amplification necessary adds noise the preview. There are very soft detents at full aperture stops which makes it easy to miss a particular stop.

A narrow ring controls the orientation of the tripod support. There is a knob to lock it in place plus markings ±90° in 30° increments. At zero degrees, framing becomes horizontal relative to the tripod. With ring turns completely smoothly with no detents at all.

The fourth and final ring uniformly controls Shift. There is a certain amount of resistance when rotating it since it mechanically moves the bulk of the lens barrel. The friction inside the mechanism is sufficiently high to handle the weight of the lens. However, this friction is too low to handle the weight of most Full-Frame Digital Cameras. Therefore, when the camera is mounted on a tripod, Shift does not drift. However, when the lens is mounted directly on a tripod, Shift will quickly drift downwards. To help setting the lens to its zero-shift aligned position, there is one detent exactly in the middle of the shift-ring.

To handle the Shift drift issue, Venus Optics equipped this lens with a Shift-Lock knob. Once it is tight, shift no longer drifts anymore. The only difficulty is having to tighten the knob while holding the lens at the desired shift simultaneously. Again, this is only an issue when the lens is mounted directly on the tripod. If the camera is mounted on a tripod, one can simply remove the connector by loosening two screws.

The fixed portion of the lens barrel has the last remaining control, an unusual spring-loaded button. This one in particular unlocks the barrel rotation from firm detents. When rotation lines up with any detent, the button springs up which locks the rotation mechanism. To turn the barrel from there, the user must press the button down while rotating past the detent. This button stays down, this allowing free rotation, until the lens angle reaches the next detent. At that point, the button springs back up and locks the mechanism. It appears that there is one every 30°.

This is clearly a solid lens with tight tolerances. Every mechanism in it operate smoothly. The only minor thing to note is that screws that hold the tripod connector can fall out easy when unscrewing them.

The Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift comes with a unique lens hood made of two parts. One part has a standard bayonet mount, while the other has the hood petals. The front can rotate 90° with hard stops at the horizontal and vertical positions. A locking knob secures the lens hood in a set orientation. This thoughtful design allows Venus Optics to provide better shading as it can rotate to match the orientation of the shift mechanism.

Optics

A Shift lens is always demanding in terms of optics since the imaging circle is movable. Also, as a specialty lens, photographers that use such lenses tend to be more demanding. It is very fitting that this shift lens is labeled Zero-D since geometry is the primary reason for choosing a Perspective Control lens.

Images captured using the 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift confirm that this lens renders geometry without any visible distortion. The optical formula used here appears to be highly resistant to flare and shows no signs of chromatic aberrations. It captures crisp details while maintaining good contrast.

The uniformity of this lens is outstanding. There is no noticeable vignetting at any aperture with the lens centered or shifted to ±8mm. Beyond that, there is still no corner shading unless the aperture is wide open below F/5.6. That is the best performance from any reviewed Shift lens.

This lens can focus down to 25cm from the sensor plane. This, combined with its 17mm focal-length, give it a maximum magnification of 0.13X. While this means that it is not suitable for closeups, the short 17mm focal-length give it an expansive depth-of-field. This is quite useful when include foreground elements to complement the main subject.

Sharpness

The optics of this 17mm F/4 Shift lens are highly impressive. There is clearly a leap in image-quality from the older 15mm F/4.5 Shift. While the latter had excellent central sharpness, it got softer near the edges when shifted. The new lens though is virtually as sharp at the center than it is at the edges with the maximum shift applied. This is a level which rivals first-party lenses for a fraction of the price!

Sharpness is the most crucial aspect of lens performance since nothing can compensate for a loss of resolution. There are essentially two concentric image-circles with a shift lens. One always expects maximum sharpness in the center. The inner circle corresponds to full-frame coverage which must be sufficiently sharp for the lens to be useful. The outer imaging-circle determines how much shift movement can be dialed-in while maintaining reasonable sharpness. To measure this, a completely different setup than usual is required. Multiple frames were captured with the lens unshifted and then shifted to its maximum in one direction. This produces two overlapping images that can be compared by subject and image area as seen below.

The pair of images shown below are 100% crops captured using this lens at the selected aperture. The top crop shows the center of the frame with the lens centered. The lower crop shows the left edge of the image with the lens shifted right 11mm.

Select the captured aperture to see the crops taken at that stop. When judging image quality, understand that these are crops from a 61 MP image that is normally used to print images up to 45x30". On a computer display, these often appear much larger which magnifies image defects.

Sharpness at the center with the lens opened to its widest F/4 aperture is near perfect. Stepping down between F/4.5 and F/11 produces images with impeccable sharpness. At F/16, resolution drops due to diffraction when mounted on a 61 MP camera. Unshifted image edges can be characterized the same way. They show very slight softness wide open and excellent sharpness from F/4.5 to F/11.

Normally shifting a lens slides the optics towards software edges. However, with the Laowa 17mm F/4 Zero-D Shift, sharpness remains consistent throughout the ±11mm range. This makes the lens completely usable to capture images at all combinations of aperture and shift. It is only at F/4 that the slight drop of resolution lowers maximum print sizes by a few inches.