Venus Optics Launches 14-Blade Aperture Shift Lens

2022.04.11

This morning Venus Optics released an upgraded ultra-wide Shift lens for Full-Frame and Medium-Format digital cameras with a much finer 14-blade aperture to render smooth bokeh and sunstars with lower contrast.

The new Laowa 15mm F/4.5R Zero-D Shift is virtually indistinguishable from its 5-blade aperture counterparts except for a red cosmetic ring near the front of the lens, instead of the traditional blue highlight. Optically, this is the same lens. It retains an ultra-wide 110° field-of-view with a 20cm minimum focus-distance. A rotating system allows it to shift along any axis for ±11mm on Full-Frame cameras or ±8mm on Medium-Format, currently for the GFX mount only.

This completely manual lens is ideally suited for architecture and we have a review of the original Laowa 15mm F/4.5 Zero-D Shift here This is one of the rare Shift lenses sold at an affordable price and, even more importantly, it is among the very few such lenses available for numerous mounts. The lens weighs just under 600g officially, although we suspect weight could fluctuate a little by mount. The importantly for architectural photography is that this is a Zero-D lens which produces virtually no distortion which also helps when assembling panoramas from shifted images.

The Laowa 15mm F/4.5R Zero-D Shift lens is one of the few Shift lenses for Sony Mirrorless Digital Cameras and Pentax DSLRs since those companies currently do not produce such specialty lenses. Nikon Z and Leica L mounts also lack first-party Shift lenses. Venus Optics launched today this lens in 8 mounts: Canon EF, Canon RF, Nikon F, Nikon Z, Sony E, Pentax K, Leica L and Fujifilm G, again showing their dedication to making widely supported lenses. Regardless of the mount, Venus Optics is pricing the lens at $1200 USD.

• Lens