Venus Launches Full-Frame Fisheye Zoom Lens

2025.06.06

Venus Optics released this week a unique Full-Frame Fisheye zoom with a bright aperture. It is the very first Full-Frame Fisheye Zoom lens designed for Mirrorless cameras. Until now, both Canon and Nikon has lenses with the same focal range for their DSLR mounts, except without the bright maximum aperture.

The newly released lens is the Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye. With its Full-Frame coverage, this new lens captures a 180° field-of-view when completely zoomed out, resulting in a circular image. Zooming in until its 15mm maximum focal-length produces a rectangular image that spans a 175° angle-of-view. Throughout its entire focal-range, this lens maintains a maximum F/2.8 aperture.

This extremely wide lens requires a bulbous front optical element, making it impossible to support a lens hood or filters. Its aperture stops down to F/22 and is made of 9-blades to render smooth out-of-focus areas. Its minimum focus distance is 16cm which gives it a 0.23X maximum magnification. Like other Venus Optics lenses, this one is completely mechanical. Aperture and focus must be set directly on the lens. To help precisely control the lens, Venus Optics gave each ring a wide throw, ranging between 42° and 75°.

Venus Optics managed to keep the size and weight of this lens within a very reasonable limit. Generally wide lenses with bright apertures are quite heavy but the Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye weighs 650g only. This new lens is being made for 4 mirrorless mounts: Sony E, Nikon Z, Leica L and Canon RF. This lens can be ordered for $700 USD already. Follow the link for each mount for detailed specifications and offers:

• Venus Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye - Sony E-Mount
• Venus Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye - Nikon Z-Mount
• Venus Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye - Leica L-Mount
• Venus Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 FF Zoom Fisheye - Canon RF-Mount

• Lens