New Laowa Slim Ultra-Wide Lens

2024.11.12

Venus Optics, makers of third-party lenses, just announced a new slim ultra-wide lens for Full-Frame Mirrorless Digital Cameras with support for four lens mounts.

The new Laowa 15mm F/5 Cookie FF lens captures a 110° angle-of-view with a dim F/5 maximum aperture to make this lens incredibly small. Only slightly thicker than a pancake lens, this 15mm F/5 is just 3.5cm deep and only as wide as the mount to join it. Most of the barrel is actually narrower, closer to 4.5cm. This diminutive size also comes at an light 158g.

Venus Optics is introducing some modernization with some versions of this lens. While the Canon RF and Leica L mounts are fully mechanical lenses, as the majority of lenses produced by Venus Optics, both the Nikon Z and the Sony E mount versions provide automatic aperture control. Focus is exclusively manual on all versions.

The optics of this lens cover a Full-Frame imaging circle and allow it to focus down to 12cm from the focal-plane. This gives it a 0.2X magnification. It uses a 5-blade iris which makes light bloom as 10-point stars. The front of the lens accepts 39mm filters. A ribbed focus-ring allows precise focus-control. A wide-angle lens is this one has a deep depth-of-field, which makes manual focusing easier.

All four mount versions are available from Venus Optics and should make it to retailers later this month.

• Lens