Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro Review: Not Done by an Influencer

The Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro is quite a fascinating choice. You see, this isn’t the company’s first 15mm lens. Laowa also has a 15mm f4.5 Zero Distortion Tilt-shift, a 15mm f2, and a 15mm f4 macro — the latter is something we stated to be, “…true thing of beauty.” Perhaps best of all, this lens is only going to cost $399. But why another 15mm lens? It’s an odd focal length choice to make so many options for. Lots of photographers instead would expect a 50mm or 35mm lens variant instead. But this? Well, at least the image quality is pretty nice.

The Big Picture: Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro Review Conclusions

I have to be really frank here: this is the most lukewarm I’ve been about a lens in a long time. It doesn’t excite me very much and it’s pretty far from really winning any awards. To be honest, I don’t understand why Laowa made it. Why add yet another 15mm lens let alone a 15mm macro lens to your lineup? Granted, there’s a lot of good things about it.

But in my mind, this is just another 15mm lens. And what’s the point in having another?

Pros

• Metal build
• Nice image quality
• I love the super saturated colors
• Nice controls
• Ergonomically pleasing control rings

Cons

• Lacking weather resistance
• Focusing with Nikon isn’t the best

Gear Used

We tested the Laowa 15mm f4.5 with a Nikon Zf. The camera is our own and the lens is a loaner unit provided to us by Laowa.

Who Should Buy It

The Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro is a fascinating lens, but I’m honestly not sure that it’s worth getting over so many others on the market.

Hardware

The lack of weather resistance here is a real problem. At one point, I tried stopping down the lens only to see a really big hair on the Nikon Zf sensor. So after trying to figure out the problem, I needed to take the lens off and indirectly blow air from my mouth onto the sensor. It reminded me of when I was younger and a parent would try to blow air into my eye to get something out. If the lens had resistance and sealing, this problem wouldn’t have happened.

Focusing

The Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro has manual focus only but with Focusing confirmation built in with Nikon. But in this case, it’s really not all that good. Sometimes Nikon will say the lens is in focus when it really isn’t. So often, I’d end up magnifying the image to ensure the focus worked just fine. There was a point where people would say that you didn’t need to focus the lens, but this isn’t the case at all. With digital, there’s so much depth to the image that you have to focus it.

Ease of Use

Well, if you complain about manual focus, then you’re not going to like this lens. It requires you to slow down to get the shot. Plus there’s the manual aperture around the lens. Truly, the Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro is a lens for someone who wants to create an image and have the fullest manual control and experience possible. Lots of photographers don’t really know what that means until they do it.

Image Quality

While the Laowa 15mm f4.5 Macro can deliver bokeh, I don’t think it’s worth it with this lens. Instead, it’s much better for cityscapes and landscapes in so many different ways. Stop this lens down, focus it out, and then use a slower aperture to get some of the better experiences with it.

Extra Image Samples

The Phoblographer has been huge on transparency with our audience since day one. Nothing from this review is sponsored. Further, many folks will post reviews and show lots of editing in the photos. The problem then becomes that anyone and everyone can do the same thing. They’re not showing what the lens can do. So, we have a section in our Extra Image Samples area to show edited and unedited photos. From this, you can decide for yourself.

Unedited

Edited

Tech Specs

Provided to us by Laowa

Declaration of Journalistic Intent

The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:

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