GHarris
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 p.2 #9 · Review: Laowa 11mm f/4.5 FF-RL | |
NuclearRoy wrote:
Don't mind at all. Good for people to see what can be done in post. (By someone who knows what they are doing)
Yea. It was just a point and shoot, no tripod, so not surprised it wasn't level.
I got the 9mm for my travel kit. I'm almost 60 and tired of carrying my heavy Nikon stuff. The A7iii and Tamron trinity is so much smaller and lighter, but the 17mm is missing a lot so I was looking for something wider and the 9mm was an OB plus I got the "wow, you buy a lot of stuff from us" additional discount 
I'm sure(?) the 11mm would be plenty wide, and the extra 3/4 of a stop wouldn't hurt, as would being able to use cheap(er) filters, even if they might be a pain to use with the fixed hood. The review, referenced in the OP, didn't seem to say the 11mm was really any better optically.
14mm is the widest I've ever used and there have been times I wished I could have gone wider. I was surprised by this statement in the review for the 11mm, in the 'alternative' section, "The 9mm is even wider which can make finding good compositions a little harder." I seem to almost always be limited by how far back I can move, not how close I can get.
Any tips from ultra-wide users appreciated here....Show more →
I like how your 9mm shot makes that ordinary household corridor look like some deep hallway.
I am dithering over 9, 10 or 11mm. I think 9 would be too wide for me, in that, in any situation where it was the only thing I could use, the corners would just look too stretched for my liking. I actually like your hallway shot, though - I'm just not sure I always would like that much stretching. 10 or 11mm are probably more what I'd be happiest with.
The 10mm I'm thinking about is the Samyang f/3.5 XP. It's much bigger and heavier, but it's also cheaper than either of the new Laowas as it can be bought used. And despite being cheaper I think it's sharper, a tad more optically "just so", and its distortion is neater / more cleanly corrected than the (not all that bad) distortion of the 11mm (it's interesting that Bastian found, in his review, that the Laowa lens correction profile was not quite right for the lens. Hope they'll improve it/re-release the lens profile). On the Samyang, vignetting can be brought down to not-extreme levels, by stopping down to the sorts of reasonable apertures you'd expect, thanks to its DSLR-based, long-flange-distance-accommodating design. Whereas with these Laowas, the vignetting is inescapable. I know, I know - "correct it in post"... sure. But when you push a vignette really hard, the RAW file in that area gets a bit brittle. Contrast and colours become a bit weak and less flexible/able to be made punchy. If often looks a bit washed out. Like shooting at much too high an ISO, because that's almost the same thing as when you're ramming 3 stops of exposure boost into your RAW corrections.
Despite being made for DSLRs, I don't mind adapting the 10mm Samyang in principle - my Sigma MC-11 has never let me down. But in practice, rather than in principle, the portability / carrying-comfort of these tiny Laowas is hard to argue with. Wondering whether there are any other marginal differences I need to note, that might tip the balance of the decision. All three lenses have colour casts in the corners of the frame - is the Samyang 10's colour cast more or less intense than the Laowa 11's?
I guess I'll keep dithering a little while longer! But it's a big help that all this information and expertise is available.
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