chrisd999
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I've been out with the Laowa 10mm f2.8 (AF version) a couple of times so far. Reviews by Bastian, Dustin and Albert are spot on.
These are some of my initial impressions of the lens in architectural use:
1. The lens hood is the biggest weak point. It does not screw on precisely a lot of the time, causing vignetting.
2. I've tested using low profile K&F/Kase magnetic ND filters, 82mm on 77/82mm step-up rings. Very slight corner vignette. By the time I straighten the image slightly in LR, the vignette is usually cropped out. If not, a small spot healing brush will take care of it. I'm looking forward to trying some LE work with fast moving clouds.
3. The lens is very sharp across the frame at f8 or f11. Sharp enough for my needs.
4. Low lateral CA is really nice. What little there is cleans up nicely in post.
5. Autofocus hunts & pulses in AF-C mode outside of image centre. AF-S seems fine. Not sure about video.
6. It seems a little better than my previous Laowa 9mm f5.6. The extra speed indoors is nice.
7. Even though optical/geometric distortion is excellent, there is considerable stretching towards the long edges of the image ((volumetric distortion), which is not a problem in many images, but can be bothersome in some. DXO VP3 seems to correct this fairly well, although it can introduce other problems.
8. Like any extreme UWA lens, the use cases where composing using a lens this wide to good effect is very limited. I've come home with hundreds of images with only a couple of keepers. Like "what was I thinking". But when it's the right compositional situation to use, nothing else will beat it.
9. Reasons to get this over the other extreme UWA lenses: Ability to take screw-on filters, f2.8-f4, AF, EXIF reporting even if using with MF (AF version), excellent image quality for this FL.
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), though the much brighter aperture is probably enough to give this version a reason for existing.
