DavidBM
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 Super Cheap Laowa 15mm f4 Macro clone.. | |
Some of you may have seen that there's an Opteka 15mm f4 macro available, down to USD 149 from Amazon or eBay (usually from circuit city)
Laowa published a warning about this as a "shoddy copy" with no serial no etc. They say that they never sell their lenses under any brand other than their own.
Well it's so cheap, no more than a good set of extension tubes, which in any case will be too long for a really wide lens, that I decided to pick one up.
Well I don't believe Laowa's claim that it's a copy. I believe the simplified housing is a copy (it's basically the same but without the shift mechanism) and that housing is put together a bit agriculturally.
But it's exactly the same optical formula, complete with aspheric, UHD elements etc etc. And the optical performance reflects this: almost no LoCa at close distances, surprisingly sharp etc.
Now people who clone designs do not clone such complicated ones (yet, anyway). And why would you go to the huge investment required to clone a complicated lens which is so niche, and then sell for 149?
So I have no idea what happened. If I had to guess, I'd say the factory that makes the Laowas sold off extra production of the optical core, or that Laowa had excess stock they sold off in bulk.
In any case it's fine (the focussing scale is completely wrong, as sometimes happens on Samyang lenses, but a bit of disassembly can fix that if you really care)
And even the relatively inexpensive Laowa is a bit much for something as niche as an ultra wide macro, even for me who does a bit of macro. But 149? Just buy it. And it doubles as a pretty OK 15mm lens at infinity, if you don't have one.
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