The Laowa 10mm f/4 Cookie lens is one of the new products from Venus Optics. With an impressive 109.3-degree field of view, this is the widest tilting APS-C lens on the market, so how does it work?
We recently had the opportunity to visit St Kilda, an archipelago 40 miles north of Harris, Scotland. Due to weather conditions, trips get canceled quite often, but on this day everything was fine. I chose to use two lenses for Fujifilm XT-4the Fujifilm XF 18-135mm f / 3.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR and the new one Laowa Biscuit 10mm f/4. Might not be a wise choice, as I don’t know when we’ll get this chance again, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to try out the limited-time lens. Do I regret it?
Construction and Handling
The first thing I have to say is that this lens is small, and I mean small. Mounted to the Fuji, it projects out 25mm and 30mm with the ground cover attached. It’s the most compact lens I’ve ever taken, and it feels a bit odd, but in a good way. Since this is a completely manual lens, everything you need is on the lens: aperture, depth of field and of course the focus ring, just a few millimeters from the aperture ring. The filter thread is 37mm in diameter, so you can see that size is the big draw of this lens; My car key and house key combo takes up more space in my pocket than this lens.
The all-metal frame makes the lens seem sturdy, and even though it’s not weatherproof, it still feels as though it can handle varying conditions quite well. Attaching the lens to the camera is a normally easy process, removing it can be a bit uncomfortable due to its size, as you have to stick to the mount. I never used the focus ring, which is only 20mm away, although I think I could, since the lens is so solid. 
Performance
Center sharpness is excellent, with minimal loss from center to edges above aperture. I find it best between f/8 and f/11, then when you hit f/14, the diffraction starts to show up a bit. There is distortion and softening at the edges, but this is to be expected for a 10mm lens, magnifying of course the closer you are to your subject, but this can be used creatively.
Bronica’s image was intentionally shot at f/4, the minimum focusing distance, and into the sun to determine how the lens handled this, and as you can see, it handled it well. As the sun rises a little more, there is quite a bit of lens flare recorded, and again, this can happen.
Distortion is minimal for a lens of this focal distance, and the image below, aside from the monochrome profile, is uncorrected, which makes me think this would be a good choice for both photography. Architecture interior and exterior as long as you are a reasonable distance from your nearest object in the scene.
Blur image
This is my primary understanding of lenses, as I want to control vignetting in the image and decide if I add a subtle one or not add one at all. The blur effect is quite pronounced through apertures, though it dissipates to an acceptable level around f/9. Correcting this in writing is needed, so perhaps Laowa will release a profile for this. Lightroom. You can see by the images below how much vignetting occurs.
The image above shows the level of vignetting in good lighting, with the first image being a raw file and the only second image being automatically corrected in Lightroom. The images below show the amount of vignette in flat light, again with only minimal tweaks in Lightroom.
Fixing the vignetting wasn’t a difficult task: a simple inverted radial filter in Lightroom and a few slider tweaks and it was fixed, but like I said, I wanted control over the work. blurred image.
What I like
- I like the compact nature of the lens, but perhaps just a slightly larger barrel would be better. It’s a double-edged sword, as the size of the lens is quite captivating.
- Sharpness is very good for a lens of this size and price.
- Wide field of view.
- Deformation control.
What I don’t like
- Create heavy textures at wider apertures.
- The size of the lens fits and is so compact that your hand is obstructed, so you must place your hand below the camera to ensure that no fingers are caught in the image due to the field of view.
- There is no EXIF data, as there is no electronic connection point.
Inference
I enjoyed the use of the lens, the field of view, and the solid texture. For me, it’s an interesting and creative lens, sharp with minimal distortion and heavy vignetting, and because of this, I think you’ll have to choose your shots carefully if you don’t use it. creatively blur the image. The size of the lens is compact and fun to work with, but can be a bit of a hindrance if you have big hands like me. I mostly shoot landscapes, so the camera will be mounted on a tripod with my hand in focus.
Since shooting other subjects and spending more time using the lens, I’m still conflicted with my thoughts because I have to think creatively in regards to textures. Do I regret taking it to St Kilda? No, and I feel that the limited time with the location forces me to focus more on every aspect of what the lens can do rather than blurring the image. It can grow for me as I use it, especially being very portable and easy to carry. You can buy yours here.
