Laowa’s growing range of wide-angle lenses is getting bigger with the introduction of the C-Dreamer 12-24mm f/5.6 for mirrorless cameras. With a fixed f/5.6 aperture throughout the entire zoom range, an all-metal construction, 15 elements in 11 groups, is this lens a dream to use?
At the time of writing, Laowa has 17 wide-angle and fisheye lenses including the fisheye 4mm f/2.8 and 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D, to name a few. The latest addition is 12-24mm f/5.6 C-Dreamer. They are managing to fill the market with affordable wide lenses that the top manufacturers are probably lacking. So does a lower price increase the cost for photographers in terms of image quality? We took the 12-24mm f/5.6 through its paces to find out.
Construction and Handling
This fully handcrafted lens, with its metal construction, feels solid and solid. There’s a very small built-in lens hood that takes the metal lens cap, and there’s also a 77mm filter ring included, as the lens itself doesn’t have a filter thread. The filter ring is also metal; It’s best to leave it in that mode when going out to shoot.
The lens weighs just 479 g and is quite compact at 84 mm, so it won’t break your back or take up a lot of space in your camera bag. I find this a nice lens size to use as I shoot. The aperture, focus ring, and zoom ring are at a good distance from each other, and the notch is prominent enough that when using the viewfinder or rear monitor, I don’t have to feel my way around the lens to make major adjustments. corpse. The aperture ring clicks into place with full-stop increments, and the zoom and focus rings are both smooth. Note that, I wouldn’t use the lens for movie shooting unless you’re locking the aperture plus the ability to focus significantly.
Performance
It’s a fun lens to use when you’re moving away from anything over 20mm due to the softer image. While 20mm to 24mm is fine, and if you’re looking for sharper images at these focal lengths, I’d use a different lens unless you’re looking for a softer look for your images. me. Softness isn’t entirely detrimental, but after you’ve taken pictures at other focal lengths, you’ll notice a noticeable difference. Perhaps shooting between 20-24mm will give you dreamy soft images, as the name suggests.
The images below were taken at 12mm and f/5.6, with the focus on the bottom third. The top image shows the entire field of view with the focus descending, which is a good thing. The second image is a 100% crop so you can see from there the sharpness at this aperture.
The 12mm wide lens on the Nikon Z 7II is fun to use, and I took some time to shoot stills from a tripod at both focal lengths so I could see how the lens performed against subjects. different statues. The image below, although not compositionally pleasing, was captured to show the distortion effect on both the grass and the leaves in one image. The effect is quite nice from a creative perspective. Focus stacking will need to be used if you are to use this distortion creatively.
The 15 cm min focal length works as stated (pictured above) and produces an acceptable clear sharp image.
Visibly defocusing on every image at all focal lengths and more at wider focal lengths. While it’s not as serious as the Laowa 10mm f/4, it’s still there and is something you need to consider when taking photos. It’s easy and quick to fix in post, but I like to control texture printing, post or otherwise.
Shooting at 12mm to about 20mm and at apertures from f/8 to f/11, the lens does its best and produces some good, clear and sharp images, even in some cases at 24mm later when applying some texture and sharpness.
Sharpness is generally decent across the image, fading towards the edges as distortion occurs, and this can be quite severe depending on the relative distance from your subject, the subject itself, and the selection. Select focal length.
With a pentaprism, you can get 10 sunstars at any aperture and are easily achievable.
The Laowa 12-24mm is no exception to lens flare and lens flare. Chromatic aberration in certain cases can be quite severe as you know and can be rectified in Lightroom, but for the bottom right corner of the image, also showing the lens outline (circled), no amount of fine-tuning can reduce chromatic aberration. I could have simply bracketed this out, but I’d love to see how the lens performs in a single image for evaluation purposes.
What I like
- Field of view at a wider focal length
- Lens size and weight.
- Metal lens cap
- Sunstars galore
What I don’t like
- No electronic connection, so no EXIF data
- Chromatic aberration, although not so prominent, is visible in higher contrast photos
- Softness throughout apertures when shooting at anything over 20mm
- Control distortion with certain objects
- The lens hood is small, so the lens cap and filter ring are recommended
Inference
Due to its wider focal length, this is a lens worth considering for architecture or landscapes depending on the type of photo you’re taking. Whether it’s being creative in the landscape or capturing the entire building, it has its positives. Wider focal lengths are fun to use on Nikon Z 7II, with my next closest lens Nikon NIKKOR Z 14-30mm f/4 LensThis additional 2mm offers creative photography but comes with warnings like distortion, vignetting, and fringing, so this must be taken into account when planning your photography.
From my own point of view, I can’t use it for woodland scenes due to distortion and fringing, but can see its advantage when it comes to wide open landscapes and sunsets where depending on the type of light, it can create some more subdued style images. Used creatively, distortion can yield some interesting photos with different subjects. That’s not a comment on lens sharpness; it is simply observing the potential of the lens under certain circumstances.
You can buy your own copy here.
