Venus Optics 'Laowa' 14mm f/4 Review

The Venus Optics 'Laowa' 14mm f/4 lens is a tiny, light, and solidly built ultra wide angle lens designed for landscape photographers. It provides excellent sharpness and good image quality, especially in the middle of the frame. Its close-up image quality is also sharp, and it is exciting to use a polarizing filter with it. However, it suffers from strong distortion and vignetting, and its bokeh quality is not the best due to its extremely wide angle and dark aperture.

This lens is designed as a small, light, and solidly built ultra wide angle lens catering to landscape photographers who need to travel light. It provides excellent sharpness and good image quality, especially in the middle of the frame, even at its maximum aperture of f/4. It offers the exciting opportunity to use a polarizing filter with it, although it does suffer from strong distortion and vignetting.

The lens is best suited for landscape photography and can complement a standard zoom lens. While the build quality is good, the lens hood is a bit fiddly to get on and off. Overall, the lens is built to a high standard with a solid, metallic build quality.

The Venus Optics 'Laowa' 14mm f/4 lens is designed as a small, light, and solidly built ultra wide angle lens catering to landscape photographers who need to travel light. The lens provides excellent sharpness and good image quality, especially in the middle of the frame, even at its maximum aperture of f/4. It offers good close-up image quality and the exciting opportunity to use a polarizing filter with it. However, it does suffer from strong distortion and vignetting, which will need to be corrected in editing, and its bokeh quality is not the best due to its extremely wide angle and dark aperture. The lens is best suited for landscape photography and can complement a standard zoom lens. The lens is small and light with a solid, metallic build quality, weighing about 250 grams. While the build quality is good, the lens hood is a bit fiddly to get on and off. The aperture ring is spaced out somewhat unevenly, but the lens overall is built to a high standard. In terms of image quality, the lens exhibits excellent sharpness and captures a lot of detail, although color fringing is visible. It also suffers from strong distortion and vignetting, but its close-up image quality is sharp, and it can handle bright lights fairly well, with occasional flaring and glare in the corners. Its bokeh quality is not the best, due to its extremely wide angle and dark aperture, but it performs better than the 11mm lens from the same manufacturer. Overall, the Venus Optics 'Laowa' 14mm f/4 lens is a good choice for landscape photographers who need a small, light, and solidly built ultra wide angle lens. It provides excellent sharpness and good image quality, especially in the middle of the frame, and offers the exciting opportunity to use a polarizing filter with it. However, it does have some issues with distortion and vignetting, as well as bokeh quality due to its wide angle and dark aperture.

In terms of image quality, the lens exhibits excellent sharpness and captures a lot of detail, although color fringing is visible. It also suffers from strong distortion and vignetting, but its close-up image quality is sharp, and it can handle bright lights fairly well, with occasional flaring and glare in the corners.