Laowa 15mm F2, The best astro lens for the Sony E mount

Earlier this year I upgraded from my Canon 80D to a full frame mirrorless system. After months of research I had decided that the Sony A7 mark 3 was the camera that I wanted to go with. But I was unsure of what lenses I wanted to invest in. The obvious choice for the E-mount system is the Sony Gmaster 16-35 F2.8, this lens is massively popular between landscape and astro shooters alike. Unfortunately this lens is roughly $3500 AUD, while my budget was about $5000 AUD. The A7 mark 3 was going to cost me $2200 AUD leaving me $2800 for a wide angle landscape lens and another lens to shoot other things with. So long story short the Gmaster was not the choice for me. Sony does offer a cheaper 16-35 F4 lens but because I shoot a fair bit of astro I really wanted to buy something a bit faster than an F4, so I started looking at other options. Sigma has a 14-24 F2.8 and a 14 F1.8 prime lens that I would had been able to squeeze into my budget, but they both had inbuilt lens hoods. This means that my expensive Nisi filter set would be un usable ruling these options out for me. I was thinking about maybe buying the Sony 16-35 F4 and trying to find a fast, cheap prime for astro. The more I looked into it the more I realised that it was unrealistic and going to blow my budget. Then one day I randomly stumbled across the Laowa 15mm F2 lens. I had never heard of Laowa so I decided to check out there range of lenses. I wasn’t really expecting to find anything but then I noticed the Laowa 15mm had a removable lens hood. This detail alone makes the lens in my opinion a very capable landscape/astro lens not just an astro centric lens. The removable lens hood and 67mm filter thread means I can use my polarising filter along with all my grad filters.

The Laowa is a lowlight beast, mixed with the Sony A7 mark 3 and you have one of the best astro set ups money can buy.

There are two major details you need to be ok with if you are considering the Laowa 15mm F2 lens

Prime lens

The first thing you need to realise about this lens is that it is a 15mm prime lens. Meaning you are unable to zoom if you are using this lens you are shooting at 15mm, in my opinion 15mm is a great focal length for landscape/astro photography. For me this is perfectly fine when shooting wide landscapes I generally like to shoot as wide as the lens will allow me. But if you are someone who likes to shoot compositions that are a little tighter this lens probably is not for you.

Manual focus lens

The second thing you really need to consider before investing in this lens is that the Laowa 15mm F2 is a manual focus lens. For me when I shoot landscape, especially astro I usually manually focus anyway. So for me this lens has all the features I want and left out some of the unnecessary features I don’t need. But if you are planning to use this for other types of photography where manual focus is going to be a problem this lens will be far from perfect.

First impressions

My first impressions with the Laowa 15mm lens where not particularly great. First thing I noticed when unpacking the lens was that the lens cap had fallen of in the packaging. So the lens cap was loosely moving around inside the packaging, not only was the lens cap not protecting the front element it was potentially scratching it instead. This might sound a little stupid but it doesn’t matter how good a lens is, if its scratched when you get it its not going to matter. This is not to an isolated incident either, I have opened my camera bag to find both front and rear lens caps had fallen of in my bag a few times know. The lens caps on this lens are not great. Most of the time this is the lens on my camera and is nestled tightly in my bag where it would be very difficult for the lens cap to fall of. Know that I have gotten that out of the way everything else was a nice surprise. The lens is surprisingly small and compact while feeling very solid and well made. The focus and aperture rings are smooth and the lens just looks great.

Build Quality

The Laowa 15mm F2 has a sturdy full metal body with a focus ring and aperture ring. The aperture ring has a clicking toggle to change between a smooth or clicking aperture ring for video which is a nice touch. I am not a fan of there lens caps and I have replaced the rear cap with an authentic Sony E-mount cap. The lens hood is also metal and fits well, and both the focus and aperture rings turn smoothly and feel very nice in the hand. overall this lens is very nicely built. Unfortunately the lens does not have weather sealing a bit of a down fall if you plan on shooting storms or moody weather. The focus indicators on the barrel are very accurate and the infinite mark is dead on the infinite focus point. Which is great for finding focus while shooting g astro at night.

Performance

The Laowa 15mm performs great in just about any condition I have tried it in. The lens is really sharp especially stopped down to F8-F11, probably the sharpest wide angle I have used. Noticeably sharper than the Canon17-40 F4 lens. The Laowa 15mm F2 does soften particularly towards the corners the closer you get to F2 but that is to be expected. Quality starts to soften towards F22 also but I really don’t see the need to stop down that far basically ever. There is also quiet a bit of vignette at F2, by the time you stop down to F4 there is no obvious vignette. Shooting landscapes all of these problems are pretty much non existent unless you are shooting landscapes at F2 for some reason. For astro I generally shoot at F2.8, just for a bit of added sharpness and less vignette. Being able to shoot at F2-F2.8 is invaluable for shooting astro or other lowlight scenes, I am able to get such better images than if I had an F4. I find shooting a 4 minute exposure at F4 for the foreground with 10 stacked sky exposures works really well and is more than sharp enough. I would rather a slightly softer astro image than a grainy/noisy one. Another great thing about this lens is the zero D, they say that the Laowa 15mm has zero distortion. And for a 15mm this lens has impressively low distortion. The Loawa’s closest competitor is the Sigma 14mm F1.8 which has over 4 times the barrel distortion, and also a far worse vignetting problem. Yet another impressive feature of the Laowa 15 mm is the close focusing distance, being able to focus all the way to 15cm away means you can get creative with close objects in the foreground. Although being this close to things you will probably need to focus stack your images.

My laowa/sony Astro/landscape power house.

Conclusion

Is the Laowa 15mm F2 the budget E-mount lens for you?

I think the laowa 15mm F2 is a great budget wide lens for the Sony E-mount system. The removable lens hood and 67mm filter thread make this a far more than just an astro centric lens. The lens is very sharp at F8-F11 which is perfect for landscapes, the low distortion also makes stitching panoramas very easy. If you want to be shooting at 15mm and do not mind manually focusing I think this is a great option. In my opinion this is the best ultra wide for the Sony E-mount under $1500. If your after a budget friendly ultra wide for Sony E-mount I would highly recommend the Laowa 15mm F2 lens.

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Laowa 15mm F2 zero D lens review