Should I or should I not?
For a long time I have wondered whether I was really missing a super ultra-wide lens …. In a weak moment I ordered a Laowa 9mm 5.6 lens, the world’s widest rectilinear lens at the moment with 135° angle of view.
The first serious test of the purely manual lens then took place in Frankfurt Main, shortly after sunrise. Once you get used to the handling, the Lens is just great and allows perspectives that are otherwise simply not possible.
Technical things…
As with all wide-angle lenses, you have to be careful. If you don’t really hold the camera horizontally, the lines fall as usual – especially with such an extreme 135° angle of view. You can correct this in post-processing, but it costs a lot of image material and it doesn’t work with every motif. Sometimes I struggled with out of focus. This is no wonder, as it is my first purely manual lens. Ultimately, however, this is purely a matter of practice.
There is a lens profile for Lightroom, provides by Laowa / Venuslens. The vignetting is clearly increased too much in the profile. If you reduce it to 20, it works reasonably well. Otherwise, one should also know that the lens has no electronic contacts. So there is no EXIF information in the files.
Extreme lens, but I’m thrilled.
In the end, I am absolutely thrilled about how much dynamism you can bring into very simple pictures through the strong 9mm perspective, especially upright. I love it!
