How Many Wide Angle Lenses Do You ALREADY Have? Throughout the Pandemic I have indulged my lust for wide angles by purchasing inexpensive Chinese-made, manual focusing lenses with brand names like TTartisan, 7artisans, Meike, and Pergear. I actually went upscale once and purchased a Samyang lens, a 12mm F 2.0, due to its larger aperture. Metaphorically, I now own a closet full of four-dollar shoes, adjusted for inflation.
Now a new lens, made by Laowa, has just caught my eye. Unlike the first four brands mentioned in the previous paragraph, lenses from this manufacturer can be found in some retail outlets. The reason is simple: Price. Laowa lenses tend to be better made and possess better optical design, and are therefore more expensive. Profits from sales could be enough to justify carrying them in stock. But a smart retailer would be wise to stay with lenses with focal lengths that are most likely to sell, steering clear of those who are too long, or too short.
This 10mm F 4.0 manually focused lens was purchased for several reasons:
- Size: The lens is compact: 2.4" in diameter, 1.0" tall.
- Filter Thread: The lens can accept a 37mm filter.
- Angle of Acceptance: 109 degree field of view.
Raison D'être: For many years I relied on a Fuji 10-24 F 4.0 as my go-to lens. Unfortunately, I tended to leave it at the 10mm setting, and in doing so, created many images that exhibited perspective distortion, or "stretch face", associated with extreme wide angle lenses and short shooting distances. I have since made the 16-55 F 2.8 lens my first choice, thus eliminating the ability to shoot at 10mm. With its shortest focal length of 16mm, it forces me to work at longer distances, reducing the possibility for conspicuous perspective distortion. At some point, I replaced the 10-24 with a 50-200mm zoom, thinking it a more versatile choice.
Judgement Day: Things went smoothly until Halloween 2022, when I found myself without an ultrawide lens. I needed it to capture several visual elements. and a 10mm would have been fine, if I had one. As luck would have it , I had a Pergear Fisheye, with which, through brute force, I managed to make a barely satisfactory image. "Brute force" is not hyperbole, since the lens had only three zones of focus (near, far, and farther) and a fixed aperture of F 8.0. The shot required adjustments to the ISO and subsequently the flash output settings to compensate for the fixed aperture.
In my mind, this would never have happened if I had a compact, emergency super-wide rectilinear (renders straight lines straight) lens stowed away in my camera bag as a backup. Ownership of this lens will forever eliminate the specter of not having a lens wide enough to use whenever unusual background-foreground perspectives must be addressed. Sounds suspiciously like I am rationalizing a pending acquisition.
Update: February 1, 2023: The lens arrived on time, and while I haven't spent a lot of time working with it. I did take it on an outing in Mill Valley, Ken Rockwell's evaluation of the lens can be seen here.
The perspective distortion of this super-wide angle lens is apparent. However, the shot was made using estimating the subject-to-camera distance. At F 5.6 there was plenty of focusing depth to work with. Perhaps this will become my ultimate point-and-shoot.
I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of detail rendered by the lens. Even the moon appears reasonably sharp when the image is enlarged.
So far I've been satisfied with the performance, especially for a lens as wide as this. I must remind myself that it goes with me on location as an emergency lens, one that can be called upon when an extremely wide field of view is required.
I plan on taking it to the final Lunar New Year celebration in Redwood City on the weekend of February 4. I plan to relying on the distance scale if I find actual focusing too difficult.
