Laowa Sword Cine FF Macro Lenses

[Zack Birlew]

I have to say, Laowa is really making it hard to look at other lenses with releases like this! I had planned to include Laowa's selection of macro lenses in our lens lineup just as they were as stills lenses but now they have a whole set of PL/EF-mount cine versions!

https://www.newsshooter.com/2024/09/05/laowa-sword-cine-ff-macro-series/

With so many lenses out there that specialize in one thing or another and all of their unique looks, it's becoming really convenient to have modern solutions like this to rely on that have so far been all around great neutral lens options to fill in lens sets with macro features as a bonus.

 

[Michael Lindsay]

I had a quick play with these a while back and was impressed...

The 15mm looks like a reworking of their 15mm Macro Shift lens but that is no bad thing! We had TLS stick a PL mount on the back of ours and love it!

I loved that they are only 80mm fronts inc the 180mm

 

[Zack Birlew]

I had a quick play with these a while back and was impressed...

The 15mm looks like a reworking of their 15mm Macro Shift lens but that is no bad thing! We had TLS stick a PL mount on the back of ours and love it!

I loved that they are only 80mm fronts inc the 180mm

The 15mm Macro was a favorite to use on our feature film! So sharp and useful that it proved to be a worthy choice over the Rokinon Cine DS 14mm 2.8 we could have gone with (which is still very nice and we got one later). I was so sad that our 15mm macro took a drop and cracked during a cleaning session but thankfully we were done filming and in post production. This cine version is definitely on our list going forward!

 

[Chris McKechnie]

They won't even cover monstro or raptor though only covering image circles up to 43.2mm

 

[James Sielaff]

it's also admirable how close they got the weights on all of them.

 

[Phil Holland]

They won't even cover monstro or raptor though only covering image circles up to 43.2mm

I'd hold off until somebody actually tests coverage. Sigma Cine for instance we also 43.27mm image circle, but they all cover 46.31mm with no issues and good performance to the edge of frame. That 43.2mm is boiler plate spec for 135mm/FF coverage.

 

[Michael Lindsay]

i tried them on a raptor (not every lens) so I’d definitely say hold off … cause they looked fine!