Laowa 8-15mm F/2.8 Fisheye for Landscape & Astro Photography

Albert Dros
Jun 6
11 min read

Wide, wider, widest! That’s what this lens is. Laowa is known for it’s innovative lenses, and when I saw the announcement of this lens I was immediately triggered. So I was happy when I received an email from Laowa asking if I wanted to try out this lens before the launch. I have the lens for a while now and used it on multiple outings: My wild tulip project in Kyrgyzstan, creative shoots in the Netherlands, astro sessions, and recently in Menorca below the dark skies to test its ultra wide angle astro capabilities. In this article I’ll tell you everything about it.

There is also a video on my YouTube channel where I basically take you through this article in video form. So if you prefer to watch the video:

First things first: yes, this is a fisheye, so not an ‘normal’ wide angle lens. I love fisheye lenses because of the creative possibilities they offer. Almost 9 years ago I made an article about things you can do with fisheye lenses. Still a very relevant article and I would definitely recommend checking it out. The article also mentions ‘defishing’, allowing us to correct all the distortion in fisheye images, more on that later.

Wide!

Now this lens is wide. I mean, really WIDE! On the 15mm end this lens has a 175 degree angle of view. And on 8mm, completely zoomed out (internal zoom), it has a 180 degree of view in every direction. Now what does this mean? It means at 8mm you get a circular view. Yet, it’s a bit strange for sure. You basically just see a big ball with black around it (check the sample shots later in this article). Something that you probably might not immediately use, unless you have something like this available and think of creative options you can do with it. So at 15mm it’s a 175 degree fisheye lens, and at 8mm some kind of ‘ball’ with 180 degrees from left to right and from op top to bottom. And you zoom to get there. So the transition from normal, to dark curvy edges, to full ball. Honestly, you probably really use nothing in between the 15 and the 8 because it looks weird.

First Impressions - Full Manual

Laowa’s lenses are often full manual lenses and this one is no exception. There is no electronic connection to the camera, so it also doesn’t show any info (like aperture) when you import your files. The focus is manual, with a focus throw of 70 degrees. I love that Laowa has a focus throw and that the focus dial is not infinite. Let’s look at some other specifications about this lens:

Spefifications:

Aperture : f/2.8 - f/22

Angle of view : 175-180 degrees

Lens Structure : 13 elements in 9 groups

Aperture Blades : 9

Min. Focus Distance : 16cm

Weight : 650g (without caps)

The lens feels very solid like we’re used to from Laowa. No plastic, all aluminium. It’s rather small for it’s specifications, and the lens has a rounded front element. There is no lens hood as the lens is too wide. Any kind of lens hood would show up in the frame.

All in all it’s a nicely designed lens. It holds very easy on my A7RV and honestly I really have no issue with the lens being manual as it’s extremely easy to control. The dials are butter smooth and the focus is very precise and easy to achieve.

In The Field

So when you first put this lens on your camera you ask yourself: What am I going to do with this? It’s so extremely wide and fisheye lenses are a challenge in general with the distorted elements. But there is definitely a market for it. And by using it a lot, you start to find out how it works well in photos and you can get some amazing results.

Let’s start with my recent photo project about wild tulips in Kyrgyzstan. For this project, I shot some photos with this lens to add something different to the photo series. Using this lens encourages you to try different angles. For these shots I went very low to the ground, and photographed the flowers from the ground up to the sunny sky. The tulips soaking up the sun light look like they are glowing. And it gives a nice effect with all the trees above it. These are definitely shots that an ‘ordinary’ lens couldn’t do this way. The shots are very immersive. It feels like you’re right there.

And then there’s the ‘full circle’ shot. As you can see, it’s a little bit wider on the sides, but it’s much wider on the top and bottom of the frame. The full circle is something that I did not see myself use too much, but after using it for a bunch of creative shots, I can honestly say that it’s addicting! I can also see myself using these in a book for example. The circular shape makes it look like you’re watching through someone’s eye. Maybe a bug's eye view. It really makes you think creative.

While we’re at it, lets take a quick look at the sunstar. It’s rather normal, you may judge for yourself. Here the sun was touching the flower in different matters, creating the sun star. The shots are unprocessed shots exposed for the highlights.

Now in these shots above you really see that it’s a fisheye here. In all of these shots the camera is pointed upwards, so you see the horizon is curved. As these are very creative shots, it really doesn’t matter much. Especially with all the curved trees in the frame, that are bent already anyway. And about that: using a fisheye on curved subject like trees is awesome. It enhances their curvature but with the right use, you almost can’t see a fisheye is being used here. Let me give you an example in the next shoot in the Netherlands.

One of my favourite shots with this lens is this photo of twisted trees. As you can see, they’re already curved and the fisheye only enhances the curvature. You really don’t see a fisheye lens was used here. Another thing is that the horizon is in the middle. If you use a fisheye lens and the horizon is in the middle, the horizon is almost straight! So that’s what’s happening in this vertical photo. Now to give you a reference image of how wide this shot actually is, look at the following photo:

This photo was taken a few years ago at the exact same spot with my Sony 12-24 f/2.8 GM at 14mm. This will give you an idea how wide the Laowa is in comparison.

Some more shots from the same area:

Here you again almost do not see the fisheye distortion. Horizon placed in the middle while trees are curved anyway.

Now these kinds of shots are interesting. A foreground element will look curved in the foreground. Similar to what you’ll see when you stitch a panorama. In a way, this super wide fisheye lens basically creates 180 degree panorama’s in 1 shot, including the curved effect. But here is where it gets interesting. You can actually remove the curved lines with a tool in Photoshop. This tool is called Fisheye-Hemi by Imadio. I’ve been using this for more than 10 years already and unfortunately, it looks like it was discontinued as even the website is not working anymore. Fortunately I still have it, but I am currently looking for a similar replacement tool. If you know any, please reach out.

Here’s the photo corrected with the tool. It just takes 1 click and corrects all the curvature. Note that I did some other edits here including the removal of the little house on the left.

Now when we’re talking about basically shooting ‘panoramas in 1 shot’, lets continue with showing some cityscapes as you can really see that curved effect here.

I love photographing cityscapes with creative lenses like this. There are so many lines and elements you can play with to get interesting effects.

Here you can obviously see the curvature of the buildings. But the horizon in the middle is pretty straight. Now let’s correct it:

Result: A perfectly straight super wide angle, almost 180 degree view of the canals in Amsterdam.

Here’s another shot of the same area:

This is a well known photography spot in Amsterdam that I photographed lots of times. But never like this! With the Laowa Fisheye I could get the entire railing and the name of the bridge as a foreground in the shot, even with the bike included! I love this image and did not correct the curvature here. I love it as it is. I also shot this one at 8mm ‘ball’.

That’s how that looks like. Nice result, but the sky is a bit empty. This shot would have worked if there were some great clouds that evening, but that wasn’t the case. Still, just to show you the difference between angle. Also notice that on the 8mm shot, you can even see the tripod legs at the bottom.

Sharpness

Now that you’ve seen the cityscape photos you probably wonder about the sharpness of this lens. Simply put: it’s great. On my A7RV (61 megapixels) it’s easy to spot if a lens is sharp on the edges. I have not much to say about the Laowa here. It’s simply sharp on the edges at basically every aperture. It loses a bit of sharpness at f/2.8, but nothing too significant. Corner sharpness is great at every aperture, f/2.8 included.

Just to give you some examples:

I did a sharpness test with a 'boring' scene of houses to compare sharpness at different apertures: f/2.8 , f/4, f/5.6, f/8 and f/11 on the following scene:

Crops:

If you look closely, you will notice that the edge on f/2.8 is definitely a bit softer. From f/5.6 the edges are already tack sharp. But even with f/2.8 it's not that noticable. It's still very acceptable. And the center sharpness (not shown, but trust me) at f/2.8 is super sharp.

Another thing to point out is that the sharpness at 8mm is absoltely great across the entire frame, from f/2.8 already.

Simply but, the sharpness of this lens is excellent.

Astrophotography

This lens will definitely interest astrophotographers. The capability to capture such a big part of the milky way in a single shot is of course incredible with it’s relatively fast aperture of f/2.8. I tested this lens quite a lot in good dark environments for photographing the stars. Here are some of the shots I took:

To start, here’s a stacked shot of a windmill in the north of the Netherlands. That night fog was rolling in from the left side of the photo. This shot was right before I was engulfed in the fog and couldn’t see anything anymore. I think the fog also blocked a lot of the light pollution, making this shot better than I thought it could be. This photo was already processed and the horizon was warped straight as I was pointing the camera slightly up. Here’s the original RAW photo, slightly brightened:

When we look at the crops of the original image above, we see the centre has absolutely great sharpness. The blades of the windmill are super sharp, and so are the stars, without any aberrations. We do see some aberrations in the corner crop, but the sharpness is still excellent wide open.

When we look at the vignetting at f/2.8, it’s there for sure. It’s not that strong over the whole image, but the far edges do darken down. This vignetting is easy to fix with some gradients in the corners in Lightroom. I am however sure Laowa will also release a lens profile to correct it later on.

My final version of this shot was actually a crop that I liked more. It’s a luxury to have 61 megapixels available to be able to crop this and still have a high resolution photo.

Let’s look at some photos from Menorca where the skies are definitely much darker.

Taken at Menorca when the milky way was just rising above the horizon. Also notice the pretty strong green airglow that was there that night. The interesting thing about shots like this is that they look like a panorama, but they’re just a single shot. You can frame such a big part of the milky way. Here is one of the original (unedited) RAW files:

We definitely see some aberrations in the close up crop of the top right part of the photo. Bright stars become a bit more like triangles. This does not happen in the centre part of the images. Apart from aberrations, the sharpness is great overall and in my own opinion, for such a lens, the aberrations are not crazy. Also, you only see them when you zoom in a lot.

I also took a shot at 8mm which is absolutely crazy for the night sky. In this photo, you can also see other people standing on the left side of the frame. I was guiding for the yearly Photopills camp and the group was shooting from that side, while I took a quick shot from this angle.

What’s interesting to see here is that if we check the sharpness at any place of the photo, it’s super sharp and with no aberrations.

Here are 2 more photos from the same week:

All the stacked shots were stacked with Starry Landscape Stacker for Mac. It’s also good to know that the distortion of the fisheye seems to be no problem when stacking shots in SLS.

Overall, the astro capabilities of this lens are great.

Closing Words

Hope that was a good overview of what this lens is capable of. Laowa told me this lens is going to cost about 700 USD (probably around 800 euro in Europe) which is really very decent for its quality.

A short summery:

Full Manual fisheye lens with a 175 degree (normal at 15mm) or 180 (both up and down at 8mm) angle of view.
High quality aluminium build.
Rounded front element.
650 gram weight. Quite the small size.
Very sharp at all apertures, even on the edges.
Good sharpness for astrophotography, has some small aberrations in the corners.
9 Aperture blades. Sunstar is decent.

Would I recommend this lens? Definitely! It’s an absolutely great lens for what it does. I would really not bother with the fact that it’s manual, as it’s very easy to focus with. This lens is great for super wide (astro) landscapes and also pushes you to try creative angles. It’s also worth nothing that you can correct fisheye distortion with tools like Fisheye-Hemi (by Imadio, now discontinued unfortunately). This basically gives you a super wide angle shot with still almost all the resolution.

It can imagine it’s also a great aurora lens, and it performs well for astro photographers. I’m keeping this lens and will use it for specific shoots. I can’t wait to shoot a big aurora show with it. I think that’s going to be epic!

If you like my editing style, check out my new Lightroom Course. Or if you want to learn how I stack exposures and use Starry Landscape Stacker, check out my (little bit older) Full Editing Course on Landscape Photography.

Hope you liked the article. Thanks for reading!

Albert