New Laowa Argus 35mm f/0.95 FF reviewed by Dustin Abbott and Phillip Reeve

As you know since last week you can preorder the world’s fastest 35mm f/0,95 lens at Venuslens.net (worldwide shipment). First 100 purchases in the webstore will get a free focus gear belt.

Phillip Reeve tested the new lens and concluded:

So far f/0.95 fullframe lenses have been special purpose lenses for shallow depth of field photography with plenty of compromises, too many compromises for myself to consider using them on an everyday basis.

For the Laowa 35mm 0.95 this is not the case and this is what really makes it stand out among the other f/0.95 lenses. While it is being surpassed in several categories (e.g. sharpness, flare resistance, coma and CA correction) by slower and often more expensive lenses, the package as a whole ended up being a fully usable lens that can be used for a wide variety of applications and not just shallow depth of field portraiture.
It therefore behaves similar to the Voigtlander f/1.2 lenses while being more than half a stop faster – quite the achievement.

I am sounding like a broken record by now, but it is really time for Laowa to add electronic contacts to their E-mount lenses though, especially considering not only Samyang but also Yongnuo and Viltrox manage to do that.

This 35mm 0.95 is Laowa’s first attempt at designing a fast portrait lens with an “ordinary” focal length where there is a lot of competition in the market already. Before using the lens I was afraid making it f/0.95 might have been too ambitious, but this is not the case at all. If I was to pick a fast manual 35mm lens for an E-mount camera today this would clearly be it.

And Dustin Abbott also posted his full review:

 

Laowa Argus 33mm F0.95 review by Marc Alhadeff: “the best 33-35mm F0.95 for Sony APSC camera “

Lens at BHphoto and Venuslens.net (worldwide shipment).

Here is Marc Alhadeffs take on this lens:

Build quality is top notch , weight (580g) & price (500$) are quite high for an APSC lens

The sharpness is already good wide open with a good contrast. Corners are weaker than the centre as expected but their behavior is but much better than on the 7 Artisans 35mm F0.95 or the Mitakon 35mm F0.95 Mark II, which make the Laowa more versatile than its alternatives

The Laowa 33mm F0.95 will be excellent for portraits and objects details, with a beautiful rendering for skin tones, good sharpness wide open and creamy background blur, nice bokeh balls; at F2.8 the lens is tack sharp.

It will be also ideal for street photography when you want to isolate your subject and have the rest of the street in the blur (very nice 3D effect). For photography in dark situation it’s F0.95 will help not to increase too much ISO, but pay attention to direct light sources has the resistance to flare at f0.95 is weak with big halo effect.

Alternatives

  • The 7 Artisans 35mm F0.95 : 250$ is a budget lens providing similar sharpness in the centre, same creamy background blur and excellent color rendition at half the price and a much lesser weight. But this lens exhibit much more color fringing at F0.95 and has much weaker corners
  • The Mitakon 35mm F0.95 Mark II (600$) is not a bad lens : it has similar sharpness in the centre and nice background blur, but its show its age with weak corners, some color shift and much less good color rendition

Globally the Laowa is the best 33-35mm F0.95 for Sony APSC camera

Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 FE test at Opticallimits: “a true value king”

Opticallimits reviewed the Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 FE lens and concluded:

The Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 FE has been substantially improved compared to the older DSLR variant. The resolution is still not impressive at f/1.4 but fit-for-purpose if you intend to use it for portraits. You just may not want ultra-sharp results in this case. However, if needed the Samyang can give you that when stopping down a bit. The quality is already very high at f/2 and downright great at medium aperture settings. Image distortions are a non-issue even in RAW files. Typical for such lenses, the vignetting is a bit on the high side at f/1.4 but most users will probably rely on auto-correction which reduces the light falloff to an acceptable level. From f/2 there isn’t anything to worry about here. Lateral CAs are low. The same can’t be said about axial CAs (LoCAs) which can be very pronounced in certain scenes. Axial CAs are very difficult to remove in post-processing. The quality of the bokeh is pretty good overall. The general quality of the out-of-focus blur is pretty silky, especially in the critical background. Out-of-focus highlights are very nicely rendered in the image center but the circular shape is falling apart rather rapidly beyond.
In terms of build quality, it is the best Samyang lens that we tested to date – the metal body feels very sturdy and Samyang implemented some degree of weather sealing. An internal focusing mechanism is also maintaining a constant lenght throughout the focus range. The AF is not the fastest around though. It has to shift quite some weight due to the heavy glass elements but there’s room for improvement here. The rather noisy aperture mechanism isn’t ideal either.
The few weaknesses have to be balanced with the price tag of the lens and the Samyang AF 85mm f/1.4 FE is hard to beat in this respect – a true value king.