Introduction

The Laowa 15mm f/4.5 0.5x macro is one of the very few lenses that combine an ultra-wide angle of view with close focusing capabilities, offering up to 1:2 (half life-size) magnification.

Laowa previously introduced a 1:1 macro version back in 2019, but it came with a few quirks. It featured a shift mechanism that added bulk, the full 1:1 magnification required you to get extremely close, almost touching the subject, and its sharpness at infinity focus left much to be desired.

With this newer lens, Laowa has aimed to address all those issues in a more compact, practical design. Have they succeeded? Let’s find out in this review, as I compare it to its predecessor in each section.

I tested this lens on a 46 Mp Nikon Z7ii (Sample images were taken with a Nikon Zf)
You can see this review as a YouTube video here!
Sample images in high resolution here.

Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review and many more can be found in higher resolution here.

Specifications

Disclosure

Loawa kindly provided this lens for test and review purposes, but this is a completely independent review.

Handling & Build Quality

As with other Laowa lenses, the build quality is excellent, predominantly featuring metal construction and tight assembly. This lens is manual focus only, with a large metallic focusing ring as its sole control point. The focus ring has a throw of about 90° and turns with medium resistance, though it is nicely damped. The lens extends by about 1 cm when focusing at minimum focusing distance (MFD), but the front element does not rotate.

The focus distance in meters and feet, along with magnification ratios of 1:5, 1:4, 1:3, and 1:2, are engraved and filled with ink on the focus ring. A depth of field scale is also engraved and painted on the lens barrel. Additionally, the lens name and other markings around the front lens element are engraved and ink-filled.

The lens has no control buttons or aperture ring. However, electronic contacts on the mounting plate allow the aperture to be adjusted via the camera in one-third stop increments, and lens data is transmitted to the camera. A mini USB port on the lens barrel also enables future firmware updates

A sealing gasket is located beneath the metallic mounting plate, offering additional protection against dust and moisture.

In addition to the front and rear caps, a small metallic petal-shaped lens hood is included in the box.

The older f/4 1x macro lens includes a tilt mechanism, which is missing on this lens — so one point to the older lens. This newer lens, on the other hand, is both smaller and lighter, earning it one point for improved portability. It also features electronic contacts for EXIF data transmission — another point. Additionally, it includes environmental sealing, which the older lens lacks — giving the newer lens yet another point.

Optical Features

Sharpness (Infinity)

For the infinity sharpness test, we look at three areas of the image, centre, mid-frame, and corner, see highlighted areas in the image below!

Infinity sharpness is excellent in the center even wide open at f/4.5, and improves slightly when stopped down. The midframe is good at f/4.5 and f/5.6, but it softens at f/8 and f/11 before improving again at f/16. This is a behavior we’ve seen in only a few lenses. Corner sharpness ranges from usable to good at its best and remains fairly consistent across the aperture range.

In this category, the lens shows a clear improvement over the earlier 15mm f/4 1x model, particularly in the midframe and corners.

Sharpness (Close-up)

Close-up sharpness is excellent in the centre of the image from f/4.5 (wide open). It gets better by stopping down with its peak sharpness at f/8. The sharpness gets a dip at f16 due to diffraction, and the effect becomes more visible at f/22 and most at f/32. Nonetheless, f/16 is still very good, and f/22 is good, with f/32 still usable.

The farther you move from the centre, the less sharp the image becomes. For good sharpness at the rule-of-thirds intersections, you’ll need to stop down to f/8 or f/11. For acceptable sharpness at the one-fourth intersections, stopping down to at least f/16 is necessary, but f/22 is recommended.

Even the sharpness near the minimum focus distance seems to be better than on the older model, so that’s another point for the new lens.

It’s worth noting that the older lens offers true macro capability with 1:1 magnification—double that of this lens—earning it a point. However, achieving 1:1 magnification requires positioning the lens as close as 1 cm from the subject, which often causes the lens to shade the subject and makes focusing and lighting difficult. In practice, you may end up touching the subject before achieving focus. So, while the older lens has the advantage on paper, its 1x macro feature proves impractical in real use.

Lens Distortion

While this lens isn’t part of Laowa’s Zero-Distortion series, distortion is impressively well-controlled — virtually nonexistent, which is quite rare. However, there’s a catch. Like Nikon, Laowa appears to be using a trick: the camera applies built-in distortion correction that can’t be turned off. It also embeds a lens profile in the RAW file, so when you open it in Lightroom, the software automatically applies the correction — and doesn’t let you disable it. The result is a distortion-free image, but not entirely due to optical design alone.

The older 15/4 1x lens showed a wavy, difficult to correct distortion, which this lens seems to be free from. Another improvement for this new lens.

Vignetting

The vignetting from this lens is among the best for ultra-wide-angle (UWA) lenses. It only exhibits 2.3 EV of vignetting wide open (at f/4.5), and this improves significantly when stopped down, with light fall-off becoming negligible beyond f/8.

• F/4.5: 2.3 EV
• F/5.6: 1.3 EV
• F/8.0: 1.0 EV
• F/11.0: 0.7 EV

Clear improvement compared to the older 15/4 1x model, so another point for the 15/4.5 0.5x.

Focus Shift & Aberrations

As a very wide and relatively slow lens, it shows no signs of longitudinal chromatic aberration—so there’s nothing to worry about on that front.

Lateral chromatic aberration, on the other hand, is visible in the corners—as demonstrated in the following 100% crops—both at infinity focus and at close distances. However, the aberration is not excessive and falls within an average range.

Close Focus

In this area, performance is on par with the older model—so it’s a draw.

Flare Resistance

Laowa, like many other Chinese lens brands, has had its fair share of flare issues—and this lens is no exception. However, it seems they’ve made some improvements here. While ghosting flares can still occur, they are generally less distracting, and the lens shows better-than-average resistance to veiling flare.

Flare resistance is much better than on the older 15mm f/4 1x lens — another point for the newer model.

Coma

Although a 15mm lens is an obvious candidate for astrophotography, a maximum aperture of f/4.5 is not ideal. While you can get away with longer shutter speeds for the occasional astro shots, the lens really needs to perform well wide open—especially in terms of coma. Unfortunately, while coma performance isn’t terrible, it’s not particularly good either, and it doesn’t improve significantly until you stop down to around f/16.

Sunstars

When I first saw the specifications for this lens, I was a bit surprised to find that it only has 5 aperture blades. I wasn’t concerned about bokeh—after all, this is a 15mm lens—but I was curious about how it would handle sunstars. Laowa typically uses even-numbered blade designs, which often produce attractive sunstars, and I had never seen impressive results from a 5-blade aperture before. But I was wrong—this lens actually produces very nice sunstars, even starting at f/5.6. By f/8, they look quite good and improves by further stopping down. Well done.

Focus Breathing

While this lens can focus as close as a few centimetres, I tested focus breathing at a distance of approximately one meter to near infinity. Even at this setting, the focus breathing is quite noticeable.

Bokeh

An ultra-wide-angle lens with a maximum aperture of f/4.5 isn’t something you buy for its bokeh or subject separation, and we usually don’t spend much time discussing it in reviews of such lenses. However, in this case, the extremely short minimum focusing distance makes a significant difference.

As you can see, the background blur is quite pleasant and unobtrusive — at least to my eye.

Even at larger distances than MFD the background blur is not disturbing

In this category, we don’t award points to either lens, as both produce pleasing bokeh—at least to my eye. After all, the beauty of bokeh is in the eye of the beholder. Take a look at the images here and other samples to see how it appeals to you.

Conclusion

This is one of the very few lenses that offers macro (or near-macro) capabilities in an ultra-wide-angle design. While it performs strongly at close distances, it also delivers good results at normal distances, making it usable for landscape and architectural photography as well. I’d classify it primarily as a wide-angle macro lens that also can handle landscapes and architecture — rather than the other way around.

For pure landscape or architecture photography, there are certainly better options — but they, of course, can’t focus nearly as close as this one.

So, is it better than the older 15mm f/4 1x? Optically, absolutely. It outperforms the older lens in almost every respect — both in image quality and practical usability — and is cheaper too. That said, the older model does offer true 1:1 macro capability (although it’s somewhat impractical due to its 1 cm working distance), includes a tilt mechanism, and is 1/3 of a stop faster.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you get this lens, check the firmware version. If it’s 002, update it via USB to at least version 004 to prevent battery drain when the camera is left on.

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Alternatives

There is only one other alternative:

Laowa 15mm 4.0 Macro
The Laowa 15mm f/4 Macro was originally designed for DSLR cameras. The mirrorless versions feature an integrated adapter tube that allows the lens to be used on mirrorless systems, it has 1:1 magnification and is 1/3 of a stop faster, in addition to its shift mechanism. I’ve compared it with the reviewed lens to provide a comprehensive understanding.
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More Sample Images

Most of the sample images in this review and many more can be found in higher resolution here.

Further Reading

• What camera gear and accessories do I use most frequently?
• Review: Laowa 15mm 4.0 Macro
• Review: Laowa FFII 58mm f2.8 CA-Dreamer Macro 2X APO
• Review: TTArtisan 100mm f/2.8 Macro 2X

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Martin

Martin M.H. lives outside Stockholm, Sweden. He is a M.Sc. in Computer Technology but he has been a passionate photographer for over 45 years. He started his photographic adventures when he was thirteen with an Agfamatic pocket camera, which he soon replaced with a Canon rangefinder camera that his mom gave him in his teenages. After that he has been using Canon SLR, Nikon SLR manual focus and Autofocus, Sony mirrorless crop sensor, Nikon DSLR and Nikon Mirrorless. He has photographed any genre he could throughout the years and you can see all kind of images in his portfolio. During the later years though it has been mostly landscape, nature, travel and some street/documentary photography.

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