VENUS Laowa 60mm Ultra Macro Lens - Thoughts & Availability?

THIRTYFIVEMILL

THIRTYFIVEMILL

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I'm considering ordering one of these later today for my new X-T1 setup. The results look good and the price impressive for what you get. Haven't seen much talk about this one lately though I might have missed it. For those who own or have tried the lens, how have you got on with it? It seems it can be quite dark focusing at f22 and around. Do you use live view instead at that point? How's the build quality? Also, I'm assuming the front has a standard 62mm filter thread, as opposed to something funky? Once you acquired it, did it become your goto lens for true macro or did you find yourself moving back to familiar grounds? There seems to be one supplier here in the UK who sells them at £299 or order direct from China at about £260. Did the of you would ordered direct get hammered on import duties or was it worthwhile ordering direct?

If anyone is thinking about moving on their sample, do let me know, too.
 
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I like everything about this lens except the rather exposed front mechanicals, exposed when the lens racks back over its extreme focusing range. I'd like to examine one in the hand, physically, to see how liable it looks to the ingress of bits of gritty debris.
 
chris malcolm said:
I like everything about this lens except the rather exposed front mechanicals, exposed when the lens racks back over its extreme focusing range. I'd like to examine one in the hand, physically, to see how liable it looks to the ingress of bits of gritty debris.
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Yeah, I think that's why they include the free filter. You'd definitely want to keep it in place, I would have thought.
 
Didn't think they'd be much input on this one, TBH, as I'm guessing very few here have the lens. I'm going to order one in the morning and that will be my X-T1 macro kit complete. Now just to figure out how to make decent images with it! Better go buy a torch to help me focus. :cool:
 
There are some people using them in the macro section, Paul Iddon is one I think
 
NSNO said:
There are some people using them in the macro section, Paul Iddon is one I think
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Yeah, I noticed a couple have posted in the past. Still very little info available on the net about them. The various reviews are all a much of a muchness followed by some threads on other forums where one guy owns one and 50 others give opinionated commentary based on nothing. I must have read for hours about the lens yesterday and literally 5% of what I read was actually of any use or even based on fact or experience. 'Tis the way of the internet, I'm afraid. I'll keep reading our own macro section and maybe post further questions in there. Thanks for the heads-up.
 
you can get reasonable led ring lights that help with focusing, but realisticaly you need a flash also to freeze motion.
ive got one from stealth gear that fits on cokin p rings, and everything is in the ring flash, no control box, im sure its a rebranded chinise thing but cant remmber the brand :(

you will get 2-3 stops of light from decent led rings i think
 
pingu666 said:
you can get reasonable led ring lights that help with focusing, but realisticaly you need a flash also to freeze motion.
ive got one from stealth gear that fits on cokin p rings, and everything is in the ring flash, no control box, im sure its a rebranded chinise thing but cant remmber the brand :(

you will get 2-3 stops of light from decent led rings i think
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Paul, I'm not keen on the harshness of ring lights but I'm currently putting together a rig with flash and diffuser etc. See this post:

https://www.talkphotography.co.uk/threads/ring-flash-update.604699/#post-7277542

However, I'm actually considering adding some kind of ring flash purely to help me focus at f11, using it as continuous light whilst focusing and then allowing the diffused flash above to do the image lighting. Does yours have a button on their to allow it to be switched on and off for continuos light without having it attached to the hot shoe?
 
@pingu666 Many thanks for that. I ended up ordering a Meike FC-110. My thinking behind that is I can attach the hot shoe controller on the horizontal flash bar that comes out from beneath the body. With the controls facing me and right by my left or right hand, I should be able to very quickly switch the light on, focus, adjust aperture, switch off and shoot, all without having to moving my hands round to the front of the camera except for focusing. The latter I'm thinking will be useful as a hand flapping around the front (especially mine) is likely to severely disturb anything that I'm trying to photograph with (or without) a pulse. Hopefully this will provide the light I need and mean I can keep as much of me behind the camera for as much of the time as is possible.
 
sounds good, ive thought of having the control box hang underneath from tripod hole too, would need a double ended tripod thread and female tripod thread to hotshoe converter, would be more stable than the on top of camera position :)
 
pingu666 said:
sounds good, ive thought of having the control box hang underneath from tripod hole too, would need a double ended tripod thread and female tripod thread to hotshoe converter, would be more stable than the on top of camera position :)
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Agreed. The only problem with that setup for me would be a lot of what I'll do will be handheld. I'm thinking 50/50. With the controller on the tripod I'd need to either drag the tripod or keep taking it on and off. If this setup works out how I'm thinking (when the 500 parts have all arrived :D) I should be able to mount the setup on a tripod, release and shoot handheld in seconds and not have to remove anything in order to drop the battery or card. We'll find out in the next few days whether my theory pans out in practise..
 
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pingu666 said:
sounds good, ive thought of having the control box hang underneath from tripod hole too, would need a double ended tripod thread and female tripod thread to hotshoe converter, would be more stable than the on top of camera position :)
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A cheaper option for the double ended tripod thread would be a short piece of 1/4" Whitworth studding - Whitworth is close enough to the correct UNC thread for this low stress application and usually easier to find than UNC! If all else fails and you can't find the correct thread, 6mm MIGHT be a working bodge. Failing that, drop me a PM and I'll see what I can dig out in the way of Whit or UNC studding - 1/2" or so should be enough.
 
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Interesting set up. I have a variety of shorter focal length macro lenses (old film lenses back to front) and the same LED ring flash. I find it very good as a shadowless front fill when trying to photograph details in dim places, such as the internals of desk top computers. For close macro work I find the LEDs aren't throwing enough light inwards enough, there's a dark cone in the middle of the beam. For flower portraits being encircled by a ring side light can be very good. The supplied diffuser doesn't diffuse enough to do that. I'm going to have to invent some kind of inward reflecting baffle, perhaps no more than a bit of short white card tube.

I note your test shot is of a knife blade. Did you have to use special lighting to reveal the grain of the folded steel? One of the projects I want to tackle is photographing the sharp edges of knives. All I have discovered so far is that it's going to be very difficult!
 
chris malcolm said:
Interesting set up. I have a variety of shorter focal length macro lenses (old film lenses back to front) and the same LED ring flash. I find it very good as a shadowless front fill when trying to photograph details in dim places, such as the internals of desk top computers. For close macro work I find the LEDs aren't throwing enough light inwards enough, there's a dark cone in the middle of the beam. For flower portraits being encircled by a ring side light can be very good. The supplied diffuser doesn't diffuse enough to do that. I'm going to have to invent some kind of inward reflecting baffle, perhaps no more than a bit of short white card tube.

I note your test shot is of a knife blade. Did you have to use special lighting to reveal the grain of the folded steel? One of the projects I want to tackle is photographing the sharp edges of knives. All I have discovered so far is that it's going to be very difficult!
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Chris, I'm only using the ring flash to illuminate the subjects when trying to focus the lens between f11 and f22, as the viewfinder becomes extremely dark. I'm very much in the learning stage at the moment as I've not used a rig like this before, nor more than dabbled with extreme macro photography.

I used a cheap studio kind of light over the knife blade. It's one of these ones. I have five of them in differing sizes and as long as they're diffused with some plain white paper in front of them they can cast a quite decent and even light. It's always a bit of a challenge getting the lighting right when the lens is virtually touch the subject, though.
 
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