The Laowa 15mm f/4 Wide Angle Macro is an extraordinary lens. It's a 15mm lens, it's a 1:1 macro lens and it has a shift facility for getting rid of (some) converging verticals. It's manual focus, full-frame (sort of!!) and comes in a variety of mounts. I chose Nikon so I could use it on all my cameras. For my M10 and E-M1X this requires adapters. Now if you have never seen a 15mm 1:1 macro lens before (and I certainly hadn't) be prepared to be amazed. Click on the link above to see some remarkable images. Below are some that I took with my Leica M10.
As you can see the results are radically different to the standard macro lens. What isn't obvious is how close the main subject is to the lens. You can in fact focus on a subject that is almost touching the front element. The 15mm lens also gives a lot of context to the image. I'm eagerly anticipating the arrival of spring and flowers and plants bursting into colourful life to use this lens.
THE SHIFT FUNCTION.
Now this works in some situations but with reservations. You are certainly not getting a fully professional tilt and shift lens here, but it does help with getting buildings straight. It does require some Photoshop work however, but for me the results are worth it.
The problem is when using the lens on a full frame camera you get some serious vignetting.
There are three other issues. When I use it on my Nikon D850 the exposures are all over the place. If I tilt up I have to add 1.5 stops and when I tilt down I have to subtract 1.5 stops. Something to do with the way DSLR's work I guess. I also don't seem to be able to get infinity focus on my E-M1X, though I am using it via a Viltrox speed booster. Finally it's not that sharp at the edges.
However bearing all of that in mind I really like using the lens. It does open up all sorts of possibilities and is an excellent creative tool. The images it creates are unique (as far as I am aware) The macro facility is obviously the 'killer' feature and the shift function can produce great images with a little work. If you fancy pushing the limits of your photography then, like me, you may value the investment. It's certainly different and while it's maybe somewhat over ambitious it produces eye catching images. And that's never a bad thing.
