Venus Optics has officially announced a super-fast Laowa f/0/95 Argus range, designed for a variety of mounts including Micro Four Thirds, Sony E and Fujifilm X mount. This brand new range seems to be designed to give users access to super-fast glass – and presumably at the affordable prices that Laowa is known for (although no pricing information is available as of yet).
These brand new pieces of glass include the Laowa 25mm f/0.95 for Micro Four Thirds mount, the Laowa 33mm f/0.95 for Fujifilm X mount and the Laowa 35mm f/0/9.5 and Laowa 45mm f/0.95 for Sony E mount.
• Read more: Best Fujifilm lenses (opens in new tab)
At present, we've only seen images for three of the four upcoming lenses (via Mirrorless Rumors (opens in new tab). However, the upcoming Laowa 33mm f/0.95 Argus lens is potentially the most interesting lens in the new collection, as Fujifilm had originally planned to produce its own super-fast 33mm for its X-mount. However, this was then scrapped in favor of the Fujifilm XF50mm f/1.0 WR lens (opens in new tab).
It had previously been rumored that Venus Optics was due to release a single 35mm f/0.95 for full-frame cameras. However, the launch of the Argus range shows that this is seemingly no longer the case. Instead, Venus Optics has produced a different piece of glass for each mount, which means that the results will be tailored to the different sensor formats. For example, a 45mm lens would produce drastically different results on a Micro Four Thirds camera in comparison to an APS-C camera.
Over the last few years, popularity for Laowa lenses has been increasing. In fact, last year Venus Optics beat out Olympus and Zeiss when when it came to the market share of lens rentals (opens in new tab). With the addition of these super fast aperture lenses, the demand for Laowa lenses is likely to increase, especially due to the consistent quality these lenses tend to offer.
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