Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D lens review

The Laowa 9mm’s size, handling and optical performance are simply awesome

5 Star Rating
A black Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D lens

Digital Camera World Verdict

Laowa might not be one of the best-known brands out there, but the 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D is a serious, premium-quality lens, both optically and in terms of build quality. Don’t be put off by the manual controls: you’ll adapt surprisingly quickly, and the payback is edge-to-edge sharpness and a distortion-free rendering you’ll rarely see from a lens this wide.

Pros

  • +

    Incredibly sharp

  • +

    Almost no barrel distortion

  • +

    Extremely portable

Cons

  • -

    Only manual controls

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If you’ve bought an APS-C mirrorless camera, the chances are it’s because you want a compact, portable camera kit – so the last thing you need is a big, fat zoom lens to cover off all the focal lengths you need. 

One of the things that makes the Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D especially appealing for Sony E, Canon EOS M or Fujifilm X-mount camera owners is its size. You can get ultra-wide zooms for these cameras, but they can’t match the Laowa’s size, or indeed its f/2.8 maximum aperture. You can even fit 49mm filters to the front.

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Rod Lawton
Contributor

Rod is an independent photography journalist and editor, and a long-standing Digital Camera World contributor, having previously worked as DCW's Group Reviews editor. Before that he has been technique editor on N-Photo, Head of Testing for the photography division and Camera Channel editor on TechRadar, as well as contributing to many other publications. He has been writing about photography technique, photo editing and digital cameras since they first appeared, and before that began his career writing about film photography. He has used and reviewed practically every interchangeable lens camera launched in the past 20 years, from entry-level DSLRs to medium format cameras, together with lenses, tripods, gimbals, light meters, camera bags and more. Rod has his own camera gear blog at fotovolo.com but also writes about photo-editing applications and techniques at lifeafterphotoshop.com