Laowa 2.5-5x Ultra-Macro Lens Arrived

[Macro_Cosmos]

I am pleased to see this at my desk after waking up from bed at 1 pm!

Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x Ultra-macro Box by Macro Cosmos (DH)

It's nicely packed! Mine has been opened by Laowa's support team already to ensure its quality, it would have came in an air-tight vacuum bag.
Contents are as displayed below: The lens, Lens Collar, and some documents. I did not ask for the LED ring light add-on, since I will not need it. It is going to be used for image stacking in the studio! It would work in the field obviously, but I cannot get up early when all the critters are not on constant drugs. That is when I usually sleep! 
Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x Ultra-Macro Sitting in its Box by Macro Cosmos (DH)

Box art!
Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x Ultra-macro Box Art by Macro Cosmos (DH)

The lens itself is really rather small. It is solid, built well, fully metal as usual.
Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x Ultra-macro In Hands by Macro Cosmos (DH)

Size comparison! The odd lens in the middle is a Nikon Rayfact 95mm f/4. No details on Nikon's website about this lens. It was made for a company manufacturing line scanners, covers medium format sensors. It is not optimised at a specific magnification.
Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x Ultra-macro Size Comparison by Macro Cosmos (DH)
The 95mm itself produces really sharp results, but without a bellows or tubes, the magnification is low. Mine is pushed into a M42 helicoid for easy mounting onto my Nikon camera. Without that, it is smaller. But if I want it to reach 2.5x magnification, I would need a lot of extension.

I will be using this lens and writing a detailed review when my stackshot package comes. Probably end of this month. Before that, I am going fiddle with some manual studio stacking. Going to get used to it before actually commenting on it.
There is already a detailed review which I cannot read here: http://makrofokus.se/blogg/2018/2/7/forsta-intryck-laowa-25mm-f28.html
The Laowa 25mm is compared to Canon's MPE 1x-5x lens. And... the Laowa is levels superior to the Canon in terms of both resolution and sharpness, according to the test photos. The two kind of equalise at f/8 where diffraction busts in and ruins everything. 

The lens will be on sale after Chinese New Year. I do not know the exact date and I am not allowed to announce the exact price. I will put it this way: If you are expecting to pay for a Canon MPE, and the Laowa shows up as an alternative with even better image quality, you will be pleasantly surprised at how much you need for it. The excess can get you a nice manual photomacrography setup. 

[JKoerner007]

Ya know, I am several months' late finalizing my "Ultimate Field Macro Lens" article ... and then this comes along 

Interested in your views

I will be immediately ordering one of these on my own, to juxtapose it against my already-biased findings.

Best of luck,

[Macro_Cosmos]

Ya know, I am several months' late finalizing my "Ultimate Field Macro Lens" article ... and then this comes along 

Interested in your views

I will be immediately ordering one of these on my own, to juxtapose it against my already-biased findings.

Best of luck,

I run all the Laowa flickr groups so I might be a bit biased. Here are my initial impressions:
1. The lens is very resolving, wide open, 400 lines/mm not a problem at all.
2. Wide open, moderate CA. Since I will be focus stacking, I don't care that much about CA.
3. Light weight, smaller than the MPE. Other tests show the Laowa surpassing the MPE in terms of sharpness at every single aperture and magnification setting. Great news!

Can't wait to take actual photos, normal people don't photograph quartz glass.

[JKoerner007]

Thanks.

Looks like an exciting lens, one that will liberate alot of Canon users from their inferior Canon bodies.
(One of the main reasons I didn't switch to Nikon sooner was the MP-E 65mm.)

As important as range (2.5 - 5x), is the compactness of the Laowa 2.5-5x Ultra-Macro by comparison (much better for the field), and if it really is sharper, well then it's a Grand Slam in my book.

I will definitely hit the "buy" button the moment I become aware of its availability.

Have you measured the working distance @ 3x and 4x?

I see many posting the WD @ 2.5 and 5x, but I would like to know the intermediary working distances as well.

Thanks again,

[JCDowdy]

The odd lens in the middle is a Nikon Rayfact 95mm f/4. No details on Nikon's website about this lens. It was made for a company manufacturing line scanners, covers medium format sensors. It is not optimised at a specific magnification.

Here is, perhaps, some information on the Nikon Rayfact 95mm f/4: http://www.tochigi-nikon.co.jp/en/products/lens/micro.htm

[Dr Klaus Schmitt]

Here is, perhaps, some information on the Nikon Rayfact 95mm f/4: http://www.tochigi-nikon.co.jp/en/products/lens/micro.htm

Thanks John, had one offered, but it is not designed for high resolving sensors unfortunately. Large image circle is nice though.

[Macro_Cosmos]

Greetings again! Here are some updates after fiddling with the lens. I'd also like to answer some questions:

Firstly, the working distance:
2.5x 45
3.0x 44
3.5x 43
4.0x 41
5.0x 41
Take these numbers with a grain of salt, it was a rough measurement.

There's a boring quartz glass resolution chart photo in this thread: http://www.photomacrography.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=227481#227481
(No one cares about stuff like that to be honest, but long story short: Quite a lot of LoCA wide open, resolution is perfect)

Here's some stacks:
Grape Chalcedony by Macro Cosmos (DH)

Heulandite on Apophyllite Crystals in Half Vug by Macro Cosmos (DH)

Purple-Blueish Fluorite by Macro Cosmos (DH)

  Enjoy! I'm going to run more tests soon.

[Bjørn Rørslett]

Axial colour is an aberration of which I'd prefer to see as little as possible ... perhaps manageable in a stacked world setting, though.

I noticed you are using IKEA lamps (Jansjö) -- can these be ruled out as exacerbating the CA issue?

[Macro_Cosmos]

Axial colour is an aberration of which I'd prefer to see as little as possible ... perhaps manageable in a stacked world setting, though.

I noticed you are using IKEA lamps (Jansjö) -- can these be ruled out as exacerbating the CA issue?

That's a very interesting proposition actually, worth a comparison. When better equipment come, I will rerun those quartzglassography snob tests illustrated in the PM thread, using both Janjsö and speedlights. I'm very interested in seeing the results. 

[Bjørn Rørslett]

I asked because fluorescent light sources definitively can make colour correction of lenses go haywire.