Some test shots with Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro

[lothman]

Hello,

since Guppy /Kurt Wirz showed some test shot of the Zhongyi 1-5x lens here I want to share some test shots of the Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X.

I used a wafer as target, illuminated with LED panels. Camera was a Sony A7Riv with and without Pixelshift. I did not stack and only took a sharp crop from the centre.


Laowa at 2,5x and f2,8:

Overview:

100% crop single shot.

100% crop 16xpixel shift

100% crop single shot up sampled to same pixel number like the pixel shift

Laowa at 5x and f2,8:

Overview:

100% crop single shot.

100% crop 16xpixel shift

100% crop single shot up sampled to same pixel number like the pixel shift

So at 2,5x the lens still outresolves the Sony A7Riv sensor and brings more details using pixelshift, but at 5x there is not more much gain by pixel shift. I am 100% happy with purchase of this lens, and can recommend it interested in this magnification range.

best regards
Lothar

[Olympusman]

A little mushy for my taste and some very high CA. In my opinion, not a very good optic.

Mike

[Guppy]

Hi Lothar

At 2.5x the lens resolves higher than the camera can take,
therefore pixelshift, or even 10 stacked images of the same object, gives a higher resolution.

At 5x, the lens no longer resolves higher than the camera can,
therefore the gain with pixelshift is hardly or no longer visible.

Kurt

[lothman]

A little mushy for my taste and some very high CA. In my opinion, not a very good optic.

Mike

I just repeated the shots, single shot no pixel shift. May be this time I got the lightning a little bit better, the wavers are unforgiving ;-) :

Laowa at 5x magnification
f2,8

f4

f5.6

and finally a Mitutoyo 5x Raynox 150 as tube lens

[lothman]

and an example from nature (this butterfly wing was provided from Kurt Wirz long ago). Depending of the the incident angle the blue colour increases.


Laowa @5x Magnification, f2.8, stepsize 10µm

Again please consider that the 100% crops above are from a 62 Megapixel shot. Sampled down to 24 MP a 100% crop looks like as follows:

and with some processing before down sampling it could look as clean ans sharp as this:

I still think this is a very good lens worth buying.