The Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift Is the Fastest Tilt-Shift Lens Ever
Laowa has officially announced the 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift lens. Built for architectural and commercial photography, the full-frame lens also works on Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD medium-format cameras thanks to its large image circle.
With its f/2 aperture, the new Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift is an especially fast tilt-shift lens. Canon’s 24mm TS-E Tilt-Shift Lens for EF-mount cameras, for example, is an f/3.5 lens. Nikon’s F-mount PC-E 24mm lens is also f/3.5. Fujifilm’s GF 30mm f/5.6 T/S, which is effectively equivalent to about 24mm, is clearly much slower than the new Laowa lens.
Laowa says that thanks to the 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift’s fast f/2 aperture, the fastest aperture of any tilt-shift lens ever made for any format, it is significantly better-suited to low-light and night-sky photography than any other tilt-shift lens before it.
Despite its fast aperture, it’s also a relatively compact and lightweight lens for its class. The lens is 119 millimeters (4.7 inches) long with a maximum diameter of 93 millimeters (3.7 inches). It weighs 860 grams (1.9 pounds) and accepts 77mm front filters.
The lens features 13 elements arranged across 10 groups. It promises to minimize distortion through optical corrections, hence the “Zero-D” in the model name, and keep lines straight throughout the frame, from center to edge. Laowa also promises high resolution, strong contrast, and minimal reflections and ghosting. PetaPixel will be putting the lens to the test in real-world situations to verify these claims.
The manual focus lens can focus as close as 0.25 meters (9.8 inches), resulting in a maximum magnification of 0.19x. It’s not quite a macro lens, but it should work well enough for foreground elements in a scene.
The shift range is ±12 millimeters, while the tilt range is ±10 degrees. However, Laowa notes that the precise tilt and shift range may vary “slightly” depending on the selected camera mount. Tilt-shift lenses like this often offer reduced ranges on medium-format cameras because of their larger image sensors. However, in this case, Laowa says that the lens retains “its full” range on Fujifilm GFX and Hasselblad XCD medium format cameras.
Sample Photos
Pricing and Availability
The Laowa 24mm f/2 Zero-D Tilt-Shift lens is available for Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z, L-Mount, GFX, and XCD mirrorless camera systems. It is available now for $1,249.
Further, Laowa has also announced that its 55mm and 100mm f/2.8 Tilt-Shift 1x Macro lenses are now available for Hasselblad XCD cameras as well. They are also $1,249 each.
Image creditsLaowa
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