Laowa 15mm 2.0 Zero-D Z für Nikon Z

The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D is a capable lens ... within certain limits. As mentioned in the introduction, Laowa tries to find a "better balance" between quality and the size of the lens than other manufacturers. That already provides a hint that there's no free lunch here and the necessary compromises hit the lens at large aperture settings. While the broader center zone is perfectly fine even at f/2 the outer image field is soft and it doesn't really improve much at f/2.8. However, the quality is fine from f/4 onwards albeit without reaching greatness. The best quality is available around f/8. The amount of lateral CAs is good. Unsurprisingly, the vignetting is very high at f/2 and it remains visible even at smaller apertures. Laowa does promise very low distortions - hence the "Zero-D" in the lens name. While not actually "zero", the low amount of barrel distortion is certainly a highlight. If you really want to you can push all ultra-wide lenses into producing heavy flare effects. However, the Laowa does a quite decent job here - probably because the front element isn't bulb-like and as such not quite as vulnerable to stray light. The build quality of the lens is very high when just looking at the mechanical aspects. It's a tightly, assembled, all metal construction with a smooth focus ring. If you like old school, you will also enjoy the manual aperture selection on the lens. However, others may not like the idea of a fully manual lens without electronic aperture coupling and without AF. The Laowa 15mm f/2 FE Zero-D is not a cheap lens at around 800USD/1000EUR. To be honest - relative to the performance of the lens, this is stretching things a little. For a few bucks more you can get the Zeiss FE 16-35mm f/4 OSS and the Samyang AF 14mm f/2.8 FE is more affordable - and both support AF. Still, the Laowa is faster and the corner weakness will not show up in shallow depth-of-field scenarios. If you are aware of its limitations and manoeuvre around them, it's actually an Okay lens - more so on an A7(S) x rather than an A7R x. That being said - there are better alternatives out there.