Two Laowa T/S lens coming soon in the Fuji GFX mount

[asnapper]

VenusOptics unveils the 55mm F2.8 and 100mm 2.8 Tilt-Shift - Canon Rumors

VenusOptics has shown off the FFII T/S 55mm F2.8 and 100mm F2.8 Macro lenses in Bejing. Both lenses will be available for the RF mount as well as the GFX, Z, E, and L mounts. VenusOptics under the Laowa brand name is starting to make a name for themselves in the realm of tilt and […]

www.canonrumors.com

 

[P. Chong]

Looks quite interesting. Any idea about pricing?

Edit to add: oh found on the Fujirumors site that the 100 is JPY 500k, about USD3.5k. not much cheaper than the GF110 t/s.

 

[marc aurel]

Generally a good thing that third party manufacturers start making tilt shift lenses for the GFX system.

But the focal length, weight and price point make me scratch my head. Laowa chose focal legths that are well covered. 100mm is close to the outstanding Fuji 110mm TS (and close to the also excellent Canon TS-E 90mm L which covers the GFX with full shift too, and it is lighter). And 55m is quite close to Canons excellent TS-E 50mm which covers the GFX sensor too. One point for Laowas newly announced lenses is that they offer 1:1 macro versus 1:2 with the Fuji. But shift is limited to 12mm versus 15mm with the Fujis.

Why didn't they make a focal length that is actually missing in the GFX lineup yet? For example a lens in the 40 to 45mm range?

 

[MGrayson]

Why do your own market research when Fuji has already done it for you?

 

[Alkibiades]

55 Shift Lens Wolf be nice but i dont Think it can be better than the Canon, 15 mm movements would be a advantage…

 

[P. Chong]

Good point Matt makes on having Fuji do the research. If I were Venus Optics, I would have gone a step further…and copy more. Maybe a 28 as well. When I tried the GF T/S lenses, I found the 30 and 110 to be well chosen focal lengths. Very useful. Except the 1/2x magnification at close focus, I need an extension tube to get closer to 1X. So the Laowa 100 being capable of 1X is an advantage for my use case.

Other than the lower shift compared to the GF, I think the Laowa at f/2.8 wide open is nice. Offers a bit more flexibility, though not really useful for macro or architectural work.

 

[rdeloe]

Dear Laowa: Please make a really high quality 28mm tilt-shift lens so that I can remove the front from your tilt-shift mechanism and attach the remaining bits to an Arca-Swiss lens board. I won't grumble if it's f/5.6, as long as it's really good at f/5.6 and excellent at f/8. Seeing that I'll be ripping it apart anyway, a shift-only lens will be fine.

 

[Allthink_]

Interesting to know if these 2 models, as well as previous 20mm ts model, have same image circle across all the brands they design it for.
Because it's supposed to work on Nikon, Canon, Fuji.
I see it's selling for 1600 on ebay, while the older 20mm sells for 1000$.
The reviews for 20mm were pretty positive. Interesting to know if the new ones are different/better optical designs.

 

[Thyl]

Generally a good thing that third party manufacturers start making tilt shift lenses for the GFX system.

But the focal length, weight and price point make me scratch my head. Laowa chose focal legths that are well covered. 100mm is close to the outstanding Fuji 110mm TS (and close to the also excellent Canon TS-E 90mm L which covers the GFX with full shift too, and it is lighter). And 55m is quite close to Canons excellent TS-E 50mm which covers the GFX sensor too. One point for Laowas newly announced lenses is that they offer 1:1 macro versus 1:2 with the Fuji. But shift is limited to 12mm versus 15mm with the Fujis.

Why didn't they make a focal length that is actually missing in the GFX lineup yet? For example a lens in the 40 to 45mm range?

It's probably that Laowa discovered that their T/S lenses have a wide enough image circle to cover the Sony sensor used in the FUJI GFX and Hasselblad X cameras. They also offer other T/S lenses with GFX and X mount. These lenses are not designed to compete with or supplement Fuji's lenses; they are mostly for the 35 mm market.

 

[JeRuFo]

Still, for macro photography those movements seem reasonable and the 1:1 magnification sets it apart, especially on the 55mm (I don't even understand how that would work). Only if the resolving power doesn't let the sight down, of course.