Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro review

Pros

+ There aren’t many native mirrorless tilt/shift lenses
+ Excellent optical performance
+ Good value for a lens this complex

Cons

– Not really wide enough for a shift lens
– A bit too wide for macro/product shots
– Heavy and awkward to handle

Tilt/shift lenses are a breed apart. They offer specialized and technical lens movements to adjust the position and angle of the lens relative to the camera sensor, and can be used to conteract perspective distortion in architecture and interior photography and to control the plane of focus in close-ups and product photography.

Sometimes you get lenses which just offer a tilt movement for focus plane control, such as the Lomography Composer range, and sometimes you just get a shift movement for perspective control. In the case of the Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro you get both. 

These lens movements do make tilt/shift lenses slower and more technical to use. This is partly because you need to understand what the lens movements do and how to control them precisely, and partly because this all takes some time. These are lenses that really need to use used on a tripod for precise positioning and to leave you with your hands free for adjusting them.

Not only that, the tilt and shift movements make physical and electronic communications between the camera and the lens impractical, so you have to use manual focus and manual aperture, and you don’t get lens aperture information included in the EXIF data of your images.

The complex design of tilt/shift lenses makes them both heavy and expensive compared to ordinary lenses. They also need advanced optical designs covering a greater image circle than regular lenses – which also adds to the cost and weight.

That said, tilt/shift lenses do things that regular lenses can’t. They need time and patience to use, but for precise, technical photography they are often useful and sometimes indispensible.

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Features

The Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro has some unusual features for a lens of this type. Let’s start with the focal length of 35mm. This is not really wide enough for much architectural work, where you’re often trying to capture large buildings or spaces without much room to work in.

With still life and product photography, it’s the opposite problem, because 35mm is quite a wide focal length for this type of work and it makes it difficult to control what’s in the background. You’ll also get a degree of wide-angle distortion as you move closer to the objects you’re photographing.

So one issue with this Laowa is that its focal length is a bit of a compromise between two very different genres of photography. Really, you would be better off with an ultra-wide shift lens of 24mm or wider for architecture, and a longer focal length shift lens, say 85mm, for product photography. This quickly gets expensive, so despite the limitations of its 35mm focal length, this Laowa could still be a sensible, cost-effective compromise.

The f/2.8 maximum aperture is pretty good, and does give you some leeway for controlled depth of field effects – you can use the shift movement to make the depth of field extra-shallow, for example. If you can get access to the roof of a building to shoot down into the street, you can produce a highly convincing miniature diorama effect.

The Macro feature might be useful for smaller objects, but note that this has a maximum 0.5x magnification, or half life-size, so you can get in close, but not as close as a true macro lens.

Specifications

Format:	Full Frame: Sony FE, Nikon Z, Canon RF, L-mount; Medium format: Fujifilm GFX, Hasselblad XCD
Focal Length:	35mm
Aperture Range:	f/2.8-22
Angle of View:	87.5°
Lens construction:	14 elements in 12 groups
Aperture blades:	15
Tilt range:	Tilt range:
Shift range:	±12mm
Mount rotation:	360°
Min Focusing Distance:	22.8cm
Max magnification:	0.5x
Focusing	Manual
Filter size:	77mm
Size:	148.9mm x 104.9mm, 1,350g

Design and operation

This is a big lens. It’s more like a professional 70-200mm f/2.8 in size and weight, and perhaps the biggest giveaway is that it comes with its own tripod foot. It needs it. Mounting the lens on the tripod rather than the camera actually makes a lot of sense with a tilt/shift lens, where you often need to rotatie the camera relatative to the lens.

This is not just for portrait or landscape format shots. The design of tilt/shift lenses means you can use these movements only on one axis. If you need to swap from horizontal to vertical perspective correction, you need to rotate the lens to do it, and it’s the same when swapping from horizontal to vertical tilt movements. When you factor in the camera rotation, lens rotation and the different types of lens movement, you can see that this is quite a technical job, even for experts.

The tilt and shift movements each come with a geared adjustment wheel and a locking screw. They work smoothly and precisely – except that if you’re using vertical shift, the sheer weight of the camera makes it drop through gravity alone, so you’ll need a firm grip on the adjuster.

I did have one other issue – you can’t get infinity focus with the lens set to its maximum tilt angle. This could be frustrating for landscape photography or deliberate tilt/miniature effects. The best workaround is to set infinity focus with no tilt, then see how far you can adjust the tilt.

Performance

I didn’t see any sign of vignetting or sharpness drop-off even with the shift and tilt movements set to their maximum. Indeed, the lens comes in a medium format Fujifilm X version, so its image circle is clearly more than enough to accommodate its full range of movement on my full frame Sony A7 III.

Take a look at this series of shots below to see how this lens works and what it can do. I used a little wooden seaside souvenir to demonstrate both its tilt and its shift movements.

Value

The Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro might look expensive for a third-party Chinese lens, but own-brand tilt/shift lenses can cost twice as much. Besides, the so much optical and mechanical engineering in this lens becomes apparent as soon as you pick it up and start using it. The only thing I would say is to make sure the 35mm focal length is going to work for you.

Verdict

The Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro is a terrific lens. What else would we expect from Laowa? Apart from some awkwardness about its handling and controls, I’ve got no complaints at all. I just worry, though, that it’s a compromise that won’t work for everyone. I would want a shift lens to be wider, and a tilt lens to be longer, and while a 0.5x macro capability is good for close-ups, you might need to swap to a true 1:1 macro lens if insects or jewellery or other tiny objects are your speciality.

• Get the Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro at B&H: $1,249 (different mounts available)
• Get the Laowa 35mm f/2.8 Zero-D Tilt Shift 0.5x Macro at Wex: £1,269 (different mounts available)