Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 ZERO-D review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 ZERO-D

10 March 2018

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

The Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 FE ZERO-D doesn’t have any problems concerning the longitudinal chromatic aberration. Even at the maximum relative aperture, in areas situated far outside the depth of field, it would be difficult to notice any distinct colour fringing.

Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 ZERO-D - Chromatic and spherical aberration

The lateral chromatic aberration can be described in similar terms – the graph below shows its performance depending on the aperture and the detector you employ.

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As you see we got results in the 0.05- 0.07% range; it means the level of that aberration is low. Taking into account very demanding parameters of this lens, its performance in this category should be assessed very positively indeed.

A7R II, RAW, f/4.0	A7R II, RAW, f/11.0

Spherical aberration

The tested lens has a lot of spherical aberration-related problems and they can be noticed in practically all aspects of our test. Firstly, the photos used for assessment of longitudinal chromatic aberration which we showed at the beginning of this chapter feature a noticeable shift of depth of field towards greater distances when you pass from f/2.0 to f/2.8. It is a classic sign of ‘focus shift’ which can also be spotted in resolution measurements. If you want to find the best resolution by f/2.0 and then stop down the lens to f/2.8 you see a slight increase of MTF values. A more distinct increase can be observed only after changing the position of the focusing ring. Also the appearance of defocused circles of light in front of and behind the focus is the proof that the spherical aberration is not corrected properly. It’s true that it was hard to produce distinct circles due to the parameters of the lens but still you can easily notice that they differ markedly.