Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 ZERO-D review - Vignetting

Have you rated your lenses yet?

Venus Optics LAOWA 15 mm f/2 ZERO-D

10 March 2018

Arkadiusz Olech

8. Vignetting

First, let’s check the vignetting performance on the smaller APS-C sensor – appropriate thumbnails you can find below.

A7R II, APS-C, f/2.0	A7R II, APS-C, f/2.8

At the maximum relative aperture the brightness loss in frame corners amounts to 31% (−1.08 EV) and, taking into account the size of the detector, it is a rather pronounced value. On stopping down the vignetting level decreases quite slowly : by f/2.8 it gets to 25% (−0.83 EV), and by f/4.0 it is still 20% (−0.64 EV). What’s more, further stopping down doesn’t provide any measurable effects.

Please Support Us

If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - advertisement - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Now let’s check how the situation changes after progressing to full frame.

A7R II, FF, f/2.0	A7R II, FF, f/2.8

A7R II, FF, f/4.0	A7R II, FF, f/5.6

On applying the maximum relative aperture you have to take into account losses of light of as big as 66% (-3.13 EV). That value is really high. Also by f/2.8 the vignetting is huge - officially we got 60% (-2.65 EV). You encounter a lot of problems by f/4.0 too, where this aberration reaches 50% (−1.99 EV).

Further stopping down doesn’t provide any distinct results: the values we got by f/5.6 and f/8.0 were, respectively, 44% (−1.69 EV) and 43% (−1.63 EV).

To be honest I don’t remember testing a lens which, by f/11 or f/16 aperture had vignetting on a level of 40% or more.

Sony A7R II, JPEG, f/2.0