An optically advanced normal-length prime, the Laowa Argus 45mm f/0.95 FF Lens from Venus Optics lets you create crystal-clear images in both brightly-lit scenes and difficult lighting situations. Offered here with a Nikon Z-mount, this lens features an extremely bright f/0.95 maximum aperture for low-light environments and rendering dreamy bokeh with full-frame cameras. A perfect focal length for amateurs and professionals alike, the lens provides a 51° angle of view that is well-suited for portraits, street scenes, cityscapes, and reportage. The lens is video friendly as well and features a click switch mechanism so videographers can de-click the aperture ring to prevent the click sound when recording. This also allows for a smooth change in brightness when adjusting the aperture settings.
- Z-Mount Lens / Full-Frame Format
- Aperture Range: f/0.95 to f/16
- 1 ED, 1 Aspherical, 3 UHR Elements
- 13 Elements in 9 Groups
Venus Optics Laowa Argus 45mm f/0.95 Overview
Venus Optics Laowa Argus 45mm f/0.95 Specs
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Venus Optics Laowa Argus 45mm f/0.95 Reviews
Beautiful rendering, flawed design
This lens is quite different from any I have shot with before. It is fully manual focus, and sends no data to the camera, which takes some getting used to. While lighter than many of my favorite GM lenses, the center of gravity seems to be farther from the lens mount than in typical Sony lenses, making it feel very heavy. The focus ring has a 270 degree focus throw, which combined with a very smooth turning, but resistive, ring makes it easy to perform very precise focus adjustments. Use the lens in combination with focus magnification and focus peaking for best results. But...the 270 degree focus throw also makes it difficult to do large changes in focus, as those may require 2 or 3 turns of the focus ring. Focusing on eyes is surprisingly easy with the long focus throw and focus peaking. However, the eyes will not be super sharp with this lens if you are shooting around f/0.95. The aperture ring needs significant improvement. It is located too close to the focus ring, and it turns with almost no resistance, even in click mode. This makes it extremely easy to bump it into a completely different aperture setting. An aperture lock switch would be *incredibly* useful here, especially since there is no way to control aperture from the camera body with this lens. Also, note that the aperture ring settings are not at a constant distance from each other. Since the camera doesn't know your aperture setting, and since the clicks at each setting offer almost no resistance, it is difficult to change apertures correctly by feel. The aperture click/declick switch has a nice feel to it. Handling is poor. When shooting in portrait orientation, the combination of the lens weight and having to turn the focus ring (which requires taking your hand off the lens if you need more than one turn...eliminating your support of the lens) The lens renders very softly. At f/0.95, the bokeh is smooth, but not in the way that it is in the 50 1.2 GM or 85 1.4 GM ii. The foreground is dreamy and soft, which may be what you want for your portrait lenses, depending on your style. Foreground / background separation is not particularly strong, even at f/0.95. The lens intentionally incorporates a fair bit of chromatic aberration. This actually enhances the dreamy quality. Depending on the lighting, some subjects get a bit of a glow around them. Strong lights, such as vehicle headlights, get red or green halos. This adds a nice, artistic effect to the photos, but also reduces sharpness. The lens hood is difficult to remove, and even harder to put on upside down. This is another feature that needs significant improvement. You will want to try this lens if you are looking for soft and dreamy images, you shoot portraits, you like to shoot wide open, or you like adding a unique look to your photos. This is not the lens for you if your subjects move around a lot, if you want your subjects to appear sharp and crisp, or if you need autofocus.
Less of a Compromise than I was Expecting
I picked this lens up for lack of availability of the Voigtlander 50mm f/1.0 or 40mm f/1.2 - I had originally been eyeing those optics for their included CPU contacts affording access to features in the Zf for manual focusing, but given their impossible availability I settled for the Laowa 45mm f/0.95. I spent plenty of time reviewing the lens to understand the compromises involved, but am happy to report those supposed compromises are not nearly so grave as originally expected. Sure, CPU contacts are lacking and that's a bummer, but from a performance standpoint the lens achieves great character and sharpness, and contrast stops being an issue by f/1.2 which is probably where this lens will spend most of its time being shot. Lack of purple fringing is a joy to not have to contend with, and given my intention of using this lens for mid-range half and full-body portrait work it handles LoCA just fine. Even stopped down just to f/1.2 it works stellar up close, which is a quality I did not expect of this lens considering its specialty purpose. I find I enjoy using it for close-up shots when stopped down just a little. Mid-range it's just fine wide open at f/0.95, if not a little soft on contrast but that also seems to be a quality affected by the light of the scene as well. For example, a shaded twilight shot ends up looking a bit soft when wide open, but a higher contrast sunlit scene by its very nature introduces enough contrast on its own that the softness wide open doesn't affect the image so much. Additionally, there's a nice swirl to the soft bokeh that is most accentuated when wide open that is hard to turn down when contrast can be introduced to an image in post anyway. Ultimately I think I am happier with this lens for its image quality based on comparisons to the equivalent Voigtlanders. Lacking the CPU contacts is a bummer, but I haven't found it a deal killer having to zoom in for critical focus when using the Zf's built-in subject detection which seems to nail my intended subject reliably and affords me the ability to zoom in, ensure focus, and snap without having to zoom out to check composition - That whole process goes pretty quick once you're used to it. And for as much as I lean into RAW processing, the Nikon's JPG engine introduces contrast to wide open shots which I struggle to replicate, nearly negating the whole issue of f/0.95 softness from the get-go. Bokeh is more nervous at the sharpest f-stops, but if you enjoy shooting high-character low DoF images from close-to-mid-range, this lens does the job for a steal of a price. If Laowa re-releases it with CPU contacts, I'd buy it again for that feature, but otherwise it's perfectly suited to my wants and needs in such a lens.