Seeing the first Webb Telescope space images today, I think about everything we have on Earth and how much magnification is enough for a photo. For me, there is never enough. Just like with Webb, every time I dive in deeper with macro photography, I see more amazing intricacies that I would have never seen or even thought existed.
That leads me to the subject of this post – the remarkable Laowa f/2.8 25mm 2.5-5x macro lens. If you think you need a big, heavy lens to get amazing, extremely close macro photos, then think again. The 25mm Laowa macro lens is relatively small, light weight, and with 2.5 to 5x magnification, is very powerful. And for all it delivers, it is also very reasonably priced.
You should visit the Lawoa (Venus Optics) website to see all of the specs and pretty photos of this lens, so I won’t repeat them here.
Instead, below I highlight some of the amazing results from this lens that I could not have dreamed of before. The examples below include: two very small spiders, a Monarch Butterfly egg and one day old Monarch caterpillar, the wording on a US penny, an Eastern Bluebird hatching from its egg, and a Jagged Ambush bug with prey.
When working with high magnification lenses, be aware that you will need lots of light on your subject, for example from a well diffused flash, or use long exposures. This lens is focused manually, and the aperture is not coupled to the camera but set manually on the lens. This means higher aperture numbers will make the viewfinder dimmer unless external light is added (from an LED, for example) to help aide with focusing if the natural light levels are getting low.
The lens is exceptionally sharp, but keep in mind that as you increase magnification, the lens length extends which in turn increases the potential for diffraction softening the image. This is just the physics of light and not a fault of the lens. At 2.5x, f/11 is works well, and when reaching 5x I try not to exceed f/5.6 to keep the photos looking their best.
As you can tell from the photos below, I am very, very happy with the Laowa 25mm macro lens. Because of this lens, I am creating photos that were impossible for me beforehand. I keep the Laowa 25mm 2.5-5x macro lens with me every time I am out looking for small things to make big – right here on earth.
(Click a photo above to enlarge, click again for even bigger)