Earlier this year, Laowa (Venus Optics) announced their new full frame 10mm f/2.8 auto-focus lens for several mirrorless camera platforms. 10mm is a very wide lens. "Typical" wide angle lenses range from 16mm-28mm. many people even use a 35mm lens for landscape work. For many locations, this lens will actually be too wide, but for the right scene, and for many interior architectural shots, it could be invaluable. And even where it is too wide, in a pinch, you can crop if you've got the megapixels to spare. Distortion, even in the near-field, is negligible to non-existent except for the straightest lines or perfect circles. Very correctable in post.

Laowa includes this lens in their "Zero-D" line, claiming it has virtually no distortion. And I think they are right. I walked around downtown SF on Saturday—and no, I didn't get mugged, didn't step on or avoid poop or needles, and had a great time on a beautiful day—and tried it out in the Salesforce Tower area. I'm in the camp of loving this building. Many are not. But it's a great subject for testing color, flare, and distortion. The Laowa did not disappoint.

The shot above is taken from the entrance/exit of the parking lot at the corner of Howard and 2nd Street. Except to turn it into a JPEG from raw, and to remove one bit of dust on the sensor, it has not been processed for distortion, perspective, color, or sharpness. Nada.Truly SOOC. Not bad at all.

I've shot the tower from this area before, and anything narrower than a 13mm FF equivalent usually requires too much upward angling to get the full building in, while still leaving room for perspective correction in post. For example, here is a shot from the wide angle camera on an iPhone 13 Pro Max (13mm equivalent) from 2022 taken at Howard & 1st St, a block further east.

Correcting this shot took a lot of work to achieve anything remotely approaching a pleasing  architectural viewpoint. It was doable:

But it wasn't easy. Having a lens like the Laowa 10 allows you to explore different angles and perspectives while leaving plenty of room for whatever perspective adjustments are necessary in post. You can shoot buildings like this fairly close without having to angle your camera upward and exaggerating the perspective. And if you are shooting on something with enough room and data on the sensor—this weekend on the Sony A7Cr, which offers 60mpx—then you have a lot of room to work. So, a starting image like the one at the top of this piece can produce an interim working file with still plenty of detail and flexibility:

This new lens by Laowa is really quite the achievement. Being able to accept 77mm filters—integrating nicely with the Kase Revolution system—is more than a bonus. For some compositions, it's a game-changer.