LAOWA the lens brand of Venus Optics
Which is far easier to say than: Anhui Changgeng Optics Technology Co., Ltd (Venus Optics) was established in 2013. Headquartered in China, are a leading camera lens manufacturer formed by a group of photography enthusiasts and industry experts. Their team of optics designers has more than 20 years of experience and have designed lenses for Japanese & German manufacturers. Their mission is to design and create their own portfolio of photography lenses which are truly Unique, Practical and Affordable.
Well I'm here to tell you I believe they have done it especially for all of us Drone Pilots who appreciate an amazing prime and have been using the Olympus 12mm in favor of the stock 15mm provided by DJI.
For most of us flying for real estate, going from broad wide panning sweep shots to carrying on that flow to the inside of homes, factories or commercial buildings we need a wide, bright pin tack sharp lens and the 12mm is great but what if there was something wider, faster, crisper and soon to be lighter?
Well here comes the LAOWA 7.5MM 2.0 PRIME MFT
A lens I was fortunate to be able to test a pre-production model after buying their new LAOWA 12MM zero distortion prime lens for my SonyA7MR2 and SONY A99MK2. During a very friendly email exchange with the team in China asking questions about the new Sony lens they saw my website ExtremeAerialProductions and said I should check out this other new lens they have created for the Inspire Series, and that's when I went OMG I gotta get my hands on one. And started begging to test the lens out.
Hence the testing below:
So some caveats please - the footage is all shot in auto - why to maintain consistency for the shots of what the system will do with the lens, they are not color graded nor any filters used - straight from the camera. Also note the footage of the 7.5mm is soft - that's because the DJI app doesn't recognize the lens yet so you can't calibrate and dialing in the focus perfectly is a challenge when the gimbal is on for the one tuning you need - so the videos are simply to show how little falloff, vignetting there is and just how much real state is available for the same speed, distance and objects flown or walked towards - this lens is ultra wide and makes framing so much easier.
Once the firmware gets updated I can assure you this is my go to lens 7.5 and 45 and that should be it, for all my Inspires - an incredible new visual perspective that clients will love.