Venus Launches First Autofocus Lens

2024.02.20

This morning marks the launch of the first autofocus lens from Venus Optics. Building upon their expertise on Zero-Distortion prime lenses, the new Laowa 10mm F/2.8 Zero-D FF is an extremely wide-angle rectilinear lens with Full-Frame coverage. This lens comes in several variants, including two with an autofocus motor.

This new prime lens captures a 130° angle-of-view, which is among the widest rectilinear lenses on the market and is not available from first-party manufacturers for all lens mounts. It comes its extreme viewing-angle with a relatively bright maximum aperture of F/2.8. The optics in the lens allow it to focus down to 12cm from the lens, giving it a maximum magnification of 0.24X. The Laowa 10mm F/2.8 FF is particularly well-suite for architecture, interior and astrophotography. It can be used to capture dramatic landscape with prominent foregrounds too.

The Laowa 10mm F/2.8 FF offers a 77mm screw-on filter-thread, a rarily among extremely wide lenses. This is quite useful to add neutral densitity filters to extend exposure length for creative effect. A petal-type hood adds a little protection from flare. Venus Optics is emphasizing the zero-distortion quality of lens lens which will be very interesting for architecture photography.

©2024 Zhang Hao - Image Courtesy of Venus Optics

This lens is fairly light, weighing in at 420g, and quite compact with a barrel length of 7.1cm or under 3". This is one of the smallest extreme-angle lens with Full-Frame coverage. There are actually 3 variants of this lens. The headline model is equipped with an autofocus motor and is available exclusively for Sony E and Nikon Z mount. These models have a 5-blade aperture. There are also models for Canon RF and Leica L mounts, without focus-motors. These lenses are completely manual and do not communicate with the camera. Four more models share the same name, this time with a 14-blade aperture. Those variants are available for Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon RF and Leica L mounts.

These lenses can be preordered from the Venus Optics website and authorized vendors for $800 USD. Shipping is expected around the middle of March.

• Lens