Laowa Argus 35mm f/0.95

Introduction

The very first camera I ever used was an Olympus OM-10 with a Zuiko 50mm f/1.8 lens, but at the time those numbers didn't really mean anything to me, and as such I didn't really cared about them. What I did care about, though, is that the first night I went out with this kit, is that there was no escaping bringing a tripod with me. I didn't know much, but it was obvious that there just wasn't enough light around, and the unbeknown to me fast but not ultra-fast lens combined with the slow speed film, I couldn't get any usable image with a handheld shot.

Quickly enough, I wanted to be able to shoot with just a camera, a lens and nothing else. Getting a mirrorless camera sure helped, but there's only so much you can do with a f/1.8 lens.
f/1.4 helped for the kind of dim places I grew to love taking pictures in, but it wasn't *quite* enough. Eventually, when this Laowa ultra-fast f/0.95 lens was released, and against all common sense, I decided to get this lens.

Let's take a closer look at this lens, and see if it delivers on it's promises.

First day

I had spent a long time trying to figure out whether it was a good choice to buy this lens, or if I would regret it later on. Despite it's fairly high price of 1150€ in europe, as of 2022, it still shies away of the 8000€ of the Nikkor 58mm f/0.95Z, making it fall in the category of "budget" ultra-fast chinese lenses. With some people praising it's abilities, and some others dismissing it as yet another gimmick, low optical quality lens, the feedback for this lens online was still mostly positive, pushing me towards deciding to buy one.

When it finally arrived, I was anxious to try it, and it did not disappoint me.
I had mostly got this lens to shoot outside focused towards infinity, where sharpness is supposed to be best. it was actually better than the Nikkor AI 50mm f/1.4, which is what i had been mostly using up to this point for night photography.

Getting to know the lens more

When you get such a fast lens, the first thing you want to do for a while is to shoot it wide open everywhere you go, because why not ? And at f/0.95, you will get plenty of background blur, giving you a very specific rendering that is recognizable. Medium format fast lens lovers, be amazed at this piece of glass which will give you just what you love: soft, creamy background that are blended into oblivion should all the conditions align, and pretty good sharpness all things considered.

at close focus it's not quite the same story, sharpness takes a hit and bokeh turns from creamy into somewhat bubbly, which I actually rather like. Those two floating elements groups probably help a lot mitigating those, but there's only so much they can do.

Vignetting with this lens is strong, but not intrusive, and still fixable in post. I tend to correct it somewhat in post, but I leave some of it behind as it can sometimes make the picture look a bit clinical if i do otherwise

You will notice that quite a bit of the pictures here are shot at f/1.0 or f/1.2 instead of wide open, and that is because at it's fastest aperture, this lens will render quite nasty ring flares around strong points of lights. Thankfully, you only need to stop down a bit to f/1.0 or f/1.2 (i still think it's crazy that you can stop down a lens to f/1.2 ) for this to go away.

Becoming comfortable with the lens

It might seem counterintuitive to use an ultrafast lens wide open to shoot architecture-like photography as i often do, but it is actually more practical than you'd think. When focused towards infinity with the subject being a short walk away, the usable depth of field is larger than you would think. And, being an f/0.95 lens, you'd think it's just too fast but it actually has no more bokeh than a 50mm f/1.4 lens for the same framing, due to the shorter focal distance.

Nowadays, this lens has become my main shooter when going on night photo walks. Yes, taking a tripod and a standard zoom lens shot at f/8 would probably be wiser, I would get sharper results, more usable depth of field, and low ISO files. But, all things considered, I'd rather take a solution that isn't optimal, have a lot of fun shooting it ( have i said this lens is a lot of fun ? ) and get images that i still like.
A faster shutter speed also helps tremendously with portraits under natural light, like the pictures directly above and below that were shot using solely the light from a wind turbine.

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