Venus Laowa Offers 15mm F4.5 R Zero-D Shift for Pentax

New 14 blade aperture version of Laowa's full frame wide angle shift lens

By wadge22 in Third-Party Announcements on Jun 14, 2022

In April, Venus Optics, the makers of Laowa camera lenses, announced a new version of their full frame wide angle shift lens—the Laowa 15mm F4.5 R Zero-D Shift—which is available in a variety of mounts including the Pentax K mount. This new version of the already available 15mm Zero-D Shift lens has a 14 blade aperture to offer improved out of focus rendering and unique sunbursts. The new version also has a red ring on the front of the lens, as opposed to the blue ring on the 5 blade version. It is otherwise optically the same and with the same build as the first version, both of which will be available for the same price, offering a choice of aperture style.

Both versions of the 15mm f4.5 Zero-D Shift lens are ultra-wide angle shift lenses that cover the full frame. They offer 11mm of shift in any direction thanks to 360 degree rotation. Since the lenses are designed for medium format as well, there is no vignetting on full frame or APS-C, even at the full 11mm shift position. These lenses also carry Laowa's Zero-D designation (one of three such lenses available for Pentax), which signifies that they create rectilinear images with close to no distortion despite their wide angle. These features combined make them a great choice for interior or exterior architecture photography, as well as for stitching multiple images to get panoramas or ultra wide shots. Both lenses are fully manual aperture with no A setting or use of the camera's stop-down mechanism. They also do not communicate focal length or lens information to the camera.

The new R version is currently listed as available to order direct from Venus Laowa for US$1,199. It is also available for pre-order from B&H Photo Video and Adorama, for the same price.