OK, a few thoughts and shots from my upcoming write-up.
- The lens has some handling quirks. For example, there's no pin to lock the A position in place and the aperture ring clicks are very, very low friction. So it's super easy to knock the lens out of the A position while trying to compose and focus a shot in the field. Then the camera doesn't fire at all, which is pretty annoying. But once you know the risk, you can adjust the way you hold the lens.
- The mount aperture control is definitely at the KA level rather than KAF. If you look at this wonderful
PF page on the evolution of the K-mount, you'll find the "Digital information contact" which was added with the KAF mount in 1989. AFAIK, this is the contact which a lens uses to communicate its focal length to the body, and it's definitely not present on the Laowa (see image below, or the one posted previously by Mistral75). And as mentioned previously, your K-Mount body will prompt you for a focal length when you turn it on with the Laowa 100mm 2X mounted.
- Optically, after just a few tests, I believe this lens doesn't take many prisoners. I need to retest at 2:1, where it's exceedingly difficult to control for correct focus if you don't have a good focus rail. (For example, when shooting a penny you can find once you review your shots that the bottom of the penny is in focus, but the top of the engraved letters on the penny are not! In the field, if the eyes are not in focus, the shot is just left on the cutting room floor so to speak, but in testing, you need to nail it.) But otherwise, testing against the D-FA 100mm WR and looking both at portrait-type shots shooting very open at around 1m distance, and at 1:1 macro shots shot very closed, I am very impressed.
- I shot about 400 frames in the field over three outings, and have published nine images as a result of those outings. You can have a look at all of them in
this Flickr album. Now it definitely will no longer be possible to shoot bugs until the spring...