A Wider Berth

It arrived yesterday. The Laowa 12mm f2.8 zero-D “dreamer” lens plopped onto my doorstep, so what better test than a nearby job first thing this morning. I started the job with a view to shooting as normal with my 15mm shift lens, and shooting some alternatives with the new glass to demonstrate the difference in viewpoint, but eventually just kept in on the camera and did three quarters of the house with it still attached.

The property was a four bedroomed detatched about 5 minutes away from my home. The weather is absolutely awful at the moment, so my technique changes slightly in conditions like this due to the very dark interiors encountered. I shoot the ambient frame without any interior lights turned on with a much longer shutter speed - often between 2 and 8 seconds depending on how grim it is. This gives a natural light frame which is relatively light and bright to set the scene. I then shoot the flash frame to expose for the windows - 1/8th of a second or thereabouts in this instance. Having the interior lights on when using these shutter speeds would throw horrible shadows onto the ground, and show horrifically blown-out areas. After the ambient and flash exposures, I turn on the interior lights and shoot another frame just for those - around 1/30th or so. Blending the three exposures in Photoshop afterwards gives a balanced image overall.

So - I shot the lounge first using my normal lens. Here’s the final shot:

I then swapped over the lens to the new 12mm, and reshot from the same position,but with the tripod lowered significantly to avoid shooting too much of the ceiling. Here’s that final image:

There’s a different vibe to the shot - obviously wider, with a more angular look. I’d heared about significant vignetting with this lens, but I have to say there’s nothing noticeable, and I didn’t even compensate for it in Lightroom. There is a dedicated lens correction profile in there, but it actually adds a vignette to the frame for some reason,

The sharpness is excellent, and the depth of field scale on the lens barrel is easy to use so that the focus can be preset to be 0.5m-infinity at f8 when shooting. This is another fully manual lens which has to be focused and stopped down when being used, so just setting it and never worrying about it is the way to go. The rear exterior shots were all taken with it, and I’ll probably employ it for all the smaller gardens I come across.

So in summary - I’m glad I bought the lens. It was a bargain, and will definitely be something that I employ in my workflow every single day. The full gallery of shots is shown above. Some of the images are taken with the 15mm, but it’s clear which ones are shot with the new glass. It’s not for every room, but will help with those small bedrooms and bathrooms that I shoot all the time.