Out of Laowa Luck

Back during the ancient history of 2 weeks ago I waxed lyrical about the bargain known as the Laowa 12mm zero-distortion lens. I’d bought the lens in an excellent used condition for £350 in a bid to fill a gap in my wide-angle offerings to everyday estate-agents.

Today it’s being sent back. Whilst using the lens on a few basic jobs, I experienced the odd frame being hugely overexposed despite the lighting being identical from shot to shot - I mean a complete whiteout in comparison to the frame shot beforehand. I’d adjust the flash power to compensate, or try and recover the raw exposure in Lightroom. It happened in various rooms this morning so I tested the lens in my dining room - shooting several frames at f2.8 to f22 and 1/100s using my flash bounced off the ceiling at half power. Each exposure was about 3 stops overexposed and looked exactly the same which meant that the lens wasn’t stopping down. I shot another exposure at f8 using my Laowa 15mm shift lens and that gave me the perfect exposure first time. I took the lens off and examined the aperture blades which open and close during each shot - they moved, but very slowly when they should snap open and shut each time. The samples are shown below.

The retailer MPB are very good when it comes to aftersales, so I contacted the returns department (An AI chatbot obviously), and requested a swap for the same lens which they miraculously had in stock for the same price.

So - this one goes back today, and hopefully I’ll get another which works properly. My Laowa 12mm problems go on and on.