Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D Sony E

The Laowa 9mm f/2.8 is a solid and weighty all-metal lens. Apart from the coating on the front eleemnt, it’s not at all weather-sealed, but fits securely onto the Fujifilm X-T3 camera that we tested it with.

Size-wise, the lens is tiny - just 60mm long and weighing 215g. This makes it one of the smallest ultra-wide-angle lenses that we've ever tested, if not the smallest. Vitually all other wide-angle zoom lenses like this are notably larger and heavier. When mounted to a recent APS-C camera - in our case the Fujifilm X-T3 - the lens balances really well.

The Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D is fully manual. It also does not feature electronic contacts, meaning it is manual focus only, there is no aperture data, while metering is the stop-down method. So long as you use an automatic shooting mode like aperture priority, the camera’s metering will still work though.

Grab any of the front half of the lens barrel and you’ll have a grip on the focus ring. It has a lovely smooth rotation that spans almost 180° from infinity to the close focus distance of just 12cm. In use, that’s a lengthy four comfortable turns with the hand. 

A distance scale is clearly marked and a helpful guide for depth of field. However, for critical focusing - especially for close subjects at wide apertures - bringing up focus magnification using the camera’s live view is the quickest and most accurate focusing method.

The aperture ring has clicked stops in equally spaced whole stop values, with a seven-stop range from f/2.8 to f/22. Note that f/8 is the middle aperture that will provide the sharpest possible detail.