Despite not having been officially announced, Venus Optics has been showing off a new lens at CP+ 2024. It’s the Laowa 15mm f/5 Cookie lens, available in Sony E, Canon RF, Nikon Z, Leica L and Leica M mounts.
It’s a very tiny and compact lens, which is the reason why it’s so slow. The wider an aperture needs to be, the larger the lens also needs to be, particularly at short focal lengths such as this.
Laowa 15mm f/5 “Cookie” lens
Images of the new lens have been posted to the Chinese social media site Weibo. Shown in a person’s hand, we can see that it’s an extremely tiny lens. It measures 67.1 x 42mm and weighs around 160g. This means that you’d barely even notice it sitting on your camera.
15mm is a bit short for a walkabout lens, although wide-angle lenses can have their benefits. And even though it’s designed for full-frame cameras, I think the focal length of this one would work quite well on APS-C. With 1.5x crop bodies, it should have a field of view similar to that of about 24mm on a full-frame camera.
Laowa 15mm f/5 Cookies Specs
The complete specs have not been released yet, but here’s what we know so far.
Focal length15mm
Max aperturef/5
Min aperturef/22
Angle of viewUnspecified
FormatFull-Frame
MountLeica M, Leica L, Sony E, Nikon Z, Canon RF
Focus typeManual Focus
Lens typeRectilinear
OpticsUnspecified
Filter thread39mm
Aperture bladesUnspecified
Min focus distance12cm
Dimensions67.1 x 42mm
Weight160g
Price and Availability
There’s no word on the price or availability for this one yet. The lens exists, and it’s being shown off at CP+ 2014 in Japan, and that’s all we really know so far. I can’t imagine this will be an expensive lens, however.
Even though it’s full-frame, it’s a very slow aperture and a small lightweight lens. Not a lot of glass. Also, Laowa’s 10mm f/4 Cookie lens (buy here) sits at $299. I expect this will be similar.
[via Sony Alpha Rumors]
