Venus Optics LAOWA 17 mm f/1.8 MFT II review - Introduction

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Venus Optics LAOWA 17 mm f/1.8 MFT II

28 January 2020

Arkadiusz Olech

1. Introduction

The Venus Optics LAOWA 17 mm f/1.8 MFT II was launched in October 2019 and, as indicates the Roman numeral in its name, is the second version of that instrument. The first version was shown in the middle of 2018, a year earlier or so. We didn't have an opportunity to test that lens so we don't know what, if anything, had gone wrong and why the producers had decided to release a new version so soon. Still, such a situation is far from unusual, especially among relatively new Chinese optics producers. They have to learn quickly by their mistakes: they draw conclusions, correct what should be corrected and present new versions of their lenses pretty fast. Of course you shouldn't release rough designs but if it happens a quick reaction and correction is the right way to go and, generally, should be praised.

On the other hand a fast release of a successor doesn't necessarily means that the older version had some serious flaws. For example we saw the Panasonic 1.7/20 lenses, also belonging to the Micro 4/3 system and with a very similar focal length to that of the Laowa - their launches were separated by less than four years even though both of them were instruments of very good quality and they didn't differ from each other significantly.

As we've already mentioned, we didn't manage to test the first version of the Laowa 1.8/17 and now we want to rectify that oversight – our impressions concerning the second version of that instrument can be found in the following chapters. Enjoy your reading!

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Our test was made possible courtesy of the FoxFoto company, a sole distributor of Venux Optics Laowa products in Poland; they managed to send one specimen of that lens to our editorial office very efficiently. You are also invited to get acquainted with our test procedure, described in the article "How do we test lenses?" If you feel it’s still not enough, please go to our FAQ section where you can find some further explanation.