Used Venus Laowa 9mm f/5.6 FF RL Lens for Sony FE

2026-05-08T11:50:56

I watched a lot of videos on this lens before purchasing, and many reviewers commented on its sharpness. I may have received a lemon, but mine is very much *not* sharp, even when perfectly focused. Otherwise, the fit & finish are great, and I love how tiny it is.

E G.

2022-01-26T12:12:36

Amazing lens, a lot of distortion correction in post. Recommend getting a 10mm.

KAI C.

2020-08-28T09:43:33

Amazingly compact and light. (This is very high on my list as I am transitioning to Sony for travel. Tamron Trinity + Sony 85 f/1.8 is my kit) Very sharp. Very little distortion (relative to incredibly wide 9mm) Also, it did not seem to be hypersensitive to not being held perfectly level, something that I was afraid might be a real problem. No AF is not really a problem at 9mm. Set for hyperfocal and fire away. If you are moving to macro distances, it will be obvious on the screen/finder that you need to refocus. Focus Peaking works fine on the Sony, but with such a deep DOF, I had to turn it off because most of the image was yellow. Cons: 5.6 is pretty slow for interior/night work. The IBS on the A7iii does a great job and I got perfectly sharp photos at 1/4sec which, in the absence of people, makes low light shooting at f/5.6 and ISO200 doable even without a tripod. Vignetting is very strong. The lens correction profile adds over 2 stops to the corners. (More on the profile below) That's not much of an issue unless you are shooting at ISO800+ to begin with, which ends up adding a LOT of noise to the corners. (A7iii) The usual no filter thread problem. There is a solution, but it's not exactly travel friendly when you are focused on small and light. Although it's not nearly as bad as the Fotodiox solution with my Nikon 14-24, However, I haven't actually been able to find the adapter for sale anywhere yet. Overall, this is a great little lens at a good price. Lightroom Lens Correction Profile: I found the Lightroom profile provided by Venus Optics actually over corrects both the vignette and distortion, for my taste anyway. You can tweak the values in the .lcp file for Lightroom to your liking. I went with 75% of their vignette correction. Or you can just adjust the vignette and distortion sliders in the lens correction box.

ROY P.