and is perhaps a touch stiffer than ideal. The same is true with the new lens, so we sill see in the vignetting section whether the same problem exists. That grease lining is one of the suspects I have for the relatively poor flare performance at longer distances: as the lens focusses further away, the true front element receded, exposing more of the grease lined barrel. The nice thing about the old design was that, provided you kept the filter in place, you in effect had a cheaply replaceable front element!

I can see why, but the bad thing about that is that it can’t be replaced easily. Perhaps because of that Laowa have fitted the new lens with an immovable front glass. That was a big mistake: there is grease lining the inner barrel, and dust getting in would be not good at all. I noticed one reviewer did a test to see if that filter was optically necessary, concluded it wasn’t, and removed it. The 100mm lens came with a fitted 67mm filter. At closest focus the front element gets very close to the end of that barrel. But like the 100 before it it’s not really an internal focus lens: the trick is that there is an outer barrel, and as you focus closer, the lens extends inside that outer barrel. The lens does not change in length as you focus from 2x life-size to infinity. It’s hard to imagine better in a metal helicoid finish. The build quality is really nice.Markings are engraved and filled, it’s tightly constructed from metal and has what seems like a durable and attractive finish. You can get it at:ī&H Photo Features, Build Quality and Handling If you are interested in purchasing it, buying it from one of these affiliate links makes a small contribution to defraying the cost of this blog. Latest posts by David Braddon-Mitchell (see all).Voigtländer 110mm f2.8 Macro Apo-Lanthar.Optical Vignetting at Non-Macro distances.

Chromatic metal