Laowa 100mm F2.8 2:1 Ultra Macro APO

£469/$499 Capture close-ups at twice life size

Unlike the majority of macro lenses, this Laowa delivers 2.0x magnification at its closest focus distance. That’s twice as much as usual, enabling reproduction of small objects at twice life size on the sensor, with the potential of massive enlargement of almost microscopic detail when viewing shots on screen or in print.

As with the other manual lenses in this group, you need to set the aperture as well as the focus position manually, via on-board control rings, and no lens-based EXIF data is recorded in image files. That’s not a problem in macro work, where most of us tend to focus manually and stick to a narrow aperture anyway, to extend the typically tiny depth of field. Again, an upside of mirrorless cameras is that you don’t suffer a dark viewfinder image when using narrow apertures.

Performance

The effort of shooting manually pays dividends in terms of excellent image quality, with superb sharpness and a minimum of colour fringing. There’s a little pincushion distortion but not enough to cause any concern.

N-photo verdict

There’s an F-mount version of this lens for DSLRS, but the Z-mount one is easier to use and works well.