The new Laowa 12mm f/2.8 E-mount lens on the Sony A7s

As I reported yesterday on July 30 Venus Optics will Kickstart a new Laowa 12mm f/2.8 Full Frame lens that will be available for both Sony mounts (A and E). We now got confirmations that there is now an additional special additional product for the E-mount folk:

It will be a E-mount Magic Shift Converter to convert the lens from 12mm f/2.8 (DSLR) into 17mm f/4 with +/- 10mm SHIFT & 360 rotation (Full Frame E-mount). The glass elements inside the converter ENLARGE the image circle of the lens in order to fulfil the shifting! See attached photo:

This is a very NEW thing in the market!

I can now confirm via multiple sources that Sony is set to increase the price in the whole Eurozone area (including UK). One of the sources added an interesting note:

Due to exchange rate movements almost all camera products will increase in price by around 10%. However the August date for the increase may not be so true as Sony are trying to wait for the competition to raise there prices first. It seems that Sony don’t want to be seen as the bad company that started it. So now it is like a poker game to see which company will show their hand first.

Venus Optics will soon launch a new lens that will come in two different Sony mounts (A and E-mount). It’s the Laowa 12mm f/2.8! This is their second lens after the really great 105mm STF lens (here on BH). UPDATE: The lens will be launched on Kickstarter to get the necessary fundings.

The main specifications of the prototype from Venus Optics are the following:

Image circle: 24×36
Field of view: 121.96°
Optical formula: 16 elements, including 2 aspherical elements and 3 elements made of glass with anomalous dispersion, in 10 groups
Number of aperture blades : 7
Aperture range: f/2.8 – f/22
Manual focus
Minimum focusing distance: 0.18m
Maximum magnification: 0.2x
Maximum diameter: 74.8mm
Length: 82.2mm
Weight: circa 570g.

Image samples of the lens used on the Sony A7s can be seen on Flickr.