My New Toy: Venus Optics Laowa 100mm f/2.8
I have been wanting to start playing with Macro photography again for a while, and finally found one of the lenses I wanted on KEH at a good price, so I got myself the New Toy: Venus Optics Laowa 100mm f/2.8. This is a manual lens, no automation with the Sony body or autofocus, but unlike the Sony macro, it gives me 2X magnification and the people I know who use it like it.
To give it a first try, I snipped a couple of daffodils from the yard and brought them into the studio area I’ve been slowly setting up. It took a bit of practice (and an evening sitting with the camera reconfiguring the buttons), but I’m pretty happy with the sharpness of the lens and my ability to actually get a decent focus with it. I still need a lot more practice to help start me better see composition at macro scale, but it’s a nice first try.
I also want to sincerely apologies for the long hiatus in my writing here. It’s been an incredibly busy and interesting last few months, with interesting being both in very good ways and in the more “interesting” ways, but those now seem mostly in the past. Much of my free time has been spent out in the woodshop finally getting it properly functional and doing my first couple of projects, and I’m now really happy with it. I do plan on getting back into the habit of writing here regularly again. My goal is to get back to writing 1-2 pieces a week here, now that I’ve got a bunch of other things I’ve been juggling to keep in the air taken care of — chuq
