Micael Widell's (Laowa) Macro Lens Buying Guide

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 60mm

The Laowa 60mm is an excellent all-round macro lens with a compact and lightweight form factor. It works great both on DSLR's and on mirrorless cameras. It works great for macro photography on full frame, but for focusing distances of more than 2-3 meters you will get heavy vignetting on full-frame.

I recommend buying the lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 60mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 90mm / 58mm

The Laowa 90mm and 58mm are very very similar lenses. The only noticeable difference is the focal length. The 58mm is a bit wider and maybe better suited to all-round photography. The 90mm is longer and a bit more suited to portraits. But in macro photography their performance is very, very similar – the only real noticeable difference is that the 58mm has a slightly shorter working distance. More information about the differences in my video about the 58mm here.

The Laowa 90mm/58mm are excellent all-round macro lenses with a compact and lightweight form factor. They pretty much match the excellent characteristics of the Laowa 100mm macro lens, but the 90mm/58mm are optimized for mirrorless cameras and therefore they are smaller and lighter. If you have a mirrorless full frame camera this is the best, most versatile macro lens you can get for it, in my opinion.

I recommend buying your lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 90mm or this link for the 58mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 100mm

The Laowa 100mm is perhaps Laowa's most powerful and versatile macro lens, and also perfect optically. Its main weakness is that it is pretty big and front-heavy though, so that is something you need to accept as a tradeoff when buying this lens. If you have a Canon EF DSLR, you should consider getting the EF version with electronic aperture, as it will help against dark viewfinder when focusing.

I recommend buying the lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 100mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 85mm

I recommend the Laowa 85mm lens warmly to anyone with a full frame camera, who wants an excellent 2x macro lens that is extremely small and lightweight, and who doesn't need the wide f/2.8 aperture that most other macro lenses offer.

I recommend buying the lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 85mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 65mm

If you have an APS-C mirrorless camera and no plans to upgrade to full frame anytime soon, the Laowa 65mm is the lens I would strongly recommend.

I recommend buying the lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 65mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Micael's recommendation:

Laowa 50mm

If you have a micro-four thirds camera this is the Laowa macro lens you should get. There is no good point trying to buy any of the other lenses and trying to convert them to MFT, when there is a lens especially made for MFT, optimized in size and optics. At least that is my opinion.

I recommend buying the lens at Laowa's official website. I always buy my Laowa lenses directly from there, as they often aren't in stock locally, and as they offer the best price, as well as fast and free worldwide shipping. Please use this link to buy the Laowa 50mm as it gives me a small commission at no extra cost to you.

Links

The most common question I get from my Youtube subscribers and Instagram followers on a daily basis is "what Laowa macro lens should I buy?" So I created this little webpage where I give you my recommendation based on a short questionnaire.

See this video for a deeper explanation of this tool and how to use it.

I might develop this guide further in the future to include more macro lens brands. But to be honest Laowa's lenses are my favorites regardless of system, as ALL of them go to 2x magnification, are excellent optically, have reliable build quality, and are cheap as well!

This guide will not recommend you the Laowa 25mm, 15mm or 24mm lenses, regardless of how you answer, as I feel these are more special-case lenses and not as versatile as the others. Furthermore, if you are in the market for one of these you already know enough about macro photography not to need this guide.

Please let me know if you find a bug or have other questions or feedback.

/Micael