Manual lenses for Nostalgic Imagery - Laowa Argus 33mm f0.95 (April 2025 Issue)

I’m branching out a little from our norm here with the Laowa Argus 33mm F0.95 but it ticks many of the check points you would want from a vintage style lens. Manual focus? Check. Beautiful solid metal construction? Check. Characterful and unique rendering? Check. It has a little more besides too. Laowa has rose in fame amongst 3rd party lens manufacturers for their specialty lenses, focusing on unique macro and wide angles. Recently they have made quite a splash in the cinematography scene but their Argus range, focusing on super-fast apertures of F0.95 hasn’t seemed to pick up as much traction or at least I haven’t seen many people using them here on Fuji X -Mount. Perhaps it is because of the price tag? At around $500 usd they are more than double the cost of other Chinese manufactured 0.95’s but if there is one thing that I want people to take away from this series is, just because these are Chinese companies does not mean that they offer only entry level products.

 At around the same price as the Fujinon 35mm F1.4, and far more expensive than the Sigma 30mm I can understand the difficulty consumers have if comparing with other standard lenses for their X-Mount systems. However, despite this the Argus has placed itself in a niche that no one else on X-Mount has attempted. From what I can gather from my use of this lens, they have opted for a much more “precise” take on manual lenses, similar in concept to the Zeiss Milvus lenses. As far as the lenses we have talked about so far in this series are concerned, the image quality is by far the cleanest and most modern of them. The Laowa boasts an Apochromatic design (APO) which really does help nullify the downsides of these character lenses. Designed to eliminate chromatic and spherical aberrations by controlling how the light enters the lens, coupled with a complex 14 element design this results in a lens that reacts well. It gives crazy circular flares if caught at the right (or wrong) angle but other than that you don’t really need to watch where your light source is coming from as closely as you do with vintage lenses. It also comes with a very tactile and responsive manual focusing helicoid, able to focus down to 0.35m. I really enjoyed focusing on this lens as it allows me to get far greater accuracy. The downside to this is that it is almost impossible to rapidly focus on a subject closer than 1 meter. Between 1-2 meters the focus throw is very short and can adjust for subject movement easily. At that distance with 33mm, even at 0.95 you get a usable depth of field. If you are photographing in well-lit environments at F5.6-ish then you aren’t going to have issues.

The reason I wanted to include the Argus in particular because of the wonderful rendering of this lens wide open. Although less of an homage to lenses past, I believe the image that it produces is more in line of the “minds eye” of what you expect a good vintage lens to perform like on a modern mirrorless camera. This plays a crucial role in the images I created with this lens as you will soon find out. I decided that for this specific article and this specific lens that I wanted to go somewhere I had never been before, a place that I had always wanted to visit. I’m not usually one to chase “bucket list” shots but there was a specific image in mind I wanted to create or perhaps re-create would be a more fitting term.  Being a potential portfolio image, the lens I used was a rather big decision and that I chose the Laowa speaks volumes.

I grew up watching Indiana Jones and playing Tomb Raider, many evenings filled watching documentaries on explorers and archaeologists but sadly the truth is there isn’t a lot of exploring to do in the world anymore. I think if we take the concept of “minds eye” and apply it to this, being a photographer and being able to frame and light these ancient subjects to evoke that mystery is about as close as one can get to that dream. Where I live in Isaan, Thailand has no shortage of ancient monuments and archaeological sites, we have Ban Chaing that dates pottery to 3,500 years ago and in Khon Kaen there has been multiple discoveries of Dinosaur remains. However, like everything else, it has been commercialized and used for tourism. I wasn’t expecting anything different and is a leading factor in why it took me so many years to finally visit Thailand’s ancient city of Ayutthaya. As an Englishman, I find the concept of a 14th century city being ancient quite charming, a walk down any village street in the UK and you will pass at least one or two buildings that predate that, often by many centuries. Yet for Thailand, Ayutthaya is a very special place and for me home to that “bucket list” image I mentioned earlier, the Buddha Head in a Tree. It’s so renowned that it even has its own location on Google Maps. I can’t say where or when I first saw that image but ever since I saw Michael Kenna’s depiction in 6x6 (no doubt taken on his trusty Hasselblad) I have had the urge to add it to my very own portfolio.

On the day I was hoping to arrive early and get to the spot before the sun was too high, but on the way out of Bangkok I got stuck in a two hour traffic jam and that put me in a pretty bad mood but as soon as we arrived at the old city and I saw the chedi piercing the skies, rising above the walls my excitement immediately picked up. I knew that I was chasing a replica, a memory of a memory but it didn’t matter. It was real enough, and I think that also says a lot about how I perceive photography and to an extent these lenses. It’s a way of bridging the gap between past and present so that we may look back at it in the future and think “oh so that’s probably what it was like!” and in the moment that’s real enough. A far more esoteric thought than the technical specs but it is the driving factor in why I personally seek out these character lenses for my work. I’m not trying to fool anyone into thinking my work was shot during the 70’s on Kodak stocks whilst doing my tour of ‘Nam but perhaps evoke a similar feeling or the same fleeting emotion.

I guess with that out the way we better get back to the Argus 33mm, and the negatives. I’m not a fan of the click-less aperture and you have to double check before every image as it is so easy to knock, it also goes straight from 5.6 to 11 but even at F4 there is plenty depth of field to work with. I say that I shoot this lens wide open, but the truth is there is no way to really know the exact aperture as it floats between 0.95 and F1.1. On the 25mm Laowa has apparently corrected this, and perhaps we can have a look at that lens in the future, but I know myself personally, between 25mm and 33mm I prefer 33mm focal length. Alongside the Thypoch’s the omission of EXIF data on this one is really glaring at this price point. At the end of the day these are issues you will either be able to tolerate, or you won’t. For me the incredible output of this lens is enough for me to forgive its small flaws.

Thank you to Venus Laowa for providing the lens for this project, and if anyone is interested in learning more about the specifications or wanting to purchase your own copy then you can head over to their website - venuslens.net