Video Review: Laowa 17mm tilt shift
TS f/4 Tilt-shift Lens

17/4 Laowa tilt shift lens

Wide angle 17mm Full Frame and Medium Format

Available in a wide range of mounts Sony FE / Nikon Z / Canon RF / L Mount / Fuji G / XCD

Keith has been testing the new 17mm focal length tilt/shift lens from Venus Lens [Laowa].

The Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift, a f/4 Zero-D Tilt Shift lens and gives ±10º of tilt and ±12mm of shift [±8mm on medium format].

It’s available in full frame [36x24mm] and medium format [44x33mm] mounts.

The 17mm lens gives roughly the same field of view on medium format as a 14mm lens does on a full frame camera, so it’s pretty wide even before you add any shift.

This review looks at aspects of its use and performance on the 100MP medium format [44x33mm sensor] Fujifilm GFX100S.

The Laowa 17mm tilt shift is available from Venus Lens from March 2026

The Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift

Laowa [Venus Lens] have announced a new wide angle tilt shift lens which Keith has been testing for a while.

With shift, you get a very wide angle view – even more so with the larger GFX100S Medium Format sensor I’m testing with. [click to enlarge]

I’ve uploaded some full [100MP] sample images in this DPReview Thread    

  Laowa 17/4 Tilt Shift [some samples – full res GFX100S]     

These images are intended to give a feel for the look of images you get with such a wide lens.

Main Laowa 17mm tilt shift lens review video Part One [22mins]

Initial testing of the lens and a look at physical aspects of its design

Timeline

• 00:15 Lens testing
• 00:53 Competition for the Canon TS-E17 F4L?
• 02:10 Lens design
• 04:47 Lens foot 09:06 Using the lens
• 14:05 Vignetting and image circle
• 17:40 Geometric distortion?
• 18:38 Stitching images with Autopano Giga
• 19:30 APG for free

The second part of the review was delayed for some time after I was ill in early 2026.

This looks at actually using the lens and how well it works

Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift lens video Part Two [30 mins]

Timeline

• 00:18 Following on from part one of the review
• 00:31 Comparing 17mm lenses is in a video of its own
• 01:02 Using the Laowa 17mm F4 physical mounting
• 02:01 Testing with 100MP
• 02:12 Best apertures to use?
• 02:36 Physical features and usability
• 04:22 Using a fully manual lens
• 04:30 Setting image stabilisation
• 05:10 Maximum shift amounts
• 06:10 Vignetting and shift
• 07:35 Looking at the fronts of buildings – sharpness
• 08:48 Not much distortion
• 10:13 Looking at sample images – the look of 17mm
• 14:12 Detail in brickwork
• 16:32 Sunstars and flare?
• 19:00 Levelling the camera
• 22:45 More test images

There is a comparison between the Laowa 17mm tilt shift, the Canon TS-E17 and TTArtisan 17mm TS at  the 07:32 point in this video about why you should possibly distrust many lens reviews.

Should you trust lens reviews?

Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift Specifications

Laowa 35mm Tilt Shift MTF chart

Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift Optical design

Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift lens quality [and sensor type]

I’ve just the one example of the lens to test, so no detailed performance measurement data I’m afraid.

Since I’m testing the G mount version of the lens, the sensor is capturing more of the image circle of the lens, which is stated to be 67mm diameter.

An example showing the comparative scales of the image circle, and fields of view of unshifted sensors [FF and MF]. Note that this diagram does not reflect the actual field of view for this lens.

In the real world, lenses show fall off [vignetting] towards the edge of the image circle.

One way I test this is with a lightbox taking photos at different apertures and shift amounts.

This shows the light fall-off and any issues such as the sensor hitting/crossing the edge of the image circle.

The overall results are shown in this collection of images [click to enlarge]

Key things to note are the normal aperture related vignetting at the top, and the strong shift of the bottom two rows showing the solid edge of the image circle. Note how it’s a sharper edge at f/22.

As in the earlier example, just reduce the size of the frame to see how a 24x36mm sensor would stay within the lens 67mm image circle at the full 12mm of shift.

This shows why the G mount version of the lens has a suggested maximum ±8mm of shift.

Some actual shots outdoors show more

Click to enlarge

Sharpness and flare

In shooting at multiple apertures, the centre sharpness improves from f/4 to f/5.6 and a bit more at f/8, beyond this you start seeing a slight softening from diffraction. With modest shift f/8 is a better overall choice and at strong shift you might want f/11 if you’ve detail towards the corners. Of course, if you need the depth of field of shooting at f/22, there is nothing wrong, but you are likely to need some extra sharpening.

Any softness of the lens is of a form very amenable to reducing with modern AI sharpening tools, such as Topaz Photo AI

This example is a shifted corner shot at f/5.6 [click to enlarge and see at 100%] shot with 12mm of shift – well over the recommended limit of ±8mm

In using the lens take care to keep the sun off the front element, if not in shot. I’ve several examples of this in the videos.

Sunstars [here at f/8] are not intrusive or ragged.

Any wide lens takes care in controlling distortions and aberrations – the Laowa 17mm just works well and gave predictable results. I should imagine many of the limitations I see would simply not be so important on a full frame sensor,

Laowa 17mm Tilt Shift Lens: Feel and handling

The lens is very solidly built. Focus action is smooth.

The lens foot gave me no problems during use. Make sure you tighten the screws well – I might even have put some non-permanent thread-lok on the screws if it wasn’t a loan lens which had to be returned.

Movements are free, once you release the locks. I’d say they were a little too free, with the shift making the camera/lens likely to drop quite easily to full shift [for up/down orientation]. Where this could be a problem is that people will over tighten the locks, and this is a common problem for such lenses [of all makes].  Whilst there is a faint zero shift point detent, there isn’t one for tilt, so if not using tilt, make real sure you have not accidentally left the lens with a fraction of a degree of tilt. since that will affect image quality.

Optically, the lens is great to use – the full frame versions will give fully usable shift and are much less likely to show any edge/corner issues at full shift. That said, stick to ±8mm of shift on medium format sensors and you should be fine. Of course, the rather loose shift movement means that precise setting of shift is not as easy as it could be.

The tilt and shift controls are set in alignment, much like the original Canon TS-E lenses. Depending on how you use shift and tilt together, this may be an inconvenience. So for example, if you use vertical shift you can only tilt left/right, not so useful if you wanted to run the plane of focus along the ground.

With the GFX100S, the combination makes for a solid bit of kit – I was OK using the lens hand held [sensor IS can help a bit] and at night.

Review: Laowa 17mm Tilt-shift F4 Lens: pros and cons

Pros

• Excellent optics
• Solid build
• Wide range of lens mount options
• Lens foot reduces parallax issues
• Good value, especially for Medium Format
• Lens rotates on mount and in lens foot for tilt/shift in any direction/format

Cons

• Fully manual operation may discourage some
• Shift and tilt mechanisms could do with mechanical refinement
• Shift/tilt axes set in alignment

Learning more about tilt and shift?

There is a Tilt/Shift index page covering much of my related info on this site.

There is a full index of all my 60+ tilt/shift related videos on my detailed video index page.

My book about using tilt/shift lenses is now available.

If not in the UK check for import issues and maybe try an on-line bookshop.images].