Laowa Ranger S35 Compact Cine Zoom Series Announced – First Look

by Francesco AndreolaApril 16^th, 2024

At NAB 2024, Laowa is showcasing a new series of compact Super35 mm cinema zoom lenses, consisting of a 11-18mm, 17-50mm, and 50-130mm. My colleague Graham took the change to visit their booth to learn more about this zoom trio.

Last summer, Laowa introduced two compact full-frame cinema zoom lenses, namely the Ranger 28-75mm T2.9 and 75-180mm T2.9. These were followed shortly after by a lighter version, simply called Laowa Ranger Lite. My colleague Nino had the chance to play around with the Ranger zooms and found them to be great all-rounder lenses, especially given their price range. In case you missed it, make sure to check out his review here.

Now, on the show floor at NAB, we caught up with Marcus Kwong from Laowa to learn more about their new Ranger S35 offerings. Let’s take a look!

Laowa Ranger S35 cine zooms – features

The Laowa Ranger S35 series currently consists of three zooms – 11-18mm, 17-50mm, and 50-130mm – thus offering an optical zoom range greater than 11x in total. All three lenses share the same fast aperture of T2.9.

The mount is user-interchangeable and you can choose between ARRI PL, Canon RF, FUJIFILM X, Leica L, Nikon Z, and Sony E mount options. Also, it’s nice to see that the PL mount doesn’t interfere with rear ND filter adapters, like the MOFAGE POCO pictured below, for example.

The lenses feature unified positions for focus, iris, and zoom gears, and they are designed to be lightweight and compact. Indeed, according to Markus, they only weigh around 725g/1.6lbs each. The front outer diameter of the lens is 80mm and there’s also a 77mm thread to accomodate screw-on filters.

Optically, the Laowa Ranger S35 zooms are claimed to perform well in terms of focus breathing, sharpness, and chromatic aberration. According to Laowa, the lenses have a parfocal design and good close focus capabilities.

Price and availability

These three Laowa Ranger S35 zooms will be officially launched at the beginning of May. The retail price is set at $1,999 per lens or $5,700 for the 3-lens set.

For more information, please visit Laowa Cine’s website here.

Have you ever shot on the full-frame Laowa Ranger zooms? What’s your take on these new S35 offerings? Let us know your thoughts in the comment section below!