Venus Optics has fully unveiled two lenses that do something no commercial optic has managed before: zoom through extreme macro magnifications while staying in focus. The Laowa Asken 17.5mm f/1.7 5-10x Ultra Macro APO is the world’s first commercial 5-10x macro lens, and it arrives alongside the Asken 45mm f/2.8 1-5x Ultra Macro APO. Both were revealed in full on 31 July with orders already open. Details are on Venus Optics’ site.
The headline is the magnification, but the clever part is the parfocal design. Conventional extreme macro means picking a magnification, focusing, and starting again if you want to go closer. These lenses hold focus through the entire zoom range — 1x to 5x on the 45mm, 5x to 10x on the 17.5mm — so you can push in on a subject without refocusing or repositioning the camera. They also maintain a fixed working distance throughout, which sounds like a technicality until you realise it means the front element never creeps towards your subject as you zoom. For anyone who has crashed a lens into an insect or knocked a carefully arranged tabletop set, that alone justifies the design.
Lighting at these magnifications is the other perennial problem, and the 17.5mm has an unusual answer. At 10x the lens sits roughly 22mm from its subject, leaving no room for a conventional light. Laowa’s solution is a Coaxial Light Block, an accessory that shines light through the optical axis so it arrives from the same direction as the lens — borrowed from machine vision, and producing even, shadowless illumination where nothing else would fit.
Both use apochromatic designs to control chromatic aberration, cover full-frame, and come in multiple mounts with cinema-housed PL versions alongside the photo variants. The series has already picked up a TIPA Award on the strength of the prototypes shown earlier this year. Note the name change: these were announced at NAB 2026 as the Axon series and have since been renamed Asken.
This is a niche tool and makes no apology for it — the audience is scientific, industrial and dedicated macro photographers rather than general users. But it fills a genuine gap between conventional macro lenses and microscopes, and does it with a mechanical solution rather than a compromise. Laowa continues to build the lenses nobody else will, and we’d love to spend some time with one.
Laowa Asken Ultra Macro APO series: Specifications
Asken 17.5mm f/1.7 5-10x Ultra Macro APO: magnification 5x to 10x, parfocal, fixed working distance of approximately 22.5mm, apochromatic design, full-frame coverage, optional Coaxial Light Block for shadowless illumination.
Asken 45mm f/2.8 1-5x Ultra Macro APO: magnification 1x to 5x, parfocal, fixed working distance of approximately 40.35mm, apochromatic design, full-frame coverage.
Both: available in multiple mounts, with photo and cinema-housed PL variants.
Awards: TIPA Award 2026 winner.
Price and availability
Both lenses were unveiled in full on 31 July 2026 and orders are open. Indicative pricing given at NAB put the 45mm f/2.8 at around $500, with the cinema-housed PL version nearer $1,500, and the 17.5mm slightly above the 45mm. UK pricing is to be confirmed — we’ll update this story once it’s available.
