A few more with the Laowa 17mm on the 50R. These were all 9-shot bracketed and I also had a circular polariser on the lens - a big advantage of having a UWA with a filter thread. I can't stack the polariser with the lens protection filter without seeing the rim in the corners but on its own it is fine.
A few thoughts if people are interested (or you can just skip to the photos!).
The lens is sharp. As sharp as a Fuji? Difficult to say. There is significant improvement at f11 over f4 with the Laowa and given the weight - it is quite hefty - all my shots to date are on a tripod at iso100. At f16 (these photographs) the sharpness is very good indeed. And even allowing for the saturation effect of HDR the colour draw is very nice. To be fair I maintain that the sensor on the 50R/S is about as good as it gets so I suspect you could mount the bottom of a milk bottle and get nice shots (joke, of course).
I feel a bit disloyal saying this but I always found my Fuji 23mm when it owned it, not wide enough. I loved the sharpness and colour draw of that lens but for architecture I was compelled to use my XF 10-24 on the X-T3 where I would have preferred to use the 50S (when I had it). Now, I can take the architectural shots I want with the 50R and I'll probably leave the XT-3/10-24 at home.
As you can see 17mm is almost too wide but given the immense crop-ability of the 50R sensor (and I guess even more so, the GFX100!) it really is not a problem. You can get a level horizon in most cases and chop out the bit you don't need and still be left with an enormous image. The lens does produce wonderful panoramic opportunities and I keep cropping these out of both landscape and portrait images.
Worth pointing out it is a manual lens but at f16, for architecture, there is little point in doing anything other than leaving the lens on infinity. I did try playing around with hyperfocal distance with near shots but I haven't got any conclusions about that yet. When I was shooting with my Hasselblad SWC I eventually gave up on hyperfocal and only shot on infinity and improved my sharpness no end for architecture - so I am carrying that experience over onto this lens.
The cost to me of the lens (with a seasonal discount) was about GBP500+ less than a second user GF 23mm or GBP 1300 less than a new one. Quite a compelling financial case.
All the photographs are taken on the Royal London Hospital estate in Whitechapel, in East London, England. The top two are the early 20th century medical buildings which in their day were state of the art but now are scheduled for demolition (shame!). The final one is the 1960s Dental Institute which was also an important architectural development but has now been replaced with a brand new 21st century building nearby.