BEFORE YOU READ FURTHER ON: This is not a full review, I’m sure you’ll find other nerd stuff around. This is just a statement of how I found the lens performing for me in my general macro work. I had the lens from Laowa team, but as a test/borrow lens and I know they truly want reviewers to be honest, so I’ll be.

The lens in short: Optically speaking this lens is awesome and I liked it as much as I already love the 85mm ultra macro and other Laowa lenses. It’s a 58mmm yes, but you’re never too close to the subject and I love this focal lenght for not-ultra macro photography on “medium size small subjects” like frogs and small reptiles. If you like macro with natural light, nice bokeh, this is a lens for you.

A longer reading:

This new Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO is not a minor “mirrorless friendly” update of their older 60mm 2x, but it’s a great improvement in every aspect. It comes with the same specifications of the 85mm ultra macro but with a wider maximum aperture of f/2,8 (the 85mm is a f/5,6). This means it’s a larger and heavier lens than it’s longer cousin. So, if your need is to have a tiny-weeny macro lens and you don’t mind a closer minimum aperture, just stick to the 85mm cause it’s the smaller you can get on a full frame body right now.

But if you’re one of those photographers who like a nice bokeh and to stay closer to the subject for a “wider” perception of the frame, then this is a lens to consider.

WHAT I LIKED
I like the very solid build quality and the focus movement of the Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO, which is VERY smooth and useful. The overall quality of the lens is outstanding even at f/16 at 2x (of course, you can’t remove the diffraction, so for superior quality you have to stick to f/11 or even f/8 on the aperture ring, while at 2x), at least when a deeper DOF is required and you don’t want to stack (I hate focus stacking and always avoid it whenever possible).
I also like the angle of view and I normally like to use 50-60mm macro lenses instead of longer focal. Although I’m not a “bokeh master” I really liked how the lens gives it a nice and smooth (but not soft) way. Another thing I liked is that my test lens didn’t have a lens hood, but it managed very well the backlights and only rarely I had to put a hand to avoid flares and ghosts of a backlighting flash.

WHAT I DIDN’T LIKE
I’m one of those that always carry too much in the backpack, but in the end I tend to use everything I took with me, so…. This macro lens is a little too large and heavy for me nowadays. It occupies the same place where I can easily fit my Laowa 25mm together with my 85mm (don’t do this at home…). If you compare it to the AF Nikkor Z 50mm macro, it seems a giant (see photo below), even if the build quality of the Nikon 50mm is crap (it seems a toy, while the Laowa 58mm f/2.8 2x Ultra Macro APO is real metal and very well built). I really didn’t like the aperture ring position so close to the camera, cause I continue to accidentally touch it while moving and i end up moving it from f/11 to f/100000000. It’s too close and too smooth to me, so I would have appreciated it to be at least less easy to turn with a slight touch of one finger.
Last thing, but this is true for every manual macro lens on the market: it’s very difficult to focus on a moving (even slightly moving) subject on a mirrorless camera, at f/11 while at 2x, so it’s really time for Laowa to build their first AF lens. I end up using the AF Nikon macros with Raynox lenses when I deal with moving or “one shot one kill” subjects, if I want to be sure i got the eye in focus. But if you photograph still subjects most of the time, this is not a issue and the quality is higher.