My “11 from 2011”.

Inspiration, Life's Little Moments

My 11 favourite images from 2011, with a couple of bonus images included.

—Peter.

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Thanks,

—Peter.

Q and A: Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4.

2012, Q&A, Teaching point, Voigtländer 40mm f/1.4 Nokton

This arrived via email this morning and I was about to respond as I usually do, but then realized, I often get this question, so why not turn my response into a post that will hopefully be of help to other readers?

 

Hi. I read your review for the The Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4. and found it very helpful. I have this lens with a Leica M9 and don’t seem to be getting the results you pictured. Did you alter your M9 shots in Lightroom or do you have the lens detection set a specific way in the M9 for the The Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4? My shots tend to come out overexposed when I use it open to 1.4. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks and keep up the good work. Your photos and reviews are great.

– Adam.

First of all, thank you Adam for your very kind words.

Now, regarding your questions…  I post-process all of my files in Apple’s Aperture and then do my final colour tweaking in Nikon’s Capture NX2.  On the M9, I have lens detection set to “auto”, but I do not code any of my uncoded lenses, so for lenses like the Nokton 40/1.4 the camera isn’t recognizing anything and is therefore NOT making any adjustments.  For focal lengths longer than 35mm, there really is no need for coding anyway, unless you’re hoping to correct for vignetting or are interested in generating focal length EXIF data.

Finally, I always shoot in manual mode (controlling for aperture and shutter speed) and often manually set the ISO.   I never rely on the camera’s metering.  I’ve done this with ALL of my cameras, including Nikon, Canon, Sigma, etc., because no camera – not matter how sophisticated – truly understands what your “mind’s eye” is seeing when you attempt to create an image, and it’s better that you take full control of all the variables.

I hope this helps.

Thanks again for writing Adam, and Happy New Year,

—Peter.

The top 5 posts of 2011, and thank you.

Inspiration

According to the stats, these were the Top 5 most viewed posts of 2011:

  1. My top 25 photos of 2011.
  2. The Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4.
  3. The Voigtländer Nokton 35mm f/1.2.
  4. The Leica M9… for sports?
  5. Over-processed, not.

Honourable mention goes to the post, The Konica Hexanon 60mm f/1.2, Special Edition, as a late year write-up that proved to be quite popular.

This site started as a personal project in April of 2011 and I only started posting regularly in late June.  In the subsequent six months, I uploaded over 1,000 images and attached brief commentary to most of them (my feeble attempt to see beyond the images and offer some insight into the moment captured).  In the same period, there were over 100,000 views from all over the world…

The truth is, I’d continue posting and writing even if nobody was watching, but it’s nice to know that I’m not operating in a vacuum 🙂

So, to those of you who have stopped by and graced the site with a comment or two, I would like to offer my sincerest gratitude and convey a heartfelt “Thank you.” 

—Peter.