Japanese Garden

In Search of A Perfect Picture

I've encountered few issues over these few days. First of all, dusty lens! Just found out  that the Voigtlander I just bought have dust on the inside. But actually this is normal for any lenses. I thought it was the dust which caused spots on my shots, but turns out that it is the sensor itself caught dust. Now I must clean the sensor myself.
Then there's the autofocus problem on my Tamron. I suspect it was the PDAF algorithm since CDAF is perfectly fine.

Given the experiences, I come to a conclusion that, like life, there is no perfect lens (and photographic forums around the internet confirm this. Amen) But there's always a good news at the end of it, right ? Right ?! Yep! I just bought the carbon fiber tripod that I need (not want.. I swear :P), and the second GM firmware for my iPad runs without getting a WiFi problem anymore.

New Lens! Voigtlander Nokton 58mm/f1.4

I just got a new lens last week. I was very excited because of the technical review at photozone rate this lens as one of the best lenses. Sure enough after I try it, the lens produce stunning images!

Even everyday objects came out beautiful. Its a manual focus lens in Nikon F mount, with aperture control and metering. I think its a bit overexposed for my liking though.

On my Nikon :)

See.. the lens produce nice images that just leaps at you. I had to sell my Voigtlander Classic 35mm to fund this lens. Nevertheless.. I have no regret :) This lens is highly recommended. Its sharp wide open, nice OOF and good color rendition. Cmon, what else would you ask for ? ;)

Lenses

My lens list so far :
Nikkor 70-300G
Tamron 17-50mm / f2.8

I think I'm quite happy with the Tamron. Just got back from a holiday. Versatile and capable lens.
Now if only the photographer was equally capable ;)

I'm considering a prime or two, possibly 35 and/or 50mm.

Model, lens and Lightroom.

Had my first outdoor model shoot last Saturday, the model was beautiful and friendly, to say the least ;)
I learn a lot of thing from the session. Having brought three lenses, two of which are native micro four thirds lenses and one manual focus lens, in the end I only use one lens. Tried the 20mm pancake first. Hmm... nope.. too far. Next was 14-45 kit lens. The problem is this kit lens produced blurry images!! What?!?!? It suppose to auto focus, right? Right?!? Honestly I don't know what the cause of the problem, but I don't have time to waste. So I switched quickly to Nokton VC 35mm/f1.4.

My Panasonic GF-1 with VC Nokton Classic 35mm

I got about one thirds of good pictures out of my camera. By good I mean well focused image with good lighting and composition. I found out that at f1.4 the lens will produce slightly soft results, which is the problem for the rest of the images. I don't have the exact information because being a mechanical lens, it doesn't feed any data to the camera to be saved as EXIF data. But the lens produce beautiful images nonetheless.

I personally prefer to shoot raw because there are much more dynamic range available for adjustment.
And that is where Adobe LightRoom 3 come into play. I'm impressed with this software, and its the first expensive software I will buy, other than the OS itself three years ago.
See the difference ?

RAW (left) and processed image (right)

What really helps me is the ease of use and workflow process. I took about 300+ shots that morning. All I have to do is import all the RAW files into the catalog and tweak them with a few clicks of  buttons or some slider adjustment. In the above picture, I corrected the white balance and few light adjustment. I haven't been able to get significant noise reduction though.

She picked this picture for her tweet.

Update: I took the plunge and bought LR3 this morning.. yeaay!

CV Nokton 35/f1.4

I love this lens!!! I bought used lens in second hand market for $400, and still have 6 month warranty left. B&H list new lens for $559.
What I like most about this lens is the beautiful, classic bokeh. This lens is commonly used with Leica rangefinder cams, so now I can say my pictures have Leica-ish nuance in it. :)


I'm still struggling to use full manual mechanical lens to get a sharp focus wide open. I'm not adept at zone focusing, but perhaps the use of lens adapter affected the focus range distance. So you're not always getting focus at the stated distance.



The images produced with this lens often has creamy pastel-like colors and consistently have more grains than  the 20mm Panasonic lens. But the amazing thing is you can post process the images and adjust the exposure +2EV without much degradation.

Anyway.. now I have 20 Gigabytes of raw file images in my hard drive, need to buy extra storage soon!

Nokton 1.1

Should I buy a second hand Nokton f/1.1? My wallet is already burning in fire.. not mentioned future travel plans =D