Voigtländer 12mm and Sony NEX 7

Wat Pa Kittayanusorn, Khon Kaen, Thailand
Wat Pa Kittayanusorn, Khon Kaen, Thailand

There have been a few reviews of the Voigtländer 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical Ultra-Wide Heliar, attached to a Sony NEX 7 via an M-mount adapter (here, here and here). (NOTE: This lens is no longer available from Voigtländer. There is however, a new version with a native E-mount here). The biggest problem is the magenta vignetting that occurs with this lens/body combination. I was lucky enough to have been given the Voigtländer 12mm for Christmas and I've always enjoyed shooting with an ultra-wide. I loved my Nikkor 14-24mm - although it was mammoth in size.

Voigtländer 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical Ultra-Wide Heliar
Voigtländer 12mm f/5.6 Aspherical Ultra-Wide Heliar

Further down is the Lightroom 4.0 correction that can be used to remove the magenta cast. This lens is fun. With such a wide view and generally great depth of field, manual focusing is not an issue. And despite my earlier critical review of the NEX 7, I'm loving the small and light camera bag I get to carry now. Everything's nice and compact, and a lot more discrete than my previous in-your-face DSLR gear.

NephewsHere's a screen shot of the correction I apply in Lightroom which takes less than a second...

Lightroom Correction for Voigtlander 12mm

The setting above dials down the Purple Hue in the Color correction panel - and the magenta cast is gone.

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Comments

Another elegant solution is an app called CornerFix:

https://sites.google.com/site/cornerfix/

Available for Mac and Windows, it allows you to create a profile for each lens and it will adjust complex color cast issues from wide angle lenses (or any lens). Works on DNG files from any camera.

Thanks John. Although I've not experimented with it a lot yet, Adobe Lightroom 5 also now has a radial gradient tool, which means with a little experimenting, I think a 'cornerfix' preset could be created for a given lens/body combination.