In this last image taken with this combination I felt that a dull, cold, gray, rainy winters day deserved the same dort of image (note the lack of contrast within the image). This is the sort of image I'm not to keen on. For me a B&W image must have contrast and real blacks to it. Monochrome images must be dynamic, have lots of contrast with shadows and form defining what the image is about.

But on the day I took this above image, I felt exactly like the image looks...flat!

The image above shows one of those scenes that produce some strange, twirly "I'm not sure I like that" sort of bokeh. Sure I nailed focus on the sign but the bokeh doesn't really appeal to me one little bit. I find this happens a lot with Voigtländer lenses and I try and avoid busy backgrounds when using them I'm not aying all Voigtländer lenses do this, but....

I thought I would post the monochrome image from yesterday alone and at a larger resolution so you can see the bokeh produced by this lens. Yes there are better lenses out there but for the price it's an ok lens. Note the specular hightlights within the trees. They're not really round and the background has a twisting effect to it. I have a couple of other Voigtländer lenses that do this which spoils the image somewhat; for me anyway.

A nice enough lens to use but the very long throw of the lens does slow you down a lot. To get to one ned of the manual focus end to the other I'm very nearly turning that ring about 360 degrees. It's the one caveat of this lens, otherwise it's nice enough. Can I recomend it? Well yes, but there are a few better 50mm lenses out there, the Zeiss Planar 50 f2 for one which performs exceptionally well on the Sony A7. It is dearer however so if money is a problem, go for this one.

Just a couple more posts about this lens. This was taken when the band was having a break so I had plenty of time to concentrate on this set of drums. I just liked the lighting at the time so I took a couple of shots to ensure I got a sharp one. I never take just one shot of anything (except when the camera is on a tripod and the light is fading fast).

Towards evening I got stuck with this band. Moving was not on the cards and I got a seat quite close to the band. I found out why as they started the next song. I had the main loudspeaker right in front of me and, believe me, it was loud. Nothing I could do about it though, it was the only free space in the house. Again, good music.

You can use this lens not only for portrait shots but for all sort of things. What struck me here with this shot of leaves floating down the river was the colour accuracy. The OM-D got this right and the rendition of the lens is wonderful.

There's quite a few bandstands around the river Main during the weekend, but they're so spread out that they don't interfere with each other. I spent around an hour with each band before moving to the next and I continued to do this all afternoon. When evening comes though, doing this is an impossibility because of the crowds. An estimated 3 million people attended during the weekend and moving around is a real problem.