[Leica] baseball shoot! :-) Leica and digital working like a dream!

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Hi Crew,
Well despite dragging my cold ridden body and head from home for the start 
of my Grandson's baseball season I'm elated I did, considering the results. 
:-)

Just amazing detail and sharpness with the 80-200 R f4.0 zoom lens and the 
20D digital. Actually I'd expected some eye opener images after the results 
I had from Hawaii in January with this camera-lens combination. And without 
question once again, amazing results! The Leica lens is the secret without 
question.

Camera ASA 100, lens wide open f.4.0 shooting through the wire mesh fence 
and not a drop of image deterioration! Well that happens with any long glass 
by going wide open and putting the lens right on the fence. Obviously not 
the glass touching the wire but the lens barrel doesn't matter and it works 
like magic and there isn't any fence between you and the players when you 
look through the viewfinder or at prints later. Or slides or whatever film, 
digital capture stuff you use.

Because I was dragging my ass I didn't take any long glass, 280 or 400. 
However in a couple of weeks when I'm back in town I'll shoot with long 
glass and I expect to have smashing good images once again.

Considering I've been covering the young lad for many seasons from T-Ball to 
now minor league shooting transparency and or colour negative film I have to 
say without question. At the moment looking at these digital 11X16 prints 
off the Epson 2200 you couldn't convince me to ever go back to shooting film 
for this type of assignment!  Pity! But it's just plain old fashion honesty 
and the truth about the quality.  And the killer really is........... 
everything is done by auto! Other than my manual focus of the lens!

In Photoshop it's all auto-levels, auto contrast, auto-colour for a quick 
peek and if I don't like the look it's delete auto-colour back to what came 
out of the camera. :-) KISS baby!  Damn I love it, as it's so dang easy I 
can't figure out why some folks have to screw around with all the other 
fixin's :-) And yep it's all jpeg, none of that raw stuff either.

Skin tones you wouldn't believe, the likes I've never seen on film unless 
shot in a studio on large film and controlled lighting conditions.

Actually the results made me feel a tad better, now if I get a good nights 
sleep I might just be vertical and breathing in the morning. ;-)  If not, 
it's hasta la vista baby! ;-) Nice knowing you all! :-)

good night,
ted