Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1998/05/16
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]George, I've been shooting my kids' Little League for the past 5 years. As much as I love my M cameras, they are virtually useless for sports (don't start up about Viso's, LUGgers). The only use for the M might be for dug out candids or team photos. For actual game pictures, the 80-200 would be the minimum you should use. The 300 should be very useful. Use a monopod for camera support. I presume you are shooting color neg. Use 400 Fuji or Kodak during the daytime, 800 Kodak Max for evening or night games. The 80-200 will be good for shooting kids on base or pitching. The 300 is needed for shooting the batters and outfielders. Shoot wide open most of the time to keep your shutter speed up and to blur your background. I don't know what your SLR is, but autofocus is helpful, but not neccessary. I use a Nikon (God forbid!) F4 or F5, 80-200/2.8 and 300/4.5 EDIF. I also use the 400/5.6 and 560/5.6 Telyts with the Nikons using a special adapter. These are really excellent image wise, fast to use and don't cost anywhere near what the modern long lenses cost. I got both lenses at a total cost of less than $2,000. The Televit really works almost as good as AF. Anyway, this is probably getting into overkill for what you want to do. The main problem is reach, so use the longest lens you can get. Baseball is a good sport to shoot because it is more predictable than say, soccer. You know where the pitcher, batter and other players will be most of the time. You can focus and compose easier because of this. There isn't constant motion, so AF is not really neccessary. Use the monopod because with longer lenses you need the stability for optimum image quality and a tripod is too cumbersome. With practice, you should do just fine. Bill Rosauer