[Leica] Leica Digilux 2 @ 1600 :-)

[tedgrant at shaw.ca (Ted Grant)]

Howdy gang,

Here's a Leica Digilux 2 ASA "film ?" rating discovery. oh well OK,
sensitivity surprise! :-)

As many of you know on the Digilux 2 it's highest ASA is shown as 400. Well
that's true. However, if you set it at 400 and set the EV button to 2 stops
under exposed producing theoretically 1600, the camera along with PS after
down loading the memory card to computer produces some quite acceptable
images.

I was quite impressed after shooting at an indoor CFL football game in the
Vancouver Sky Dome stadium. Yep the image on the camera screen certainly
appears under-exposed. But when you put it up on the computer screen and
using PhotoShop with a few tweaks of levels and curves and by golly it comes
back just like it looked in the stadium and prints out quite well.

The whites are white and the face colours are quite acceptable. Noise? Well
I didn't hear any from the camera. Oh you want to no about the "grain
effect?" Forget it, it's basically non-existant certainly on 8.5 X 11 size
prints. I suppose if one wanted to get niggilly and wanted to make a big
fuss over it, you might see some "grain" in the turf areas and it was hard
for me to accept it was there when my son pointed out... "Yeah it kind of
looks like some "noise" effect on the turf."

Well I wish 1600 film came out with the little amount of "grain" look as
appeared from this manipulation of the Digilux 2's film sensitivity.

So maybe there's hope for the Digilux 2 yet as an available light kind of
camera after all, of course with a little help from PhotoShop! ;-)

Now I'm intrigued to see where I can go with this in B&W!  Will let you know
after the weekend.

ted