Several years ago I had issues with Blossom End Rot on long slender plum type tomatoes. It usually happens early in te bearing seaon if the weather is very hot and they are growing too fast. Extra calcium is needed to reduce BER and, it can be both applied to soil as well as calcium chloride mixed with water and sprayed on the foliage. A few tomnatoes after that looked fine, but when cut open, were all black inside where the seed cavities are. Being plum types, very little liquid and hard greenish black cores are not usefukl in canning. To avoid the blight next year. Don't plant tomatoes in the same area every year. Doing so will just culture teh soil for a new onset of the same nasty stuff from the year before. Since the blight issue, I never plant in the same locations anymore, and move my small tomato patch to different areas of the garden every year. The same with sweet cherry peppers, as last years insides were all dark color seeds and didn't ripen to red like they should. NEVER use that much oil in any home canning recipe unless its been approved, and not by grandma.

In the 'old days', many of the tomato plants have a lot more natural protection againt any blights. Today, with all the hundreds or varieties, its very hard to know which will grow well in a specific area. I recall growing stuffing tomatoes one year. Kind of like a cross between a big bell pepper with an empty cavity inside except for the seed cluster. The stuffing tomatoes looked good at first, but once the started to ripen to red, they got small spots on the skins that destroyed them very fast. If they were picked before the spots appeared and brought indoors, washed and allowed to sit on a counter overnight, the next day they would have many bad spots that quickly consumed them. Never again will I plant a stuffing tomato. My two favorite choices for tomato seeds is Totally Tomatoes and Tomato Growers. Both offer many kinds, and some are highly resistant to blights. Of course the store boughts are like baseballs and can take a lot of banging around, but thats fine if they are intended to be handled a lot and shipped a long distance away.

natal pic gives you a good look at the color range they go through as the ripen - especially the bowl in the back on the right. Any hint of green or even the lighter colored gold ones need to ripen more. But indirectly yes, loss of leaves can affect flavor somewhat because of the increased sun exposure (and sun scald) it allows on the fruit. The higher internal temp it causes inside the fruit sort of 'cooks' the sugars changing the taste. Plus any plant that is stressed by disease has a compromised circulatory system and that too can affect flavor. Dave

To me, some of it looks like insect damage, and the third picture down looks like it could be Early Blight or some kind of bacterial spotting, or septoria leaf spot. The lesions look a bit small for EB to be honest. It's hard for me to say what it is exactly. Here's a link to a website that can help you make a more detailed diagnosis: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/publications/tomatoproblemsolver/leaf/ Also, here's a link to a recently posted discussion on treatment for EB/Septoria (if that turns out to be your issue): http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tomato/msg06225646932.html?10 Hope that helps, Michael