Registered: May 02, 2005
Total Posts: 8010
Country: United States
So I bought a Canon FD 2x TC today. I've had a cheap Tamron 2x for FD for a while, and it's ok, but not great. I will use it predominantly with my FD 50-300mm f/4.5L, which is surprisingly good. I'll probably try it on my 200mm f/2.8 as well, but this TC is for 300mm+ lenses. To my surprise, even with the 2x, imgae quality is decent. Now, it's not going to set records wide open or anything, but it gets a fair amount of detail. Stopping down just 2/3 stop to f/11 (f/5.6 on the lens) increases contrast a bit and improves resolution. I didn't get home until after dark and Moonrise isn't until 1AM, so I had to test indoors. Less than ideal...at 1200mm effective, even on a sturdy carbon fiber tripod and A/S clamp, ANY vibration is visible. I used 2 second timer, but who knows if there's some impact from the very slow shutter speeds.
Anyway, I did this little test, putting a can of cat food on my mantle, and taking some test shots from about 20 feet away.
This is the scene at 50mm (100mm FF equivalent FOV):
This is the scene at 600mm (1200mm FF equivalent FOV) Wide open:
100% crop wide open (a little soft, but you can still see the texture in the metal of the can):
100% crop at f/11:
And a shot of my daughter (1/2 second exposure):
And at MFD (pretty good magnification), wide open:
100% crop of above:
While it's not ultra-sharp (who would expect it to be)...it's darn impressive for a 6x zoom lens from 1984 with a 2x TC from the 70s on a very pixel dense sensor. This would likely be quite sharp for some decent sized prints.
