berimbolo wrote:
In general, I don't think there has been a consensus on TC use on the big primes. Previously people have stated that the 1.4x is perfectly fine on the 600GM and 400GM, but I have read alternative takes lately. As someone considering the 400GM or 600GM, it would be nice to have a definitive answer, but I don't think that's possible for a number of reasons. For example, AF performance may be just fine for larger birds in flight, but maybe not for a swallow? IQ may be fine for sharing on social media, but maybe not for contests or prints? Who knows...
I don't think there is a lot of variation in the gear/optics or if it depends on the type of the bird, but there is great deal of variation in the operator behind the rig and the field conditions. Not claiming this is always the case but from the feedback from my clients and assessing their results, 99 out of 100 the sharpness loss at 1200mm is from poor conditions. With a lot of experience, one can immediately tell when heat shimmers are present, but first time shooting a long lens, the user may have no idea and blame it on the lens or TC.
to illustrate this point take look at the examples below. Images of the same bird from the same location at 1200mm, the bird was circling so miraculously I happened to get the same shot from two passes, one is soft but the other one is much better.
So what exactly happened? the answer is a breeze, this was a warm day and the earlier shot had shimmers but the breeze cleaned it up making a window to make acceptable images. Had it been a cooler day or a windy day I am confident the images would have been sharper than both of these
and swallow at 1200mm is not a problem, it takes years of practice to be able to find and track a swallow at 1200mm in the finder but it is possible
Feedback from Internet forums is a good starting point, I encourage you to purchase or rent the gear and use it for several months to form a better opinion. If you haven't shot with long lenses before, I recommend going on a workshop that is carefully chosen with the new gear so that you remove the other factors from the equation and see what the optics/gear can really do.
all of the factors mentioned here, some being our control, make shooting at 1200mm quite frustrating at times and reason not to like this combo, but when using in optimal conditions / technique I don't think anyone will be disappointed with the results.
Nov 10, 2023 at 12:53 PM
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