So I tried the Sigma 500mm F5.6 with the 2X Teleconverter and...
It does actually work, the only compromise seems to be the lack of Autofocus,
You have to cycle the power once or twice but once it tells you the aperture of the lens, it means that there is power and both the fantastic stabilization and the manual focus work. In the EXIF data, it will report the aperture (without the 2x multiplier), 500mm focal length (instead of 1000mm) and the lens brand and model.
This is great for perched birds when you need the extra reach. The lens performs very well with the 2x, I cannot really see a degradation in quality.
I have a gallery of my photos here at full 61MP resolution, unedited except basic color correction and the standard 40% sharpness in Lightroom:
I tried to hit critical focus onto the eyes. You can imagine 40-50% hit rate at 1000mm is impressive, but the lens has EXCELLENT stabilization, its rock solid, and A7RV's EVF resolution also helps.
My hit rate is about 40-50% birds that don't sit still. Something like an owl or an eagle would be a piece of cake to manually focus onto.
There was one strange thing that happened though: I attached the teleconverter, turned off the camera and when it turned back on, something in the lens was clicking briefly. This might be the teleconverter somehow interfering with the rear glass, though there is a LOT of clearance back there as the lens is meant to take teleconverters. I manually focused from near all the way to infinity and there was no interference with the teleconverter by the rear element. This only happened once through 4-5 times taking the TC on and off again. There must be an order to select MF on the lens, put the TC on and restart the camera that works optimally without confusing the camera too much.
Please let me know if you want me to try anything. As it stands now, this and the A7RV might be the most resolving power we can get with Sony apart from 400/600 GMs and the 2x. It is really too bad Sony continues to limit third party lenses.
Jun 06, 2024 at 11:12 PM
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