Home Forums Gear Photography 1.4 X Extender Seems Quite Fine

Took Cookie out for a drive toward our office this AM and she put her birthday gift behind a Canon 500mm. Yes, one has to make a little more effort at holding things stable, but here's a sampling of images taken from the window of her rig. Looks like it can bring in some cracker jack detail. These birds were all around 50 yds out. A bit gray with no shadows this morning, but still plenty of fines.

She tried about a 1 stop underexposure bias on the geese, and it seemed to help a bit with the detail. Typically they're heavily washed out.

Worked seamless with the 500 but one has to use manual focus with the Canon 100-400. I'm out of gift ideas now, so she's going to have to take up another hobby for the balance of her life events. Thanks for your advice here, as I think the extender will get some use.

Pintail drake


Rosse's Goose


And another blue phase Ross.


Have a good one,

Top notch photos! No money wasted on that birthday gift.

Looks good... Maybe it me but it looks like you need a bit of fine tuning...

to me ( on my monitor ) I see this...

first photo where the white/and grey feather meet (back 1/3 of the duck) look more in focus than the eye...

Second photo the near side wing feathers look more in focus than the eye...

same on the third photo...

Given the low light this could have been you focus point but just something I noticed...

other than that, great photo's, especially the first one...

also, not sure if the first one is cropped or not but if you could get the full reflection and still have the whole bird, that would be neat!

Cocadori:

Thanks for the comments, and I'll pass them along. An issue I noticed when looking through some of her images the other night was an especially shallow depth of field, and I accepted some compromise when selecting these three shots. Metadata isn't handy at the moment, so I've no idea what the f-stops were. I'll try to run that down this evening.

The pintail were typically walking away, and I rejected several images where the tail was blurred, the face was good, and several others for just the reverse. One simply could not nail down focus for a full duck length.

Looking at stubble or grass in the goose images, depth of field appears to be only a couple inches, and they're not exactly stable targets for focusing either. I could hear constant chirping sounds from the camera as she was tweaking the focus and then attempting to nail a shot when their heads popped up for a brief look around.

With that much glass, there's probably not much depth to be had anyway. If she can get a sunny day here before our herbage gets too tall, it will be interesting to see if a little more light and an f-stop or two can help shape things up a bit.

It's a frustrating issue with other critters as well. With face on deer, one can nail the eyes, and miss focus on the nose and antlers.

I do think the negative exposure bias helped add some form and detail to the whites on the normal looking geese though. In the past, they been mostly burned out white blobs.

Have a good one,

DOF will be mostly controlled by the fstop... shooting at 5.6 ( where I usually shoot wildlife) you need to focus on the eye. Many times the rest of the animal may be soft. Shooting at f8 typically solves this. The closer you are to the subject the smaller the sliver of DOF.

BIG glass magnifies all the "issues" as well... but once you practice with it enough you'll start to know where ya need to be... or just crop the image to make you look like you tried it... ;-p I know a guy who does that... hmmmm.... ;-)

Cocadori:
I looked at the metadata last night and the pintail was taken at F5.6 and the geese at 7.1 again with about a 1 stop negative bias on the geese. From memory, I think the shutter was at 1/700th so there should be some room to go down an F-stop or two. Cookie tends to go for speed though to freeze the image. If she's got plenty of time, then she'll start playing with settings, but our wild critters don't seem to sit and pose much. Need to get a box of Cheerios and head for a city park somewhere or drive out and leave her in the popup blind.

I did find a shoveler pair from the same outing in clear water where she thought the reflection worthy of capture. Those guys have some serious mandibles and a variety of feathers that could contribute to my fly tying efforts. Need to look for one next fall.

We're having a local tourist drawing waterfowl festival this weekend, so the influx of birders will probably have our fowl constantly on the move.


1/1000 F5.6 ISO 250 EOS 70D Canon 500mm with 1.4 extension.

Have a good one,

Ahhh... fly tying...yes...! Used to be a hobby until I picked up the camera again... I see some potential on the side of that fowl ;-) Good on ya!

Hard to say where the focus point is on this photo but the side looks sharper than the eye...

I'm not sure if it is correct or not but I like to shoot birds at f8 if I can so I get tip to tip sharpness....