70-300mm + 1.4X TC. Tell me what you honestly think? Sample photo's inside.

[ferris57]

Bought a super cheap 1.4tc on ebay last week because it was cheap more than having a use for it. I tried it on a 70-300mm sigma today.

Here's the first photo I took. Overcast, gloomy day as normal here. I was probably 40 feet away. Hand held at the full 420mm. Iso was pretty high 800 I think. F5.6 +1 stop for the tc. Shutter speed about 80 I think. Cropped and saved as a jpeg so reduced in quality very slighty, but no post processing (I think a touch of unsharp mask would improve it though).

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Sadg02/bird3.jpg

here's a crop at actual size:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Sadg02/bird4.jpg

The blue shimmer on it's feathers was actually there, it's not been introduced by the lens.

It's very soft but I think that might have been down to me as much as the lens combo and in better light/on a tripod I'd imagine it would be sharper. The colours and contrast seem not too bad though considering.

What do you think?

The way everyone talks about how bad a tc is on a 70-300mm zoom I was expecting it to be laughable and it doesn't look too bad to me. Maybe I'm just easilly pleased :lol:

For amateurs like me and just capturing a photo of something unusual when you don't have a long enough lens (or don't want to spend £300+ on something you might not use a whole lot) I think it seems ok.

I wonder how a photo taken at 300mm with the sigma, digitally zoomed up to the same size would have compared though? maybe it would have been as good.

[downhillbiker]

Other than the honking great blade of grass, it looks great to me. That said, I'm not initiated in the ways of nature photography (if you're pheasant had been astride a bike, or rocking out on a stage, I would have been more critical!)

[ferris57]

Other than the honking great blade of grass
:lol: It's actually a bambo cane I stuck in the ground about 2 mins before I took the photo :doh:

I was hoping to entice my resident robin into posing for me. I'd moved back and got into position and was just focusing on the cane so I'd be ready when out of nowhere the Pheasant wandered into shot :) snapped that photo then started messing around with the white balance (which he heard) and by the time I got another shot off this was my view of him :lol:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Sadg02/bird6.jpg

[Sam]

It looks a little soft but then if you were shooting at 1/80s handheld then you have steadier hands than me lol. I'd say you had a bargain

[puddleduck]

The way everyone talks about how bad a tc is on a 70-300mm zoom I was expecting it to be laughable and it doesn't look too bad to me. Maybe I'm just easilly pleased

Can I be honest and say if you think thats sharp, get to SpecSavers? :)

If you are happy with it, thats another matter - but for wildlife you need a critically sharp eye, and even in your web shot, its not sharp. Where was your focus point?

There not any fine detail in your shot, although it could be motion blur. I've had reasonable shots on a 70-300 (and for the money the 70-300 AF-G is just fine) with a 1.4x TC, but this sort of thing only looks good until you compare it with other (much more expensive) glass :)

Well you asked for honesty, you got it :) For what you paid though, it was a good deal though..!

[PaulDCocker]

I think for handheld they look great, and as a beginner (same as me) and for the price you paid, I think it's definately shows promise.

I don't aspire to be a pro, I just want pleasure from my expensive hobby :D

[ferris57]

This is my point. I know it's very soft, I said so right from the beggining (I still think it would be a lot sharper if I'd focused better, there'd been been better light and I'd been able to use faster shutter speeds or put it on a tripod). It's also not a great photo, it was just meant as a quick example.

I'm not saying the results are great, they're not. But In my opinion they're better than they're made out to be and for a number of begginers, like myself, I think they'd be happy enough using a 70-300mm and a tc despite serious photographers saying they wouldn't, at least in the short term and especially considering the cost. Given most people start of with some version of a 70-300mm.

Take the normal progression of someone who buys a dslr for the first time. They get a 70-300mm and the kit lens. Then they see pretty bird photo's on forums like this and Think I'd love to take pics like that. They can't get close enough using their 70-300mm and they realise they either need to become a ninja to sneak up on stuff, hide behind things or that they need a bit more range.

What are their options? If they don't want to spend £400+, which very few people do having just spent £400-£600 at least already. They find out about tc's and think great! only £50 but they look to see if it'll work first and Get told the results would be terrible and it's not worth trying. Tc's are only worth using on expensive fast primes and expensive zooms. Exactly what happened to me. They don't just say the results would be soft. They say, there will be serious colour/contrast issues, af won't work, it'll make the lens so slow as to be unsusable etc and that's just not been what I've found.

So anyway, they write off the tc option and then they find the sigma 135-400mm or the 170-500mm. They're very heavy, but ok for £250 second hand. I would say it's the cheapest option that still gives quite sharp results. I bought the 135-400mm because I managed to get it for £200.

Then there's a prime like the 300 f4 with a tc. Brillant at 300mm (again though begginers think I've got a 300mm I'm pretty happy with) and works quite well with a tc. This gets quite soft when you add a tc as well though if you read reviews and costs about £400+ used. Also I personally at the time didn't want to be restricted to a fixed focal range as I didn't know what distances I would be shooting at. I suspect a lot of people think the same. This isn't a big deal when you have a few lenses in you're bag but if you're just starting out and only have 1 or 2 this is an issue.

That leaves the bigma. £400 used. Great bang for buck ratio. weighs a ton though and really needs a tripod, which isn't ideal for everyone. God forbid you wanted to buy any of these new you're looking at £500-600+.

Not everyone want's to spend that starting out or can afford to. I couldn't, which was why I bought the 135-400mm, again despite being told it was junk. Yet again it was fine for me. I wasn't printing above a4. I'm not a pro, hell I'm not even any good :) I'm just learning and for that it was fine. It allowed me to do what I wanted which was to fill the frame with a reasonably sharp shot and blurred background. Here's a couple of shot's I took with it:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Sadg02/tit2.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v242/Sadg02/midge3.jpg

Perfect, that was all I wanted at the time. They're not going to win any prizes but I was happy with them.

Coming back to the tc, for £30-£40 they could get results that I think a lot of people strating out would be happy with for the money and that are better than they are led to believe.

I sold all my kit last year after only having it for a few months. Bought a d50 again a few weeks ago and am strating out again. I was going to buy a tempory 135-400mm or a 170-500mm to use again until I'd saved enough for something like a 200-400vr/80-400mm os or a 100-300mm +2x tc but I think I'll make do with the cheapo tc combo and then make the far bigger upgrade next year.

Andy, your wildlife photo's are amazing. In my opinion they tend to be the best posted on the site.I'm sure you'd agree that a part of what can make a good photo "pop" is the quality of lens. Now am I right in thinking you mainly use primes? occasionally with tc's? and I think you used to use a sigma 100-300mm. All great lenses and of course that's the ideal. But how much have you spent on lenses? The 100-300mm alone is what £500+ new? I know because everytime I've noticed you mention what lens you've used to take a photo I've thought "that's the IQ I'm looking for" and gone and seen if I could afford it, and invariably I can't :lol:

I think the better quality lenses you use the further forward your goalposts of what's acceptable move.

*Edit, just realised it was actually the 120-300mm you had/have Andy. So best part of a grand! I want one though :D