I've got the Canon 70-200mm 2.8 lens & love it. I've used the 1.4 Canon teleconverter & am impressed with the sharpness on my 5DII.
I'm considering getting a Canon 7D & a Canon 2x teleconverter for that lens for light wildlife photography. I know the primes would be better, but cost & weight are a consideration.
Has anyone used the 2x with the 70-200 2.8? Does it autofocus OK?
Thanks for any advice.
Posted by Eva McDermott on June 20, 2011 at 12:31 PM
Hi Wick - I have 70-200 2.8L and use the 2X (II) converter and it auto focuses fine. I have not noticed any focusing speed issues either but I use the combo mainly for landscape and abstracts. The new 2X (III) also seems to be better. Here is a link to a review that Keith Bauermention in the forum a while back. Canon 2X III
Wick, I have a 5D2 and the 70-200mm/2.8 IS II and I did just recently buy a mint 2.0 TC II off eBay. I'm actually rather surprised at the image sharpness, I expected it to be worse. I took the above image with the TC attached, and you can see that it is quite acceptable (actually, a 12x18 print looked VERY good... the NPN guidelines to get the image down made it look not so sharp). I do find that images are more hit-n-miss with the TC crutch, but the images that are good look VERY good. There are just less keepers. I also shot a hummingbird at our feeder with the 70-200mm and TC, and even after cropping in the image quality was surprisingly better than I had anticipated.
Having said all of that, I've scoured the web for comparisons between the II version and the new III version, and it's been unanimous that the image quality with the new III version is remarkably better. My beef is that it's still being sold at list price ($499) and this was even before the earthquake. I'm waiting for the newness to wear off so that thing, like the older version, will sell for about 40% off list. THEN I'll strike.
BTW, the new version III of the 1.4x is NOT noticeably better according to tests I've seen. That's because the II version is already excellent, not much room for improvement. The 2.0x TC needed quality improvement, and it did get that. So it's a matter of budget!
Wick, here's the 70-200mm/2.8 with the 2.0 TC (version II) from about 20 feet away, handheld. I did apply some input and output sharpening with Nik Sharpener, but the detail was there to pull out of the raw file.
Discussion
3 repliesI'm considering getting a Canon 7D & a Canon 2x teleconverter for that lens for light wildlife photography. I know the primes would be better, but cost & weight are a consideration.
Has anyone used the 2x with the 70-200 2.8? Does it autofocus OK?
Thanks for any advice.
Having said all of that, I've scoured the web for comparisons between the II version and the new III version, and it's been unanimous that the image quality with the new III version is remarkably better. My beef is that it's still being sold at list price ($499) and this was even before the earthquake. I'm waiting for the newness to wear off so that thing, like the older version, will sell for about 40% off list. THEN I'll strike.
BTW, the new version III of the 1.4x is NOT noticeably better according to tests I've seen. That's because the II version is already excellent, not much room for improvement. The 2.0x TC needed quality improvement, and it did get that. So it's a matter of budget!
5D Mark II and I did crop in the shot a bit, FYI.