New Lens

Tysonator

Tysonator

Tysonator

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Hi all,
I have a Canon EF 70-300mm F4 – 5.6 IS USM MkII lens. Now this lens is not a bad lens until you use the full focal length 300mm. At this length the image comes out soft, and from what I can gather this is at most of the aperture range !

Now what I am looking to do is replace this lens will and better quality one.
The question is, which one ! ?

I have looked at going extreme with the Sigma 120-400mm !
As I have a 7D which uses the APSC size sensor the crop factor pushes this to 193mm-640mm, pretty amazing !
Though this could be a bit to extreme really as I get from the EF 70-300 a focal range of 112-480mm !

What lens should I be looking at ?
 
Not 100% on Canon lenses, but you missed a 400mm f/5.6L for £849, would be rather sharp I imagine :D

Might be a good call to add a budget!
 
I can't see it being any sharper @ 300mm than your Canon (just going on past expirence with the lower range of sigma zooms)
 
p0ss3s3d said:
No 70-200 takes a 2x very well. They all end up soft and uncontrasty. Even the IS Mark II gives soft results with a 2x!!! TBH even the big primes can struggle with the 2x TC.
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Eveything I've read has been positive with the 2x until around 400mm. To be fair though it wouldn't be that much of a issue the amount of time I would use the lens to do that. Although I will probably pair mine with a 1.4 for those rare occassions at a GP I want a bit more length.
 
I would go for a 1.4 teleconvertor, as the 2x does not perform well at all. There are plenty of views on google of users opinions on the 2x.
Also Canons teleconvertors will only work with L lens !
As for my target use, well Sport, and Festivals so low light performance is important, for every thing else I use a Sigma 17-70 DC lens.
 
There's a lot of rubbish spoken about 2x converters bring 'bad', but personally, I've found my 70-200 f2.8 and 300 f2.8 with a 2x TC a useful combo.

What a lot of people disappointed with their results forget is that using a 400mm lens over the 200mm one they've fitted it to requires perfect long lens technique and/or a solid tripod.

Yes, you lose some viewfinder brightness and a little AF speed, and of course 2 stops of light.

The latter is where the problems start I think. With the 70-200 and 2x TC, you're looking at an effective 600mm on a crop sensor camera. So, the rule of thumb around shutter speed should be 1/600s to stand a chance of getting sharp shots. By the time folks have stopped down the combo to try and improve image quality (most lenses aren't at their sharpest wide open afterall) they are either nowhere near 1/600s shutter speed, and/or they're having to up the ISO so much to get it that image quality suffers.

I've spent hours in front of a lens focus target trying out various combinations, even stacking converters together, and my conclusions are that image degradation is not as much of an issue as is commonly written!

Now clearly, I'm not advocating bolting a 2x TC onto your average consumer 70-300 that isn't even sharp at it's native 300mm, but rather something like a good 70-200 f2.8 (and from what I read, Canons is pretty good?!) or even better a good prime.

A decent 70-200 f2.8 with a matched 1.4x and 2x TC is a flexible and useful combination. If it's good enough for Andy Rouse...
 
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The New Nikon TC 2X MK III is supposed to offer better image quality than the 1.4X TC MK II, especially on the new 70-200 2.8 and certain primes (200 2.0,300 2.8,,400 2.8).


The 500 and 600 f/4 don't take TCs quite so perfectly, but this may also simply be the 1 stop disadvantage again.
 
Tooks said:
There's a lot of rubbish spoken about 2x converters bring 'bad', but personally, I've found my 70-200 f2.8 and 300 f2.8 with a 2x TC a useful combo.

What a lot of people disappointed with their results forget is that using a 400mm lens over the 200mm one they've fitted it to requires perfect long lens technique and/or a solid tripod.

Yes, you lose some viewfinder brightness and a little AF speed, and of course 2 stops of light.

The latter is where the problems start I think. With the 70-200 and 2x TC, you're looking at an effective 600mm on a crop sensor camera. So, the rule of thumb around shutter speed should be 1/600s to stand a chance of getting sharp shots. By the time folks have stopped down the combo to try and improve image quality (most lenses aren't at their sharpest wide open afterall) they are either nowhere near 1/600s shutter speed, and/or they're having to up the ISO so much to get it that image quality suffers.

I've spent hours in front of a lens focus target trying out various combinations, even stacking converters together, and my conclusions are that image degradation is not as much of an issue as is commonly written!

Now clearly, I'm not advocating bolting a 2x TC onto your average consumer 70-300 that isn't even sharp at it's native 300mm, but rather something like a good 70-200 f2.8 (and from what I read, Canons is pretty good?!) or even better a good prime.

A decent 70-200 f2.8 with a matched 1.4x and 2x TC is a flexible and useful combination. If it's good enough for Andy Rouse...
Click to expand...

300 2.8 is fine with a 2x TC. Even wide-open. You loose a little AF speed, but it still zips about.

70-200's just turn into a soft pile of mush unless you stop down to f/13 (it's worse than the most of the cheap 75-300 zooms). 1.4x TC's are fine with the 70-200. But ideally stray away from the 2x. Ruin the AF performance and sharpness wide-open so badly, it's better to crop a 280mm f/4 in that case IMO.
 
p0ss3s3d said:
300 2.8 is fine with a 2x TC. Even wide-open. You loose a little AF speed, but it still zips about.

70-200's just turn into a soft pile of mush unless you stop down to f/13 (it's worse than the most of the cheap 75-300 zooms). 1.4x TC's are fine with the 70-200. But ideally stray away from the 2x. Ruin the AF performance and sharpness wide-open so badly, it's better to crop a 280mm f/4 in that case IMO.
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I can only repeat what I've experienced myself with my own kit. My Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR1 and Nikon TC20-EII certainly does not 'turn to mush', even wide open.

If yours does, then it's probably not a good lens or TC to start with, or it isn't being used with the correct technique.
 
dannyjo22 said:
Maybe the Mk3 extenders will fix some of the issues?
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That's just it, the 'issues' aren't as big as some would make believe.

The problem is that so many people post on the web that 'they're crap' without so much as a hint of an explanation as to why.

The Mk 3 Nikon 2x by all accounts is a lot better than the Mk 2, but then why wouldn't it be?

I'm not saying that TC's don't degrade image quality a little, they do (and on certain lenses unsuited to them, then a lot!).

But, people should try it before they dismiss it out of hand.

Personally, I'd say that if you need to use a TC the majority of the time on a given lens, then you probably ought to consider a longer lens in the first place. If it's just some of the time, then a good combination should be good enough for those times.
 
Tooks said:
I can only repeat what I've experienced myself with my own kit. My Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR1 and Nikon TC20-EII certainly does not 'turn to mush', even wide open.

If yours does, then it's probably not a good lens or TC to start with, or it isn't being used with the correct technique.
Click to expand...

The lens itself is very sharp. It remains sharp with the 1.4x. The TC's fine too, it makes a great 300+2x. But when you put it on the 70-200; put simply a 70-200 isn't sharp to take a 2x TC and still enough to give me the quality I expect.

Would you like to post a sample at 400mm f/5.6 illustrating the performance of you copies?
 
There are big differences between the Nikon and Canon 70-200s. The Nikon, especialy the newer one is sharper.
 
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