M6 at 400mm + 2x III Extender (PICS) - Summer Heat!
It's the middle of Summer here in Australia and I extend a hand of sympathy towards those of you enduring extreme cold on the other side of the globe right now. We've had some excessively high temperatures lately. I went to the beach but the surf was too flat this time to catch anyone surfing. Late in the afternoon I went down by the water to photograph some birds and tested the EF 2x III Extender. Last week I managed to test the EF 1.4x III Extender on the same lens with the M6 - https://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/4247708
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Ask anyone about using a 2x Extender and they'll tell you they're useless. They'll tell you that you'd be better to blow up an image 200% than to use a 2x extender to magnify. But that applies more to other brands of Extender... the newer EF 2x III Extenders were redesigned with superb (and improved) optical quality compared to the previous incarnations. They are sharp and perform as expected. You don't hear complaints about the Series III Extenders being soft or degrading image quality like you do with other extenders and brands. The Series III Extenders also use a new (Titanium-White?) paint that more accurately matches the more recent White L-series lenses. Earlier lenses and extenders were more of a cream-white or off-white color. Other improvements include a more rigid designs and new optical design and lens coatings. Tests I conducted with the EOS 6D showed that considerably more detail and sharpness were captured with a 2x III Extender compared to simply enlarging an existing image by 200% from the unaided lens. There was more detail captured and there was less antialiasing in the resulting images.
First test shots in daylight...
I'd used this extender on an EOS 6D DSLR at least a year ago... and had to use the Live-View with it... And while the results were incredibly beautiful, the AF speed with the non-DPAF 6D Mk1 was abysmal. It literally was infuriatingly slow and it did not work at all with the EVF on the same camera. But on the M6, it worked just fine... and though much slower than the naked lens alone, it was still usable. Just not ideal for AF speeds.
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I used to sight in an old spotting scope on this same hillside and figured I'd give the EF 2x III Extender a go in the same location. The temperature outside on the day was 36.4c in the breeze but the heat coming up from the ground produced exceptionally strong thermal fluctuations (rippling) in the air.
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Initially, I noticed that there was a LOT of softening when reviewing the first shots on the LCD... but this was not due to image degradation from the lens or extenders... this was what happens in the summer heat. You could see the air shimmering and I thought I'd continue with the experiment. Take a look at the crop of the people on top of the lookout in the pictures below. Those bars around the railing were rippled and distorted. Just like trying to capture the details of a rising moon through the thick atmosphere near the horizon, you end up getting a picture that lacks basic detail and it suffers from hideous distortion. Here's a good example of that in a moon-rise that I took last year in January Distorted Moon
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When I scrolled through the burst of images from this set at maximum zoom, the trees, grass and people were bulging and rippling with the rising shimmering heat coming from the span of ground. I didn't encounter this when shooting over water where the heat was mostly neutralized.
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AF Speeds slowed by 75% on the EF 2x III Extender...
Moving on to the Seagull shots, you can see that even at maximum magnification, the results were still very good. What you won't see in the images is the reduction of AF speed. The AutoFocus of any camera using an Extender is affected intentionally by Canon in order to increase focus and exposure accuracy. There's a microprocessor in the Extender that slows the AF down by 75%. It actually felt much slower. With the EF 1.4x III Extender, you'd barely know it was on there and that Extender is supposed to reduce AF speed by 50%. Now the 2x III Extender immediately cuts the widest available aperture down to f/11 at all times. This also means less DOF and less attractive Bokeh. It was there but it wasn't particularly visible. According to one website, no DSLR can Autofocus at f/11 with these 2x Extenders attached. The EOS M series is mirrorless and the DPAF sensor sure made this possible. No problem at all.... but it was still sluggish. It took more effort to capture moving birds at these long focal lengths.
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Color Reproduction...
The colors produced by the extender were warm and accurate in the late afternoon sun. The EF 100-400mmL II lens produces very accurate colors to begin with and the Extender reduced contrast slightly while the colors remained accurate.
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Bokeh...
The Bokeh was very subtle, and so it ought to be at f/11. If you look at the two seagulls together (below) you can see some basic bokeh in the background that would have been more prominent with other lens combinations. The 2x Extenders reduce the aperture to f/11 and so any shallow depth of field is somewhat muted when compared to wider apertures. There's still plenty of subject isolation (soft backgrounds). Even the two fishermen in one image had the chap at the rear slightly softer and out of focus than the one I'd focused on.
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iPhone 6s - Test shot close to midday. You can see the hilltop in the distance.
EOS M6 + EF 100-400mmL II + 2x III extender - Also taken at 800mm (1288mm equiv) near the water in the cool afternoon - certainly no issue with sharpness here (has not been additionally sharpened) There's no heat shimmer in this image. The resulting image quality is quite crisp.
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The weight difference was not noticeably different from using the EF 1.4x III the week prior. It's a pretty heavy combination regardless and the EF 2x III extender is almost twice as long as the EF 1.4x III Extender. It has become my favorite addition for shooting the moon recently... and I thought it made for a less expensive temporary filler until I could obtain my long awaited telescope. I almost wish Canon made a 3x extender!
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For something so small and easily carried with you, I think most people can always justify buying one just to have on hand for certain occasions. I feel the 2x was just a little too slow for wildlife for me and I had to recompose some shots when the birds moved before I snapped the picture. The 1.4x was just fine with AF speeds. But still, if you need 2x magnification, you'll get it. There was a minor amount of CA in some images but it did not require any editing.
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Sharpness...
I think the extender was sharper than I expected it to be and it was definitely sharp at maximum focal lengths. Having some shimmer and heat distortion (which was very bad at the time) is expected. I had the same when looking through a spotting scope. I regret not filming some video to demonstrate just how much the heat was affecting the image. This is also one of the reasons why Astrophotographers prefer to shoot in Winter when the air is devoid of this type of shimmer.
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Conclusion...
I think the EF 2x III Extender was a great purchase for me because I love taking pictures of the moon. But to others, I'd say that the EF 1.4x III is far better value and offers greater speed with AF and more prominent bokeh with this lens on the EOS M6/M5 etc. I can certainly recommend the EF 2x III Extender and found the image quality to be sharp enough that I did not personally see a need to add any additional sharpening to the images I took - which were all taken in JPEG. The shot of the moon below was edited with some subtle slider changes in Lightroom and Photoshop and required no careful processing to achieve.
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For Wildlife, this extender would be very much at home on the 70-200mmL lens although again, the EF 1.4x III Extender would be better just for AF speeds and aperture range. On the 100-400mmL II lens it was a little bit of overkill with those magnifications. The EOS M6 still performed well and AF was surprisingly reliable. But the speed of the AF was slowed greatly. Some people might find it unappealing. Although, as I noted, the image quality was still exceptionally good at the distances I was testing it at.
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EOS M6 + 100-400mmL II + 2x III extender - (1299mm focal length equiv) - The moon last week - prior to the Lunar Eclipse - JPEG, cropped. I deliberately used the same aperture, shutter speed and ISO settings that gave me excellent results last year.
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Regards,
Marco Nero.
Wow, that was quite good and sharp!
I didn´t even have to scoll back up to see who is the OP. Already KNEW IT after those images. Most of the time, it needs to be combination of YOU and the lenses, otherwise images are not as impressive.
Anyway, it´s impressive what small camera and good choice of lenses can do in right hands.
I can only repeat, that as a cheap setup for M, I would also recommend Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS STM and Kenko Teleplus HD DGX 1,4x converter. That one gives us 560mm of eq reach for roughly $370m while maintaining lot of sharpness. Not bad at all.
I would like to know what is next cheapest set. Didn´t find any. 100-400mm and Canon III extender is out of reach for me now. Do you have any recommendation?
crashpc wrote:
I can only repeat, that as a cheap setup for M, I would also recommend Canon EF-S 55-250mm IS STM and Kenko Teleplus HD DGX 1,4x converter. That one gives us 560mm of eq reach for roughly $370m while maintaining lot of sharpness. Not bad at all.
I would like to know what is next cheapest set. Didn´t find any. 100-400mm and Canon III extender is out of reach for me now. Do you have any recommendation?
I'm just going to bed (7am! here) but could you possibly post any examples from the combo you mentioned? You can post them here if you like. I'm sure others would be interested in the combination you are using as well. This might be the ideal place unless you want to start another thread. I'm certainly interested in seeing what you're getting from these combinations.
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I don't have an alternative lens option to the 100-400mmL II yet... although it's so heavy I'm not sure what problems I'll have if I try to bring it overseas as hand luggage. Like you, I'm keeping an eye out for logical alternatives. I think Canon released this baby recently and it looks to be a very decent lens - although I haven't looked deeply into any reviews yet. It's quite affordable too... https://www.dpreview.com/products/canon/lenses/canon_70-300_4p0-5p6_is_ii_usm
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