Merlin, and the use of teleconverters

 

As always, click the photo to enlarge

A Merlin (Falco columbarius) perches high in the dead boughs of a spruce in Columbus's (Ohio) Union Cemetery. It was a frosty morning, with temps in the low 20's F with a noticeable wind chill. Shauna and I ran down here yesterday, with Merlins as the main target. The burly little falcons have been winter residents in this cemetery for a number of years, and two were conspicuous yesterday.

Because of the wind, most likely, the birds were at first sitting in more sheltered spots within the crowns of bushy deciduous trees. But it didn't take too long before they began hunting and shifted to prominent open perches near the tops of ornamental spruces. As always, they were fun to watch, with a bit of spirited play-fighting as one bird would strafe the other and short chases would ensue. We didn't have a lot of time to watch these Merlins, but I'll back again as Union Cemetery is only ten minutes or so from my house.

A grim reality of bird photography is more is better. And more, as in lens reach, also means more $$$. This can get fiendishly expensive. Basically, there's two groups of photography: bird photography, and everything else, when it comes to cost. The bare minimum reach for birds, to get consistently good results, is 500mm, in my opinion. But even that often falls short. My first big prime telephoto was Canon's remarkable 500 f/4 II. I took out a credit union loan to get it. Shortly thereafter I obtained a Canon 1.4x II teleconverter and that lens was rarely without it for the rest of my ownership. With the teleconverter attached, the lens had a focal range of 700mm and remained tack sharp. The only tangible downside is that it lost one stop, going from a wide-open f/4 to an f/5.6. Small price to pay and I got scads of great bird images over the years I owned that setup.

But it wasn't long before the lust for a bigger lens set in. I eventually sprung for my current workhorse, the Canon 800mm f/5.6, which I've had for many years now. And in the process, learned an important lesson. Buy used. Let someone else take the initial hit. That lens retailed for about $13,000 when I got mine, but I found a perfect used copy for $8,000. Still a lot of money but way less than new.

While the 800mm has its downsides, they are few and mostly dependent upon the users' physical fitness. The lens alone weighs about 10 lbs., and couple that with the camera and the sturdy tripod and head that is necessary, and you've got a hefty package to be lugging around. It's worth it for the incredible range that the lens offers, and it can be expanded upon with the aforementioned teleconverter. The 1.4x, mounted to the 800, offers a focal range of 1120 mm. And with good technique and proper settings, especially on a day with decent light, sharp images are easily obtained. The Merlin photo in this post was made with this setup. I should also note that 1120mm allows the operator to remain out of the sphere of disturbance of the subject. You are often just too far away to provoke angst.

Probably the biggest downside to the 800/1.4x teleconverter setup is the loss of one stop. The lens becomes an f/8, in the case of the 800mm. That's why the more natural light, the merrier. One could argue that teleconverter-created images are not quite as sharp as those without and that's probably mostly true, but if all is done well, sharpness issues are relatively inconsequential.

While I am a huge fan of large prime lenses, like my 800 and the 500 before it, and my 400's, great progress has been made in the world of much less costly zoom telephotos. In the infancy of my telephoto days, I experimented with both Sigma and Tamron zoom telephotos (I think they were 150mm-500mm). I wasn't a fan - slow focusing, much vignetting, lack of sharpness, although it should be noted that these were among their first efforts. But now, their telephotos are much improved, as are factory offerings from Canon and Nikon. Shauna shoots with a Nikon Z8 and is soon to take possession of a Nikon 180mm-600mm telephoto. We have heard great things about this lens and are eager to work with it. It's roughly $2,000. For comparison, Nikon's superb Z 600mm f/4 with built-in 1.4x teleconverter is about $15,000, new. We hope that the lesser Nikon lens works well with the teleconverter and otherwise and can make great bird images.

If you have a lens that functions with a teleconverter, acquiring a 1.4x is fairly inexpensive way to bolt on extra fire power. Your 500mm becomes a 700mm, 600mm an 840mm, etc. Do note the attendant loss of a stop, though.

As far as 2x teleconverters go, I'm generally not a fan and I have long had Canon's 2x and have played with it a fair bit. While the doubling of the lens's reach is alluring, the tradeoffs often negate the extra reach. In general, the lower the focal range of the lens, the better it works. My best results are on 300 and 400 lens, and with Canon's 400mm f/2.8 II it can work incredibly well. Note that two stops of light are lost with the 2x, though. Thus, my 400mm II becomes an 800mm at f/5.6, and why would I shoot with that when I have the 800mm f/5.6 prime which is razor sharp? Also, it can be very hard/impossible to get razor sharp images with the 2x teleconverter mounted in many situations where I would probably have success with the prime 800mm.

Bells's Vireo (Vireo bellii), shot with the Canon 400mm f/2.8 II lens, 

Canon 2x II teleconverter, and Canon 5DIV camera. No problems with sharpness here, but this is one of the few lenses that I've used that has a high level of functionality with the 2x. But in general, I wouldn't recommend 2x teleconverters for sharp high-quality imagery. However, 1.4x teleconverters - an emphatic yes.

Photo-wonky stuff: Teleconverters

As always, click the photo to view at full size

A white-eyed vireo whisper-sings as he works through a dense snarl of vegetation. I made this image yesterday morning in Hocking County, Ohio, before the sun had fully illuminated the vireo's shady haunts. Experienced photo critics will notice the flaws in this image, perhaps most notably the graininess. Even at a low shutter speed of 1/400 - given the lens I was using and the bird's movement - I was still at an ISO of 3200 - far higher than I'd want. Good noise reduction programs can't completely vanquish digital noise. Even with excellent full frame cameras, I really don't like the ISO rising above 800, and 500 or lower is far better yet.

Low light and high ISO settings are not the point of this post, though. The lens and its accouterments is. I shot this with Canon's remarkable 400mm f/2.8 II, which is great for low light shooting and insanely fast at attaining focus and holding it. But 400mm is at the low end of reach insofar as birds go. Birds are often tough to approach closely, and oftentimes size matters. The bigger the lens, the better.

I have both 1.4x and 2x teleconverters (Canon version III). Teleconverters are stubby little magnifiers that can be quickly mounted between the lens and camera, and increase magnification by the power indicated on the converter. In this case, my 400mm lens becomes a 560mm lens with the 1.4x teleconverter, and obviously an 800mm lens with the "doubler" mounted. Voila! Like magic, we're in truly big lens territory, and much more able to hunt those bashful birds.

But few things come without cost. For sure, the teleconverters are WAY less expensive than are huge lenses, but they exact a different price. One, you're shooting through more glass - the teleconverters have internal lenses - and the more glass one shoots through, the more the image quality suffers. This deterioration, however, is almost negligible with Canon's 1.4x. It's more noticeable with the 2x, but still the image quality can be quite reasonable even with this super-magnifier. Probably a bigger burden brought on by teleconverters is the loss of aperture. With the 1.4x, you lose one stop, and the 2x causes a loss of two stops. So, with the 1.4x mounted on my 400mm f/2.8, I'm at f/4. With the doubler, f/5.6. If conditions are sunny and light is abundant, this may not be much of a problem - you can still use a sufficiently fast shutter speed, yet maintain a low ISO. In the case of this vireo, that wasn't possible.

For this photograph, I used the 2x doubler, giving me a much-appreciated 800mm.That got me in good working distance to my bashful subject. But at 1/400 shutter speed - what I felt was about the lowest I could go - it gave me that dreaded 3200 ISO. If the doubler did not cause a loss of two stops and I was able to shoot at f/2.8, my ISO would have been 800. But as I said, there's no free lunches.

In great light, especially, teleconverters are a fantastic tool for extending reach. I use the 1.4x all the time, and see nearly no downsides to it. Autofocus is nearly unaffected, the loss of a stop is almost never an issue - ideally, I like to stop down to f/8 or so if light permits - and image quality remains superb. It's nearly magic without strings.

The 2x is a different story, and I usually don't recommend them, as I and many others have found that attaining sharp focus can be difficult with one. Micro-adjustments are usually necessary, and even with such tweaking it can still be hard to make crisp images. Autofocus is lost on some lenses, and if it's still enabled, it's slowed significantly. I've only had one lens where I could just slap on the 2x and take consistently sharp images and that's the Canon 300mm f/4 (600mm with the doubler). Until I got this miracle-working 400mm. With no micro-adjusting, it took perfectly to the 2x teleconverter. Not only that, but autofocus remains incredibly fast, and images look sharp and clear, especially under good lighting.

If you want more reach for birds, it might be worth renting a teleconverter or two. If they mate well to your lens and you're happy with the results, a teleconverter(s) is well worth the investment. The recent Canon version III lenses - like the 400mm and 600mm - are the best yet at mating effectively to teleconverters. They'll only get better, too.