2024-11-08
Got a surprise gift from work for my work anniversary, so I purchased the Canon RF 1.4x extender with it since I’ve been wanting to try one, but haven’t wanted to spend my own money on one.
The effect is moderate, but it works pretty well.
This hummingbird was an alright subject for some comparisons. This is a small bird at about the furthest distance I would even think about trying to photograph something this small (perched at the top of a small tree). The first image was shot with the extender on, but zoomed to the equivalent of 500mm (the maximum focal length of this lens normally, without the extender). The second at 700mm (as long as possible with the extender). The effect isn’t dramatic (only 1.4x difference) but is enough to be noticeable.
At full resolution (100% pixel view), you can see the enlarged bird shows a fair bit more detail. If I were being rigorous I would have removed the extender to see if the less enlarged photo was any sharper without the extra optics, but you can see the image is pretty sharp even with the 1.4x attached. It’s enough to eek out a bit of extra detail and get in a little bit closer, but it does come with downsides.
The lens can’t retract fully with it attached, so it is larger for transport and you can’t quickly zoom out to capture wider views like you can without the extender. It also adds a stop of effective aperture, so where you might shoot at f/8 normally, you’ll be reduced to f/11. In practical terms this means you’ll probably shoot at higher ISO and get a bit more noise in your images, or want to reduce shutter speed a bit which can result in some motion blur. These tradeoffs are one of the reasons I wasn’t really considering buying one.. but I wanted it enough to spend my work gift on it, and I’m glad I did. I’ll probably leave it on whenever I’m going specifically on a birding outing in reasonably bright light - it’s pretty much always the case that you end up cropping when shooting birds and any edge you can get is useful.
All the images in the gallery were shot with the extender and (mostly) at maximum focal length.
