Canon Extenders II vs III

With the reduction in light , I found it is better to just enlarge the shot .

But all I have to do is please me .

No body really cares about my flower shots and cropping and enlarging family shots - people are more interested in subject than quality .

tonyjr wrote:

The 2X II is designed for version II of lenses . It is better on my 70-200 mk II than the 1.4 version one [ kind of grainy on 8 X 10 - OK on 4 X 6's .

I was told even the 70-200 mk II is to old to benefit from the 2 X III . At that time they said the 2 X III MIGHT work on the new 100-400 II , but they did not think it would even fit . They also said there were different versions of the 100-400 , but none would that any 1.4 or 2X without and extension tube and you would loose AF .

I just rented a 1.4x III and 2x III from lensrentals and tried them both on my 100-400 mk II. I'm using a 5DS, so it can AF using an aperture as small as f/8. Unfortunately, the aperture with the 100-400 mk ii with 2x extender is smaller than f/8, so it will not AF except using live view.

GerryDavid1981 wrote:

Is it better to go with two 1.4x's than one 2x? sounds like the 1.4s are better than the 2x by a bit.

No. One 2x is better than 2 1.4x's.

I can't comment yet on a direct comparison basis, but I've owned the 1.4 II for many years, and my new 1.4 III arrives tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what difference it makes (if any) with my 500/4 IS (the recently discontinued Mark 1).

I've already got a  new 2.0 III and tried it out briefly with the 500/4, using a 7D II last week. It is clearly superior in AF speed to the Mark II 2.0X I had for a while but sold years ago (back when I had a 1D III). How much of that improvement is down to the III converter and how much to the 7D II I cannot say.It's still too slow to be attractive for bird photography though.

I'll try the 2.0X on a 1D IV next time I'm out, but my first impression on the 7D II was not good. I might just sell it. I don't reckon the extra reach winds up delivering a better picture overall than just using a 1.4X and cropping.

As for the two different 1.4 converters, I'm not expecting much difference, but we will see. I plan to buy a 600/4 II reasonably soon, so I imagine that, even if it does nothing better on a 500/4 IS Mark 1, it's still worth keeping.

NWMUSA wrote:

If you're dealing with a full frame camera one other option is to consider using a second camera (APS-H or APS-C) rather than an extender. Canon's APS-H 1D series cameras have approximately a 1.3x crop factor while Canon's APS-C cameras provide a 1.6x crop factor. Used cameras using one of these crop factors can often be found for a price in the same range as the Canon extenders. While the 1.3x crop factor is not quite equal to the 1.4x extender, it's close. Obviously a 1.6x crop factor is even better. Of course, these crop factors are achieved thanks to smaller-than-full-frame sensors but, If you can live with that, you can eliminate the need for the 1.4x extender and don't have to worry about AF issues and other issues that the extenders sometimes present.

While your suggestion may be valid, it seems unlikely that the OP will see it since his/her last activity here was over 8 years ago (the question was asked 11 years ago ).

Colin

You are probably right . The last time I went to a 15th birthday party , I only took my phone . I have the II extender and the 17-55 but I can now crop for results .