Morris0
Forum Pro
I ordered the lens on Sunday morning and it arrived Tuesday morning. It is small and light with the same plasticky build as the 100-400. I purchased the lens so that I can have a lighter lens to take hiking and that dose not triggers my carpel tunnel when hand holding as my Sigma 150-600 C dose. All of the images I'm posting in this review were shot RAW and converged with Adobe ACR with sharpening and noise reduction disabled. In one case I brightened the shadows. In Photoshop I saved as JPEG highest definition.
The first photos were out kitchen window which is near my feeders and a tree where the birds that visit my feeder go. I opened the window so no glass was there to interfere and the first visitor was a female downy woodpecker. She ignored me while driving a peanut into the bark of our dogwood.
In the afternoon I decided to take a walk around Kissena Park to continue my testing. On the way out I stopped to take a few photos in my garden as the 70-300 can focus very close. Two samples one wide open at f5.6 and another at f22.
In the park I tried out the 1.4x TC. The first image has the shadows raised
View attachment dcb2e9ca4d93488fa60ffb8c36569281.jpg
I also tried the 2x TC
This last image is at 300mm wide open and show off how nicely the lens renders out of focus areas. There are people and an assortment of flowering trees in the background.
The only time I found the focus limiter switch was necessary was when using the 2x TC and without if focus was very slow and with it acceptable. Otherwise, focus is snappy and it tracked well with and without the TCs. I was able to take flight photos with both of the TCs. OIS was not always reliable and found the best practice was to keep the shutter speed up. The lens is so light that I did not bother with a camera strap during my 3 hour walk in the park. Some times I held the camera by the lens barrel and others by the X-T3 bump out grip. Balance was very nice with the bare X-3. The 70-300 is a fun lens to use and as you can see it's quite sharp.
Morris
The first photos were out kitchen window which is near my feeders and a tree where the birds that visit my feeder go. I opened the window so no glass was there to interfere and the first visitor was a female downy woodpecker. She ignored me while driving a peanut into the bark of our dogwood.
In the afternoon I decided to take a walk around Kissena Park to continue my testing. On the way out I stopped to take a few photos in my garden as the 70-300 can focus very close. Two samples one wide open at f5.6 and another at f22.
In the park I tried out the 1.4x TC. The first image has the shadows raised
View attachment dcb2e9ca4d93488fa60ffb8c36569281.jpg
I also tried the 2x TC
This last image is at 300mm wide open and show off how nicely the lens renders out of focus areas. There are people and an assortment of flowering trees in the background.
The only time I found the focus limiter switch was necessary was when using the 2x TC and without if focus was very slow and with it acceptable. Otherwise, focus is snappy and it tracked well with and without the TCs. I was able to take flight photos with both of the TCs. OIS was not always reliable and found the best practice was to keep the shutter speed up. The lens is so light that I did not bother with a camera strap during my 3 hour walk in the park. Some times I held the camera by the lens barrel and others by the X-T3 bump out grip. Balance was very nice with the bare X-3. The 70-300 is a fun lens to use and as you can see it's quite sharp.
Morris
