R5 & RF100-500mm - experience adding teleconverter?

I recently purchased a Canon R5 and RF100-500mm lens. I am mostly into bird photography and am wondering if there are others with practical experience adding either Canon’s 1.4 or 2.0 teleconverter and how it worked.

Thanks!

kentmcpherson wrote:

I recently purchased a Canon R5 and RF100-500mm lens. I am mostly into bird photography and am wondering if there are others with practical experience adding either Canon’s 1.4 or 2.0 teleconverter and how it worked.

Thanks!

My RF 1.4x has lived on my RF 100-500 (on the R5) for 2 1/2 years.  Excellent image quality and autofocus.  Highly recommend this combo (along with RAW and DxO PL6).

As mentioned, the only down-side is that you can't back off the zoom, but I just treat it like a 420-700mm zoom.

A few pics in this earlier thread...

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66810397

R2

I fully support the reports from the last two posters. The RF1,4x is just as good as it gets on both my R5 and R7. I see a significant gain in object detail (pixel per bird) and no relevant disadvantages. For BIF you have to practise but that is not the fault of the combo but the reduced field of view that comes with such long FL. The RF2x is more for static applications on tripod from my testing. But again: you get significant extra detail even on the high pixel density R7. That is especially evident from moon shoots!

R7+RF2x+RF100-500 copied from my fb page because I am traveling and have no access to the original file...

kentmcpherson wrote:

I recently purchased a Canon R5 and RF100-500mm lens. I am mostly into bird photography and am wondering if there are others with practical experience adding either Canon’s 1.4 or 2.0 teleconverter and how it worked.

Thanks!

I bought the 1.4x at the time I bought my RF 100-500 about a year ago. I was so impressed with the combo that I decided to buy the 2.x last summer. This is the only 2.x TC I have ever liked in my 40+ years of doing photography. I am very happy with both extenders, I find almost no impact when using the 1.4x and I like t he 2.x option when I need to go longer.  I have also used the 1.4x on my RF 800 f11 with good results.

I like the the 1.4 xTC with the 100-500L on R7 for moon shooting on a good solid tripod, but being an old dog can't hand hold it for bird shooting.   The R7, with it's built-in 1.6 crop factor works great w/ the 100-500L and I prefer it to the R5 for static bird shooting from a rest-- well, up to ISO 1600 only.

Bramble9

Moon 100% crop from a R7+RF2x+RF100-500 pic last night.

Abbott Schindler wrote:

My biggest gripe about the RF 100-500 is that it's got to be racked out to 600mm or more just to install the TC, which is both inconvenient, makes for a very long piece to carry around, and severely limits FL.

This is one of the reasons why I switch to the R7 when I need more reach.

Nice shots Neil, you should post them in the nature forum

I bought the RF2X along with the RF100-500 fully accepting the limitation of the zoom range for the 2X. I like it a lot. For my purposes the 1.4X was not extending enough for my chosen uses.

I wrote how I made that 2X choice and what I thought were the design criteria used by Canon to make the combination of the R5, RF100-500 and the RF2X which you can read here:  https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/66180309

Since that above post, I have spent many hours waiting for our local Peregrine falcons to fly, taking photos from the close and long distances of the birds standing on the cliffs, with and without the 2X extender on the 100-500. When I compare the images in the computer the 2X extended images at 600-1000mm look a tiny smidge softer and have slightly lower contrast at the adjusted exposure than do the 500mm photos from the native lens. However, the extended images also have more detail as the focal length is increased. In the case of 2X500mm vs 500mm the increased detail is significant.

So, surprise, surprise--increasing the pixel count for the subject can mean significantly greater detail of the subject. Then when you post process the raw images to optimize contrast, color temperature, sharpness and so on and the images from the 2X extender are terrific.

The common statement about extenders and zoom lenses is that extending greater than about 1.4X is not  worth it because of the loss of sharpness. In the case of the R5, RF100-500 and RF2X, my experience is that this is not true.

Don