Randomrants

1000mm Focal Length Test Shots – Kenko 2x Teleplus Pro 300 DGX and a Sigma 150-500mm.

So I ended up choosing to get a Kenko 2x Teleplus Pro 300 DGX for my latest camera toy.

A few quick impressions. Yes the Sigma 150-500mm will try and auto-focus with this converter…. but and it is a big one.. it won’t be very successful. In bright light you can get focus but it requires a tripod and a lot of luck at the long end of the range. So you are better off switching to manual focus. In fully auto mode I found the d7000 tended to over compensate for the F stop which pushed out to f13 at 500mm, and so the ISO jumps to 1600. So, once again push to manual. Even my Nikkor 18-105mm does autofocus with this teleconverter.

It is going to take me a while to get the hang of this new teleconverter, but first impressions they say are the ones that count. My impressions are nice. Yes images aren’t as sharp, there are issues with focus. But the EXIF data is all correct, the Kenko works with my Sigma perfectly.

Part of the major issue with focus is that most of my lenses don’t hard stop at infinity. Which means looking through the view finder to get the image as sharp as possible. Quiet hard to do when a mm movement will reduce sharpness dramatically.

And if you have ANY dust devils on your sensor… you will notice them straight away. I am going to have to get the D7000 cleaned before the Point Cook Airshow, at f13 the shots are full of dust.

So here are two moon shots the settings in camera and are copied from one shot to the other in lightroom3 so are identical. These are the uncropped versions, click on the images for the bigger versions on Flickr. ( But I did do a dust clean up on them )

The Moon at 500mm