Canon 70-200mm F2.8 IS and 2x Entender

bovril

Been reading some reviews on these pair together after something Darren said to me at the weekend. I am totally confused after reading some forums. Some people say yes they'll work, some people say no and there are some folk saying it kinda works but the results are soft.

Does anyone here use the two together?

rymus

it works, but the focus slows down noticably. Cant comment on sharpness. After testing it with a 2x in B&H, I bought a 1.4x to use with my 70-200 IS and it's super. Never really noticed any great hit on speed or sharpness.

Paulw

I have the 70-200mm f/2.8 and the 2x extender.

I think they work well together. The extender does give you a 140-400 f/5.6 and works fine. I've used it many times, including at the zoo.

I've never noticed the images being soft.

leinsterman

I have the 2X and the 1.4X ... both work fine on my 70-200 F2.8L IS ...

georgey

I have this lens and extender combo and I gave up using it, soft soft soft, now I could have a bad copy of the extender but for me it is unusable, a friend of mine bought one as well for his 2.8 Is and he reports the same so we chipped together and bought a bigma the results are so much better.
Sorry to confuse you even more but as with a lot of canon glass of all types copy variation is present here as well
Get a loan of one and try it, I live near swords and if its handy I'll meet ye and you can try mine.
Philip

mikeanywhere

I was led to believe that you cant use autofocus when using the extenders, is this right?

GristlyEnd

mikeanywhere wrote:

I was led to believe that you cant use autofocus when using the extenders, is this right?

For Nikkor glass, once you go over f/5.6 (f/2.8 glass and 2x extender) you usually lose autofocus. There are work arounds but it can be painfully slow to focus.

Paulw

DarrenG wrote:

For Nikkor glass, once you go over f/5.6 (f/2.8 glass and 2x extender) you usually lose autofocus.

Similar for Canon, but, a 2x on the 70-200 f/2.8 will still have auto-focus, however, a 2x on the 70-200 f/4 will no longer have auto-focus.

dubtom

If you use a third party extender on Canons you can autofocus at F8 and above depending on conditions.2X extenders seem to generally give a soft image, no matter what brand. I'm waiting for a Kenko 1.4 from Ac (for quite a while now) for my canon 70/300 IS. I'm not even sure if the canon 1.4 would work on that. The benefit of third party extenders is that they fit/work on lenses that canons won't. My sigma extenders will only fit sigma lenses,which is a pain, where Kenko will fit most everything canon fit.

feileacan

bovril, agree with paulw. they complement each other well although i too have read that there are occurrences of canon layers (and im sure its true for all manufacturers) that the occasional one or two are 'soft' and reviews on http://www.fredmiranda.com/ often recommend sending them for calibration.

or it could be just personal preference that person has.

i would recommend the combo as its a hell of a lot cheaper than purchasing a 400mm L lens (£1000 for 5.6 or £5000 for f2.8)

theres a flickr meet this saturday - ill be bringing both to that if you want to try it out.

Fireman

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-Extender-EF-1.4x-II-Tele-Converter-Review.aspx

Read this before you buy you're extender

Fireman

bovril

Cheers lads for all the replies, I guess I should wait and try them out

feileacan wrote:

theres a flickr meet this saturday - ill be bringing both to that if you want to try it out.

Will take you up on this feileacan, thanks a mill.