Canon x2 Teleconverter

[The Moose]

So, does anyone have one of these bad boys??

[LongQ]

The Moose said:

So, does anyone have one of these bad boys??

Yes.

1 for EOS. A Mark II.

2 for the old FD mount (1x A type and 1x B type)

[nellyleelephant]

What lens / body are you using?

Pretty sure they only work with 'L' lenses, most of them anyway. Plus, they'll only autofocus on a 1 series body.

[jimmy156]

nellyleelephant said:

What lens / body are you using?

Pretty sure they only work with 'L' lenses, most of them anyway. Plus, they'll only autofocus on a 1 series body.

They will work on other lenses other then L's but you may loose things like AF.

Also you only loose autofocus if the maximum apeture falls to over f5.6 (its f/8 on an 1 series) so a 400mm 2.8 would become a 800mm 5.6 and retain AF on and eos body. AF would be considerably slowed down though

[nellyleelephant]

jimmy156 said:

They will work on other lenses other then L's but you may loose things like AF.

Also you only loose autofocus if the maximum apeture falls to over f5.6 (its f/8 on an 1 series) so a 400mm 2.8 would become a 800mm 5.6 and retain AF on and eos body. AF would be considerably slowed down though

You may well be right, The Canon site only lists AF to work with 1 series bodies though.

[Gemm]

It cannot physically fit on certain lenses (most non-L?), or it will damage the rear elements of the lens.

[MartinP]

nellyleelephant said:

You may well be right, The Canon site only lists AF to work with 1 series bodies though.

Can you post a link to that please? I've looked on the Canon site and the page I found makes no reference to body compatibility, only lenses. Was planning to get one of these at some point to use with my 5D mk ii, but wouldn't be interested if the AF doesn't work. Seems quite an omission from Canon - I have a 3rd party one at the moment which works fine, but is a bit soft optically.

[S47]

Great bit of kit, but you need to match it to your Money lens, for me this involved buying 3 - 2x convertors testing each in turn and selecting the best, [other 2 were sold on ebay]
End result is well worth the effort.
I use the Mk2 convertor, Canon recently released a newer version, which is supposedly better but costs almost twice as much, the Mk3 I tried on loan was no better than my matched Mk2 on my Money lens [400 F2.8]
Hope this helps

[The Moose]

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll be shooting with a 5D mk1 body and probably use it on the 100-400mm canon lens.

Ive been sort of interested for a while and have found somewhere selling the X2 teleconverter for about $400 and wondered about having it delivered to our place out in the US waiting for me when I get there.

[jimmy156]

The Moose said:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll be shooting with a 5D mk1 body and probably use it on the 100-400mm canon lens.

Ive been sort of interested for a while and have found somewhere selling the X2 teleconverter for about $400 and wondered about having it delivered to our place out in the US waiting for me when I get there.

You will definitely loose AF with that combination, something to bear in mind. Also you maximum apeture at 400 will be f/11.

[nellyleelephant]

MartinP said:

Can you post a link to that please? I've looked on the Canon site and the page I found makes no reference to body compatibility, only lenses. Was planning to get one of these at some point to use with my 5D mk ii, but wouldn't be interested if the AF doesn't work. Seems quite an omission from Canon - I have a 3rd party one at the moment which works fine, but is a bit soft optically.

Sorry for the delay, here is the link.

It looks like I wasn't quite right, scroll down to the small print at the bottom of the page and have a look at points 5 & 6. It does look like L series lenses only though

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/l-lens/spec/lens_spec....

[The Moose]

jimmy156 said:

The Moose said:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll be shooting with a 5D mk1 body and probably use it on the 100-400mm canon lens.

Ive been sort of interested for a while and have found somewhere selling the X2 teleconverter for about $400 and wondered about having it delivered to our place out in the US waiting for me when I get there.

You will definitely loose AF with that combination, something to bear in mind. Also you maximum apeture at 400 will be f/11.

Hmm.

I can live with the aperture, but not sure about the auto focus bit.

I guess anything that im going to want to shoot will be reasonably stationery

[MartinP]

nellyleelephant said:

Sorry for the delay, here is the link.

It looks like I wasn't quite right, scroll down to the small print at the bottom of the page and have a look at points 5 & 6. It does look like L series lenses only though

http://web.canon.jp/imaging/l-lens/spec/lens_spec....

Thanks for that. Looks like AF is ok then (phew!).

[LongQ]

I think what you mainly see is not a total failure of AF so much as limitations creeping in, especially using bodies that do not have the extra sensitive f2.8 AF points. The 1 series bodies have them but for centre AF point sensitivity only.

The result can be that the AF lags the position of the subject or at least the part of the subject you tjhought you were focusing on! Not a problem for a more or less stationery subject (after taking distance to subject and likely DoF into account) but not so good for faster movement. This means that light quality and subject content (in terms of whether it offers anything with good contast differentiation to help the AF system) become more evident factors for both speed and accuracy.

On the plus side they are usually a lot less expensive and smaller and light to carry around than another longer lens would be.

[jimmy156]

The Moose said:

jimmy156 said:

The Moose said:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll be shooting with a 5D mk1 body and probably use it on the 100-400mm canon lens.

Ive been sort of interested for a while and have found somewhere selling the X2 teleconverter for about $400 and wondered about having it delivered to our place out in the US waiting for me when I get there.

You will definitely loose AF with that combination, something to bear in mind. Also you maximum apeture at 400 will be f/11.

Hmm.
I can live with the aperture, but not sure about the auto focus bit.

I guess anything that im going to want to shoot will be reasonably stationery

You will need good light if you plan to hand hold with a max aperture of f/11.

What do you plan on photographing with that lens that wont be moving very much ?

[The Moose]

jimmy156 said:

The Moose said:

jimmy156 said:

The Moose said:

Thanks for the replies guys.

I'll be shooting with a 5D mk1 body and probably use it on the 100-400mm canon lens.

Ive been sort of interested for a while and have found somewhere selling the X2 teleconverter for about $400 and wondered about having it delivered to our place out in the US waiting for me when I get there.

You will definitely loose AF with that combination, something to bear in mind. Also you maximum apeture at 400 will be f/11.

Hmm.
I can live with the aperture, but not sure about the auto focus bit.

I guess anything that im going to want to shoot will be reasonably stationery

You will need good light if you plan to hand hold with a max aperture of f/11.

What do you plan on photographing with that lens that wont be moving very much ?

I'm not sure I would be able to shoot anything at 800mm hand held?!?! (can do 400mm though).

The thing I'd like to take that has been annoying me recently is the moon (which ironically is one of the fastest moving things )

Also want to shoot (both with camera and rifle) some of the animals in south africa...when of course there is some light available to me!

[jimmy156]

The Moose said:

I'm not sure I would be able to shoot anything at 800mm hand held?!?! (can do 400mm though).

The thing I'd like to take that has been annoying me recently is the moon (which ironically is one of the fastest moving things )

Also want to shoot (both with camera and rifle) some of the animals in south africa...when of course there is some light available to me!

i always handhold my 400mm lens with effective focal length of 640, a bit different to 800 though I suppose

I would say Africa is about the only place you would attempt to photograph wildlife with an aperture of f/11! I don't think I've ever used an aperture smaller then f/8 in the UK for wildlife, and I'm usually wide open (5.6)

I cant imagine wanting to shoot wildlife with a rifle, especially difficult to understand if your into wildlife photography as well. But that's not a discussion for this thread!

[The Moose]

jimmy156 said:

But that's not a discussion for this thread!

I think that's a fair comment!

Out of interest, is there a third party alternative that would do the job better/retain the AF?

[nellyleelephant]

The Moose said:

I think that's a fair comment!

Out of interest, is there a third party alternative that would do the job better/retain the AF?

Sigma do one, doubt it offers more than the Canon version though.

[LongQ]

Earlier this morning I was reading a piece about one of the Magnum agency photographers who is also a Canon ambassador. Aparently he normally works with the 35mm f1.4 and the 50mm f1.2 but recently has been do some shots of the building in NY using a 70-200 f2.8 IS II and 2 convertors. I tookk it to read that he was using them stacked. Was happy with the results apparently.

Which is interesting ...

The Moose: The AF issue is not whether the extender allow AF to work mechanically/electronically. It's about the physics of optics and how much light gets to the AF sensors. The pro level Canons have an extra sensitive sensor at the central AF point that enhances their ability to work quickly in good light and effectively in poor light. But if there is not enough light no sensors can be guaranteed to be accurate or 'fast' - whatever 'fast' means in the contecxt of the scene to be shot.

Extenders, no matter who makes them, are hardly going to vary in the maximum amount of light transmission they can offer being constrained by the laws of Physics. Digital zooming, which with very large seonsor is becoming something that may have a future that retains adequte image quality, is a different game since the gian in apoparent 'length' of the lens is not really achieved optically.