Canon Teleconverter - or should you just crop your image? 

The main point of this video saying that if you crop more than two times, the teleconverter is better is a very useful advice. Havent seen it in other videos on this topic. Thanks man!

Note that Canon CPN has stated "To get the best out of the new lenses and the Mark III extenders photographers must ensure they attach the extender to the lens first, before attaching the whole unit to the camera. This ensures that the combined lens information is transmitted correctly to provide the optimum image quality and focus performance."

Thank you for all your time and effort to give us what we need to know how much do extenders actually make difference on an image.

Thanks for taking the time to do this comparison.

Excellent job on this video. Right to the point with the information that is needed, no fluff. Thanks

Always wanted to know these details. Great work thank you!

Thanks very much for the video. I have been so debating buying this lens - this answered my questions. This lens will be a long timekeeper. Excited to use here on marine life.

Thank you. Very helpful and informative video, very well done!

Very interesting, often wondered about this myself now I know. Thanks

Really great video on the teleconverter conundrum.

I want to see the photo of the woodpecker! ;)

Very useful video - thank you. I think I got the main message that is it all depends on what the final results might be used for. Also it shows that yes, there is a slight benefit from an extender if the image is really pushed but for video and for normal picture use, it seems as if the penalties of an extender outweigh any advantages. Thank you for really helping me with this one.

Thanks for the comparison! I would only add two more things to consider before reaching a conclusion: one is the position on the frame of the portion to be cropped. Most lenses are sharper in the center. Thus, if you crop from the edges you may be using a less sharp image to begin with. The other is the noise amount. As you crop the noise does not increase but it becomes more visible. I shot some condors in the Andes and the combination of cropping from off-center and noise gave me as a result very noise and not very sharp images. Cheers!

Good test! Crop is sharper but more pixelation vs extender which gives you a slightly softer but smoother image. If you use the extender, you can get a little extra sharpness with the photoshop/lightroom texture/clarity/dehaze settings.

Thanks always wondered about the extender vs cropping

Great experiment. Thanks for sharing!

Love that 300 2.8 L IS as well! That's more or less why I decided to go with Canon mirrorless right now

A good vid. I regularly shoot low light music events with an F2.8 70-200mm and always want more reach, but can never afford to lose 2 stops. I'll stick with a crop, but may get an extender for daytime work.

Great video, very well analysed. Thanks very much.

It was very useful information, thanks!

i think this video made me want to pull the trigger on buying one. Great informative vid!

Great explanation and excellent use case. If you want to go beyond the 2X then it’s fair to use it and crop. If you just want 2X and that’s the final composition... just crop in post. 👍

yeah, really agree with your result. I found your video after I've done a comparison myself. IF you are not going to print or show the picture on a big screen, crop can even provide better results. Test my olympus 40-150mm with and without a 1.4x teleconverter.

Nice video. The lens is a beauty and a beast.

Excellent video. I use a canon 100-400 with a 1.4x on a 5D IV. I don’t see any image quality reduction but what I do think maybe a slight downside, is the speed of focusing may be slightly reduced. I notice this with birds in flight.

I watched the video at 1,5x speed, no exposure problems at all! ^)))

Very helpful thanks

Modern Professional lenses are so sharp, that they resolve details smaller than the pixel size of modern DSLRS with 5-9µm pixel size. Teleconverters don't increase that resolution, but their added magnification brings the size of resolvable details closer to the pixel size, basically giving you a higher resolution shot for the cost of a few F-stops. For most cameras you can find the "Diffraction limited aperture", which is the aperture at which point a perfect lens can resolve details smaller than the pixel size of that camera. For a Canon 5D that's 10.1. So that X2 converter putting your aperture to 11 should not produce a noticeable reduction in sharpness. It's actually a pretty good combination to make your whole camera system work as close to the diffraction limit as possible.

I think the main advantage for using an extender is when you need to manually focus. Did you try to sharpen the pixelated image in post processing? How do the images compare after post production?

superb explanation

Thank you. Very useful.

Good test.

This is a fantastic review mate.

i was just searching for newer lens and i found them on amazon wanted to see what they do by someone who knows what they are doing

Very useful video! Short and to the point with example. I think for the price a Teleconverter is a good buy, just in case the need arises. What you loose in quality, for the average enthusiast is minimal.

You have missed one very important point here - what will the end use of the image be? Cropping in on an image as much as you did means you now have a much smaller resolution file, so say you wanted to print it, you wouldn't be able to print it anywhere near as big as the image using the teleconverter.

Excellent review, thank you. I will make this test on my future 100-400 Mark II with the 5D Mark IV. Cropping yes, but you need to have at least 30 Million Pixel. I believe the same test on a 5D Mark iii will advantage the converter...

Would be interesting to see a similar comparison but with a smaller far away target, like birds in flight, or wildlife. I find the crop of such targets quickly breaks down, especially on a crop sensor camera. The extender seems to make a larger difference when cropping such targets in post processing.

Thanks that really helped.

Great video, thanks for the pixel peaks! I’ve wondered about these extenders. Rather than the extender, I keep the M50. Its crop is my extender, turning the Sigma 150~600 into a 240~960mm lens, put on the Viltron reducer & it becomes 170~681mm. All that said, I have no doubt that using Canons extender on a quality Canon lens probably produces a better overall result.

Both!

Great video 💯

I think the main advantage of the extender is that you see the subject taking the picture. Some objects you can not see at all in detail when at 400mm but you can with 800.So cropping afterward can give bad surprises.

Thanks for this video. Clearly for most people the 2x converter is a bargain compared to $13K for an actual 600 mm lens, unless someone else is paying for the 600 mm lens.

Extenders DO help for things like Astrophotography and Macro Photography. For Astro you need a larger image cast on your sensor. Cropping won't work. Taking photos of planets or nebula, the moon or sun, you often need the image as large as possible through the lens. And pushing a 400mm lens to 800mm makes a big difference. If you simply crop it, you end up with fewer pixels in your final astro image. Same thing for Macro photography. The Canon 1.4X and 2X can be used with the Canon 65mm Macro lens, increasing the magnification of the macro image singificantly.

at 5:50 if I zoom on this RU-vid video (you can do it too, just not in fullscreen mode) I can clearly see a sharper and much cleaner image which means on my own computer there will be a big difference. Thank you for this video I will now buy with confidence.

When comparing it gives a more fair result if you increase the number of pixels in the cropped image using a sample algorithm such bicubic sampling (default in Photoshop), this reduces the pixelation quite a lot.

could be interresting to se the 300mm crop with topaz ai megapixel to get same resolution and see the difference then.

What I love about L lenses is that often cropping at 100% gives you a better image than a non L lens which is not cropped at all. This alone makes them worth the money as it effectively gives you added zoom in post, and a whole new photo from a photo that you didn't see in the field. I'm so glad I was talked into spending the extra money on L lenses. Looking at the 70-200 f2.8 with x2 tele right now.

Very helpful! 👍🏼

Awesome, thanks. Wondering if you used the II version of the 2x, any difference from the III? Thanks again, nice video.

Just a thought. Careful with your terminology. In your opening monologue you say "extenders" to refer to what I believe you mean teleconverters. It's important to note that there are "extension tubes" and "teleconverters", both of which do different things. So mixing the terminology may be a little confusing for folks.

I can barely tell the difference between no converter and 1.4. The 2x is a different story. Normally I only use the 2x when filling the frame with a (relatively) close subject (like a songbird). I have little success trying to bring in something distant. It's almost never sharp. Better to crop in post and use Gigapixel if necessary, but you have to make absolutely sure that there is no motion blur and the exposure is right on.

If you are using lenses from 300MM to as long as 200MM and you got eight a 1.4 or a 2x Converter and want to get good image quality I suggest you set your IOS on your camera on AUTO and make sure you got a mono Pods or a tripod when you are using Heavy long lenses and

I think the real advantage of a teleconverter is being able to see/read/identify what you're shooting.

The way to get a true comparison is after you crop to get the same zoom level up size it in photo shop to get the same size image and then look at both at 100 percent and see if you truly gained anything with the tele-converter. I did this on my Canon 70-200mm F2.8II and found The upsized image was better. the 300mm F2.8 Prime is a better lens though so maybe you could get some extra detail.

Thanks for this video. I've been using DSLRs since they were 4MP and back then extenders were really helpful when using long lenses. As MP count has gone up, they are less and less useful. The cameras are getting close to extracting all the info that a lens can offer. And for sports or wildlife, better faster focusing is achieved without the extender, especially in low light. Right now I use a 7DII as my "extender". The 1.6 crop gets to the center of the FF image just like an extender, but the lens is still 2.8 (or whatever it's max was.) As the pixel density of the 7DII is still much higher than a FF DSLR like a 1DX, more detail vs cropping the FF image. And while the 7DII is a little more expensive (used) than a converter. It's a also a complete camera that can be used as a back-up, handed to a 2nd shooter etc. I have a M6 II on the way with 32MP in the cropped image. You'd need an 81MP FF to get the same density.

I keep hearing this _cropping in photoshop_ option and as a media professional and photographer I cannot understand why so many people think this will work! You're literally cropping and therefore reducing resolution of your photos. A tele-converter is not going to reduce as much aperture as you think.

I actually ended up buying the 2x and it is definitely softer for me. I compared a shot without the extender and zoomed in. The zoomed in photo was the same if not sharper than the 2x converter shot. I thought online reviews were being harsh on it but I definitely see the difference. Maybe the 1.4x would be better but the 2x was a headache to put on and off so I think I'll just be cropping from now on.

Thanks for this video. I did the same test with a Canon 5DSr /100-400 Mk II / 1.4x III converter and the 2x converter. I found that the results were phenomenal with the 1.4x III. However, there was some softness with the 2x (very slight though). I'd be interested it you found the same thing with your set up.

Unless it is a very top end lens where you still have "untapped" sharpness, or where you can see when zoomed on your image that the lens could produce(not the best word choice) a little more sharpness, better off just cropping.

I liked your video, wish you would have shot something more appealing than an inanimate object. I did hear a woodpecker around although it could have been a jackhammer if there was construction going on:) I have this teleconverter and use it exclusively with a Canon f5.6 400mm lens. I find the image quality doesn't really suffer but the logistics do. There is no AF with my 6D and i definitely need a tripod, wide open it's F11 I think, it's not ideal! I can't afford the 2.8 version of this lens!

If you have a the 2x on you can still crop and get a good image

better contrast on the uncropped version, and cropping obviously degrades any images where extenders don't.

Many people find that extenders slow autofocus and lower the 'keeper rate'. Extenders work well on full-frame sensors and high-end prime lenses, but suck on crop sensors, zoom lenses and lower-end lenses. An extender between a mid-range zoom lens and a crop-sensor camera is basically garbage.

Good content.

What about doubling resolution in ACR?

I think if you already own some long lenses, it’s a small investment to make to keep some extenders handy.

Good topic. Just one comment, while adding a TC into the train you should add the TC to the lens, then add the body.

Hi thanks , very useful. What you found is why up to this point I haven’t got an extender for my 70 - 200 (on a 5d4), however I’ve just started using the 5D4 for video and need the longer reach (from time to time - currently America’s cup yachting) so am likely to invest in the 2xiii. Any views ?

That amount of cropping is entering major levels of pixel peeping. Most people who crop usually do just to change the aspect ratio a bit for composition's sake. A 5dIV sensor should be good enough for most crops. Teleconverters were really only useful during the days of film and early days of digital when sensors were no more than 12mp. Cropping wasnt an option then.

Thank you for the advise, I was going to buy a converter but after watching this video, I realise I do not really need one.

That WAS helpful. I'm getting ready to move from APS-C to full-frame (80D to R) and thinking I'll miss the "reach" I'm used to.

There is one topic missing, the compression on 600mm is more important then on a 300mm, and this is what should be compared as well.

well done that answers a couple of questions well done bu not on my M50 ha ha stay safe see ya

But cutting the photo will reduce the size of photo and get blurry when zoom in i think extendor worth it at this point

Great vid! Just wondering if I should get a 2x converter for my 5Ds-R with 75-300mm f/4-5.6?

Have you ever used your 2x with your 17mm TSE? If so what was your findings? I'm wondering if you had a similar findings as if you used your 24mm TSE.

So, here is the thing, I am not sure whether I just got a lemon or the Sigma 1.4x teleconverter is really much worse than the Canon equivalent. I have just started shooting birds, may be for a year and recently I just bought a Sigma 150-600mm. Great lens for the money. But, the guy at the shop sold me the factory combo deal together with the 1.4x teleconverter. So, this is what happened, the lens straight out of the box was very sharp, much sharper than expected. I was very happy with it and eventually I tried it with the extender. Boom and my dream was shattered in an instance!! (sounds a little dramatic I know, LOL). To begin with, the hunting was ridiculous. No, pardon me, to begin with, the actual focusing speed was much slower and yes then subsequently followed by the hopeless hunting. Simply put, it just couldn't focus. You see, what I found was the example you demonstrated in the video might not be totally true in the real shooting world pending on the subject you shoot. So, after I encountered the problem, I also tried to do something similar by shooting at a tin of paint from 50ft away. When you are looking at wordings, somehow it kind of lessens the blow as long as you can read the wordings. But, as you put it into real use if you will like in my case by focusing it on the leaves of a tree or a bird, it was literally deemed unusable. Not only it couldn't focus, even when it (sort of did), the focus was still off. Even based on the paint can, I would say anything up to 300mm (420mm extended) is OK or 400mm max (560mm extended, as long as you don't crop in is barely acceptable), but from that point up, you can forget about it. Having said that, I do use an APS-C body, a Canon 90D with a 32.5 MP sensor, so in effect, at 300mm I am actually shooting at 672mm which is much, much shorter than if I had used the lens without the teleconverter wide open at 600mm or 960mm in my case. My conclusion is, again pending on the subject you shoot, don't use an extender. Just use the lens as it is and crop in as long as it is still sharp and the quality is still there. Beyond that point, it simply becomes irrelevant or just don't shoot beyond a certain distance in order to maintain that quality. Or may be, just don't use it on an APS-C body and pretty much treat the 1.6x crop factor as your own teleconverter if you will. Or perhaps a teleconverter is best used with a full frame camera.

Worse comes to worse you could also resize your image to get more pixels for print using Topaz Labs gigapixel.

As far as I know, the tc should change the depth of field, correct me if I'm wrong

Thanks for the video. Would love to see a similar test to this for 4K video. I would assume that the converter would out perform cropping in on a video clip. Great vid!

Nice video, thanks! What if you are into bird photography abd you hace to picture fast flying birds, would you crop or teleconverter?

I wonder what the result would be had to first enlarged the original 300m image in Photoshop using the best upscaling, then cropped in as far as the 600mm equivalent image with the extender.

Speed impacted from 1/200 to 1/60 sec, i.e. I asumme this will reduce quality of moving images?

Canon recommends to couple the teleconverter to the lens 1st, then attach to the camera body (not putting the teleconverter to the camera 1st)

Hello, how are you? I know you have EOS R and when i watch your video i get mine R :) now wanna ask did you try teleconventer with R, is it work very well with adapter, any issue? And what about canon 100-400 L II, cause i have tamron 100-400 and when i try take a photo after 300 mm focusing is not good, too slow, killing me and want to change with Canon 100-400 but need advice :) need your help about teleconventer 1.4 X and Canon 100-400 :) thank you very much

I have Canon prime lens 300 mm F4 , I want to purchase Canon 2x teleconverter , its work properly

This is in no way meant o offend Disney, only help the people who have not achieved this standing This is a decent idea to make a video on, but I feel a number of details need to be mentioned in an updated video if possible. Aperture: Usually when you use teleconverters, you lose at least a stop of light. I don't know your iso values to get a good reference on this image but noise is always and issue when you loose light. Money: Not everyone can afford 300mm at 2.8 so they lose light out the gate. So when we crop we start with a handicap where 2.8 on a full frame Mark 4 will not so much. ISO: You are also in a well lit situation. A better test is to go in a low light situation and watch the image crumble at 12,800 and handicap you lens to a 5.6 (The usual kit lens limitation) to relate to everyone at the bottom first to show a comprehensive change that everyone can expect to see Handicaps Of Normal People: Then handicapping that lens that's a monster at 2.8 will allow everyone to see the benefits of having fast glass and how that improves using a teleconverter. MEGAPIX: Also Megapixels matter to those that understand the camera that they are using. A 50MP 5SDR will yield totally different results than the 5D Mark 4. Also cheaper cameras like the A7R Mark I II III and IV have way more megapixels that the 5D Mark IV at cheaper prices but not fast 300mm lenses that are readily an option Canon also sells way more crop frame cameras than full frame, so lets talk about the sensor size and possible advantages there. Physical Gear and Technique: Is this a monopod? how much money is that monopod? is it worth me getting fast glass at low iso values or slow glass and save thousands on the megapixel? Lol i'm just getting started. I thought Nikon sponsored disney?!

im having alot of difficulty with it focusing

Thanks, this video made up my mind... its not worth the money + unconvenience ... or, not for me at least

I currently have a 90D and a canon 70-200 2.8 IS III, would there be any issues using the 1.4 extender for daylight motorsports use?

Is it gonna be good? I have Canon 55 - 250mm but i want to buy teleconverter 2x to have 500mm Lens for plane spotting

question for you.. i have a mix of EF and RF glass and im thinking about the 1.4 rf extender. im wondering if the RF extender can be used with my ef lens using the rf to ef adaptor between the lens and the teleconverter? then i would only need one extender.

If the Extender cuts the light that reaches the sensor by the same factor, in this case 2x, then it is 1 stop and not 2 stops, so your f2.8 300mm turns into a f4 600mm. Alternatively it does loses 2 stops, so it turns from a f2.8 into a f5.6, but that 4x the amount of light.

What about a scenario where you are recording a VIDEO of an owl or a deer at night, with some moon light, using a Canon 5D mk4, 70-200mm 2.8 lens? Is it a similar situation where the increased length with the 2x teleconverter has diminishing returns since it is letting in less very needed light? Would it be better to just use the 70-200mm, boost the ISO to where minimal distortion(lower the better of course) and just crop after in a video editor? I am going to do this experiment, but it would be nice to get your input. With photos there is a lot more digital data to crop in compared to video. The Canon video might have an advantage because the video files are less compressed and are HUGE, so cropping in Adobe premiere might make a clear video image.............. I am guessing the only reason to use the teleconverter is if you are a perfectionist and want the max sharpness zoomed in(even though no one will ever notice or care, haha) or if perhaps you are filming a video for a live stream video and can not crop in post production..... does that make sense?

Can I use like 2xCanon Extender EF 2x III with a 400mm together?

There is no loss of quality using extenders if you need to use them to get an image that you couldn't get without using them! Cropping alone won't get you there when you are printing.

Thanks! Great video. New York accent?

Hi i have a canon 7d with a 1.6x which turns my 500mm turns into a 800mm will the extender give me then a 800mm x 2?