2x teleconverter

Most photographers hesitate to use a 2x teleconverter due to the fear of losing too much quality in the image. As long as the shutter speed is at least the reciprocal of the focal length (meaning if the focal length is 1000mm, the speed of the shutter should be at least 1/1000 or faster), I've had only very good results with a 2x. This is an Abyssinian roller I photographed in the Masai Mara Game Park in Kenya, and I used a 500mm telephoto along with a 2x teleconverter. My settings were 1/1000, f/11, and 200 ISO, and as you can see, it's tack sharp. In addition, I cropped the original 47.5 megabyte file (taken with the Canon 1Ds Mark II in 2007) down to 12 megabytes, which further attests to the quality of the glass I used. In my next issue of Photo Insights (it will be released March 1), I discuss a great way of resizing cropped images back to their original high res size using Topaz AI Gigapixel. This bird is a cousin to the lilac-breasted roller.