paulreinstein
Member
no doubt, it certainly looks good to me. all i can tell you is that one day about 2 years ago, i sat by the edge of a nearby lake, watching a pair of red-necked phalaropes go in circles for a couple of hours. the distance to them hardly changed (20-30'), and as they went round and round, i went through the base 600, added the 1.4x and the 2x. i did it with both my a9ii and a7Riv, and with my 200-600 also. lots and lots of shots.
i picked out the sharpest amongst them, and cropped to just the center 1/3 of the image (1/9th of the total pixels). on my monitor, for the a7Riv, that's pretty close to 100% view. then i moved them from Lightroom (which has limited zooming levels) to Photoshop, where i looked at the 1.4x at 100% and the 2x at 67%. viewed that way, i thought the cropped 1.4x images held a barely perceptible advantage over the 2x.
when people, such as yourself tell me, and show me a 100% crop, i'm never entirely sure how they got there and what i'm looking at. nor is it clear to me that what i'm looking at on my computer is the same as what you're looking at. computers, the internet, displays and software do lots of things behind the scene, so truth is, theres a lot of computer stuff i don't really understand. i would guess that you're vastly better at presenting a 100% crop that than i am, but because i'm not that good at LR, let alone PS, all i can do is defer to your expertise and believe your results were different than mine, which is what i was trying to do above. i offer my experience, to whatever level of knowledge i think i've gotten to, and i have no issues disagreeing with people who legitimately have different experiences. the world is complicated. if something i say rings true for someone, great. if not, great. and i'm open to being corrected when i'm wrong. your photo above looks very sharp, but i'd need a more critical, complete and compelling presentation to change my mind on this, especially since i'm old and very weight concious (i'm biased and lazy and don't want to carry the 2x also!).
maybe what i should do is take a few feathers, stick them in the ground, and repeat the test on a windless day. but i need to think through the most appropriate settings for the test, which i did on the fly back then, and i never really concluded that they were the best and fairest settings to compare. for example, when you add the 2x, the aperture is effectively smaller, so is it more appropriate to shoot that smaller aperture with the 1.4x also or change the ISO or shutter speed or some compromise approach...? not clear to me. in the field, i would normally shoot wide open, whatever that means for that lens combination, and i try to shoot ~1/(2xfocal length), depending. and then i let the ISO go where it needs to, to get the proper exposure. note that given that the 2x results in a smaller aperture (less light), and the longer focal length would recommend a faster shutter speed (less light), then the ISO needs to go significantly higher, and that produces more noise, and even with Topaz DeNoise (which i didn't have 2 years ago), its not clear how all that shakes out. like i said, whatever works for you. i'm not planning to carry my 2x anywhere any time soon.
i picked out the sharpest amongst them, and cropped to just the center 1/3 of the image (1/9th of the total pixels). on my monitor, for the a7Riv, that's pretty close to 100% view. then i moved them from Lightroom (which has limited zooming levels) to Photoshop, where i looked at the 1.4x at 100% and the 2x at 67%. viewed that way, i thought the cropped 1.4x images held a barely perceptible advantage over the 2x.
when people, such as yourself tell me, and show me a 100% crop, i'm never entirely sure how they got there and what i'm looking at. nor is it clear to me that what i'm looking at on my computer is the same as what you're looking at. computers, the internet, displays and software do lots of things behind the scene, so truth is, theres a lot of computer stuff i don't really understand. i would guess that you're vastly better at presenting a 100% crop that than i am, but because i'm not that good at LR, let alone PS, all i can do is defer to your expertise and believe your results were different than mine, which is what i was trying to do above. i offer my experience, to whatever level of knowledge i think i've gotten to, and i have no issues disagreeing with people who legitimately have different experiences. the world is complicated. if something i say rings true for someone, great. if not, great. and i'm open to being corrected when i'm wrong. your photo above looks very sharp, but i'd need a more critical, complete and compelling presentation to change my mind on this, especially since i'm old and very weight concious (i'm biased and lazy and don't want to carry the 2x also!).
maybe what i should do is take a few feathers, stick them in the ground, and repeat the test on a windless day. but i need to think through the most appropriate settings for the test, which i did on the fly back then, and i never really concluded that they were the best and fairest settings to compare. for example, when you add the 2x, the aperture is effectively smaller, so is it more appropriate to shoot that smaller aperture with the 1.4x also or change the ISO or shutter speed or some compromise approach...? not clear to me. in the field, i would normally shoot wide open, whatever that means for that lens combination, and i try to shoot ~1/(2xfocal length), depending. and then i let the ISO go where it needs to, to get the proper exposure. note that given that the 2x results in a smaller aperture (less light), and the longer focal length would recommend a faster shutter speed (less light), then the ISO needs to go significantly higher, and that produces more noise, and even with Topaz DeNoise (which i didn't have 2 years ago), its not clear how all that shakes out. like i said, whatever works for you. i'm not planning to carry my 2x anywhere any time soon.