canon 1.6 extender ?

[Ido Levy]

Hi All

I am about to order my XL-2 with the 20 zoom stock lens and the canon 1.6 extender.
Any experience regarding the quality of the image with the 1.6 extender?
My main goal is birds photography.

Thank you. ( this forum is amazing! )

[Chris Hurd]

The 1.6x extender is a great tool to have in your kit. See my page at:

http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxl2/artic...e10.php#xl16ex

and

http://www.dvinfo.net/canonxl2/artic...e10.php#xl20ex

for some examples.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

Originally Posted by Ido Levy

Hi All

I am about to order my XL-2 with the 20 zoom stock lens and the canon 1.6 extender.
Any experience regarding the quality of the image with the 1.6 extender?
My main goal is birds photography.

Thank you. ( this forum is amazing! )

This little telex device is ounce-for-ounce about the most expensive accessory for this camera, but worth every penny, if you're shooting longrange birds. I still use my 13-year old L-1 occasionally, just for bird shots across a lake. I have the same Canon accessory for it, although it's a 2x for the L-1, that has a 1/2-inch CCD. It causes no loss of resolution, no distortion and no vignetting. There's such a minimal amount of light reduction with it, that it shows only in very dim light, when at or near to full zoom. It's so nice to have a telex lens with which you can pull back to zero zoom and still have no vignetting.

Do you want to go all out for ultra-long shots? If you add the Canon 1.6X telex under the lens and put, for example, a Century Precision Optics 1.6X telex on the outer end, the magnification you can get is considerable, 57.6X.
With this dual telex setup, you will get some vignetting in the bottom half of the zoom range, some loss of light and of course, a very narrow field of view. Century Optics makes this lens with a 75mm mounting thread and sells it with a 72-75mm step-up ring to fit an XL1/XL2 lens. I talked to a Century Optics advisor about it and she said using it with one of the XL series lenses is the main purpose for it. However, they now have a version of it for the new Sony HDV camcorders. It cost $895. U.S., the last time I checked. Model No. from CPO: VS16TC-XL.

Disclaimer: I've never used this CPO telex. All my speculation about it is based on using other lenses and cameras of similar proportions. If I were going to buy one, I'd want to hear from a few people who'd actually used one on an XL2, but who might that be?

[Phil French]

Get the extender. I use it along with the 16X lense for my XL-1s and I shoot a lot of bird footage (got my first american bittern recently). It will certainly increase the amount of usable footage you get. Good luck and have fun!