![](http://www.davidfenwick.co.uk/blog/uploaded_images/Extender-700990.jpg)
Fortunately for my wallet I'm not into wildlife photography and so haven't needed to buy any of Canon's high performance telephoto lenses - here are the current prices at Warehouse Express: Canon 300mm f/2.8 L IS £2848, 400mm f/2.8 L IS £4889, 500mm f/4 L IS £4154, 600mm f/4 L IS £5399, 800mm f/5.6 L IS £9000! My longest lens is the 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS which suffices for all my professional wedding and portraiture work. However, I do occasionally need a bit more reach, and so to achieve this without breaking the bank, I invested in a Canon EF 2x II extender (also known as a teleconverter) - seen above next to a Canon EF 24-70 f/2.8 L lens for size comparison. It attaches between the camera and lens, and as its name suggests, it doubles the focal length range of the lens.
![](http://www.davidfenwick.co.uk/blog/uploaded_images/moon-768426.jpg)
The downside is that the aperture of the lens is decreased by two stops, so my 70-200mm f/2.8 IS becomes a 140-400mm f/5.6 IS lens - image stabilisation is not affected. This is the smallest aperture at which autofocus can work on a Canon EOS 5D (1D bodies can handle f/8.0) - if your lens is slower than f/2.8, adding a 2x extender will require you to focus manually. This doubling of focal length results in a doubling of magnification - great for wildlife or, for example, photographing the moon, as above (cropped). As an aside, I shot this in manual mode in order to underexpose by 3 stops to take into account the black sky filling 60% of the image - exposure compensation only allows you to correct by -2 stops in aperture priority mode. The magnification resulting from the extender does lead to a small deterioration in image quality. Canon also sells a 1.4x extender.
I've used the Canon extender on all my lenses - it's particularly entertaining to stick it on a macro lens in conjunction with extension tubes (I'll discuss these in the next post) to achieve high magnifications.
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