Slideshow: 40 Acre Lake Trail – Brazos Bend State Park

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Recently, I went to 40 Acre Lake at Brazos Bend State Park and took my Canon 50D, Canon EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens and my new Canon EF 1.4x II Extender lens. I had been on a recent trip to the park with the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens and the 50D alone and was very happy, but there were some shots I missed because I was still not able to get close enough to the skittish animals. I decided to get the 1.4x II extender and give it a try before my 30-day return period expired.

The weather that day was very threatening in the morning and I sat at home watching the weather forecasters predict doom and wondering whether or not I should go at all. After a while of no rain at home, I decided I would go ahead and at least drive out to the park. If it rained I could always come back home. If I stayed home and the showers never came, I would have been doubly unhappy.

When I got to the park around noon, it had not rained yet and the trails were dry from the previous day’s storms. It was very cloudy and there were dark, low storm clouds circling due to a low pressure system right over the area. There were very few visitors out and it felt like I had the whole lake to myself. On the pier, I took a few shots without the extender and then a few with it to try out the setup.

At first I was really unhappy with the loss of autofocus on the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens with the 1.4x II extender (NOTE: autofocus only works with lenses having an f/4 or faster maximum aperture), so I took it off. Even though the autofocus on the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens without the extender is relatively slow, it is very accurate more often than not. I just felt totally clumsy with out the autofocus. I had never relied on manual focus on any lens except for some near macro work using the 500D close-up lens on the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS USM lens.

As I continued to walk on along the trail of 40 Acre lake, I decided to give the 1.4x II extender another shot. Actually, there were some anhingas that I wanted to get closer shots of and the extender was the only option. Because they were drying themselves from swimming for prey, I was able to set the tripod up properly and spend some time working with the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens in manual focus mode. The focus ring and the zoom tension ring of the lens are next to one another and turning one often turns the other so you have to be aware of what you’re doing. With this practice, I felt more comfortable with the lens with the extender so I left it on the rest of the day which really paid of later as I was able to capture some red winged black birds and an anhinga earning its nickname of snake-bird. In all but a few cases where the subject was in motion I did pretty well with the manual focus.

Near the end of the walk I found some late blooming wildflowers and was happy to see that the minimum focus distance of the lens was not affected by the extender and I liked the increase in magnification as well.

The weather held up until right at 4:30PM as I was approaching my car in the parking lot. I could see and hear the rain coming across the open prairie and I had just enough time to get the camera and tripod into the back seat of the car and me in the front before a southeast Texas summer downpour drenched everything.

What I learned:

• When using the 1.4x II extender, the autofocus only works when mounted on lenses having an f/4 or faster maximum aperture. Maybe this will be less of an issue in brighter daylight and as I get even more comfortable using manual focus.
• The 1.4x II extender doesn’t affect the minimum focus distance of the lens it’s mounted to. This might prove useful in the future when pairing it with the Canon 500D close-up lens since this would increase the magnification of the attached lens by 1.4 as well.
• The 1.4x II Extender will decrease your lens’ aperture setting by 1 stop. While the actual lens aperture will still open to the actual width, the ratio of the aperture opening to the focal length is reduced by 1 stop. On this walk, I shot in AV mode and allowed the Canon 50D to select the ISO. In most cases, I was very pleased with the results even up to ISO1600.
• After getting used to the manual focus ring of the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens, the only other difficulty I had getting used to was with the resulting drop in light in the viewfinder of the 50D when decreasing the aperture to get deeper depths of field. For my eye, the darker image in the viewfinder made it difficult to quickly determine the sharpest focus when I was in the anxiety of the rare moment – as when trying to capture an anhinga spearing a fish.

Overall, the extender works really well with the EF 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS USM zoom lens and I was pleased with the acceptable (for me) level of sharpness and contrast. Considering I would not have been able to get the shots at all without the extender or a huge, much more expensive lens, I find any slight loss to be a good trade off for me. At 400mm with the 1.4x extender and the 1.6x crop factor of the 50D, I effectively have an 890mm lens (400×1.4×1.6). I would definitely recommend the 1.4x II extender to anyone with a compatible Canon lens. Compatible lenses include Canon fixed focal length lenses 135mm and longer (except the 135mm f/2.8 Softfocus lens), and the EF 70-200 f/2.8L, 70-200 f/2.8L IS, 70-200 f/4.0L, 70-200 f/4.0L IS USM, and 100-400 f/4.5-5.6L IS zoom lenses.

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Gallery: 40 Acre Lake Trail – Brazos Bend State Park

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