Extender or Crop

[leebase]

To "extend" or to "crop" that is the question. I admit it, I'm a cropper. Particularly when I'm shooting sports. I set the camear to AI Servo, put the center focus point on the subject, half press to get the auto focus going, and then wait for the moment and fire off in 2 to 3 shot bursts.

Back in the Bat Lair, after I've culled the bad photos, I go through and crop -- deciding what "story" I like in a photo and cropping away the rest. Not to mention that even at 200mm with 1.6x crop, some of the action is too far away to not crop.

So I took out my Sigma 2x converter, slapped it on my Sigma 70-200 f2.8 lens and I'm "up close" and personal with the action.

http://leebase.smugmug.com/photos/19801569-L.jpg

Frankly, I can't tell for sure which shots I used the converter and which I didn't. The lens and converter work well together and there's not that much degradation of photo quality. There IS a noticeable slow down in AF performance. So much so that I won't be using the converter when shooting soccer. Perhaps when shooting baseball or for birding. Otherwise, with 8mp there's plenty of room to crop afterwards and still have a good photo.

Lee

[flyingpylon]

Hey, that's an illegal throw-in. (sorry, couldn't resist) On second thought, maybe she just headed the ball?

I think that for me, two of the greatest things are:

1. The crop factor of DSLRs (which seem to make the lens focal length increase).

2. The higher pixel counts in digital images meaning you can crop quite a bit and still have a good image for printing, and especially for the web.

We'd all like big glass and media credentials, but few have them. An extender can help with the focal length issues, but in many cases that can never compensate for the access issues. If you're shooting in a situation that doesn't restrict access, then obviously you don't have the access issues.

Since most of us are not shooting for Sports Illustrated, I don't think there's anything wrong with both extending and/or cropping. And for that matter, I know that professional sports photographers do both as well, when they have to.

[leebase]

Since most of us are not shooting for Sports Illustrated, I don't think there's anything wrong with both extending and/or cropping. And for that matter, I know that professional sports photographers do both as well, when they have to.
Yep. If I was REALLY far away I just might use the extender, then crop.

Or I might just buy a copy of SI!

:)

Nonny

[wxwax]

Crop for web. Extender for print, where you need all those megapixels.

[leebase]

Crop for web. Extender for print, where you need all those megapixels.
I guess it depends on how LARGE you want to print.

After using the extender...I'm not so sure I'd get the best prints from it CONSIDERING how it interfere's with "getting the shot" in the first place.

I'm not completely panning them, of course....just talking about my own particular situation where I'm still left with about 4mp in my photo after cropping. Plenty for web and printing...even 13x19's with interpolation.

Lee