Welcome Keith,
I see you've already received a lot of advice.
I certainly agree on the teleconverter question. The 7-element
converters are really useable, where the 4-element ones are strictly for
emergencies, paperweights or conversion to extension tubes. I have the
Vivitar Macro Teleconverter and am very impressed with the macro
capability. I just got back some absolutely beautiful flower pics I took
with it. What appears to be the identical item was also sold under other
3rd. party names. Not all look the same, but some do.
On hand-holding 300mm. There are a couple of things not yet fully
addressed. Mike V. mentioned film speed in passing. It's a huge factor.
For those who only shoot 'fast' 200iso film as a measure of desperation
and bemoan the loss of 25 speed films, 300mm hand-held isn't an option.
When it's dim and gloomy, I break out the Supra 800 and sometimes
intentionally underexpose it up to a stop. With 1/500-1/2000 shutter
speed, good technique and steady hands/body, I've had some good results.
That said, I usually travel with a hiking stick with tripod thread
attachment on top and a very simple azimuth only head on it to use as a
monopod. It's also nice how many trees, fence posts, etc. there are
around to lend a stable hand. I regularly use the 60-300 Tamron SP Mike
mentioned and it's only f5.6 at 300mm, about 1/2 a stop slower than the
300/4.5. I have the 300/4.5, but use it less than I had expected,
because it so often turns out that what I really want is 175mm, or
270mm, or ??mm to frame the shot. I think I may be catching zoomoholism.
And here I am stuck with 11 different local lengths of Zuiko primes ;-) .
Moose
Keith Allchin wrote:
I "need" a 300/4.5 but the light in the UK is usually poor and I
usually hand-hold so I would probably never use it enough to justify
the 250-350gbp expense. I have the Vivitar converter mentioned above
but the picture quality with the 135 has not been marvellous. Is the
Oly 2X sufficiently better to justify 120GBP?
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