2700mm Desert Cottontail

I recently learned of a Great Horned Owl's nest in a saguaro cactus near my home, and after reading George Lepp's story about the eagles and tele extenders in this month's Outdoor Photographer, I thought I would give this a go to allow some distance between me and the nest, as well as staying on the designated trail.

The image below was my first attempt in my backyard. This was with a 600mm f4 IS I, 2x Series II, 1.4x Series II, and a 7D on a Gitzo GT5541LS tripod with Wimberly II head. IS was turned on. ISO bumped to 400, I selected f11 to extend the depth of field as the subject was only about 10 yards away, and metered straight up, with 1/13th of a second.

My subject is a desert cottontail rabbit, that is drinking from a bubbler in my back yard.

It is soft, but this was my first experiment and I only had a few minutes to play. The fur on the shoulders seem sharp, but the eye is soft. Still fun to play.

Love the experiment. That is a good image for those settings. 1/13th of a second? Amazing. Indeed it isn't the quality of a bare 600 by any means, but 2700mm!

I was impressed. I have never played with the 2x that much, because I always used it for longer range items. I had talked with others who felt that it was better for closer objects, but had never tried it.

I have been getting OK results with the owl's nest, however, I did learn something. I knew that the 7D could not autofocus with anything greater than the 5.6 minimum aperture, but I was surprised that appears to only apply to the phase detection autofocus seen through the view finder. If you put the camera into live view for fine focus, and then press halfway on the shutter, it will actually focus using the contrast detection of the live view. It is slow, but with the stationary objects, I think it is helping.

Selected f/11? Wouldn't that be wide open with stacked 1.4 and 2x teleconverters on a 600L?

I'm very curious as to why you chose to stack both teles when you already had a 600 and the subject was just 10 yards away. This would explain the loss in quality. To be honest I feel like the end result could have been sharper if you just used the 600 and cropped. I could be wrong though. Cheers!

The reason for this was simply an experiment. I had come across an owl's nest that I wanted to photograph, but did not wish to approach too closely, not to mention, your not allowed off the trail.

Some times to get the true close up and follow the rules, you make due with what you have. As for the desert cottontail, I have quite a few pictures. This really was not my intended subject, it just happened to come for a drink while I was messing around. We have several of these rabbits that frequent our yard every day.

As for the f/11 Lloyd, I am not entirely sure that it reports f/11 or f8.0 when the converters are stacked. I will have to look at this the next time I experiment.

Thanks for all the comments.