Hey all!
I tried something new today -- new in the sense that I've never tried it before, duh.
Two or three years ago I bought a couple Better Beamer Flash Extenders specificaly for birding -- they are little contraptions that are meant to magnify flash for focal lengths 300mm or longer. So, I never used them, because I always shot at longer than 300mm and never used a flash. Makes sense, right?
Anyway, it was a dark and gloomy afternoon, headed toward sunset, and I got it into my head to mount one of these suckers on my 1D3, 100-400 with the 1.4x TC and a 580EX to see what I could do and headed out to some nearby wetlands.
Of course, none of the expected ducks were nearby, and the Canadian honkers were smart enough to fly way up there beyond my desired shooting level. But, there were a couple of robins, a male and a female, who hopped around near enough for me to get some shots.
Here are a set with some close crops -- they were taken at 1/160 sec ( but the first one at 1/13 sec) so I was pretty impressed with how they turned out (all at 560mm):
1/13 sec f/11 ISO 400
Crop:
1/160 sec @ f/11 ISO 400
Crop:
