Image of the Week

Western Cattle Egret (Bubulcus ibis). Fancourt, George, Western Cape Province, South Africa

Canon EOS R3 with a Canon RF 400mm f/2.8L IS USM lens with an RF 2x extender. Mounted on a Gitzo 1548 tripod with a Wimberley Gimbal head.

  ISO 400. 1/4000 sec at f/5.6.  Exposure set manually. 

I am still playing around with my RF 400mm lens f/2.8L lens with a 2x extender attached. I have been extremely happy with the lens at the bare 400mm and also with a 1.4x extender. Was always concerned when I attached a 2x extender to my various EF and RF super-telephoto lenses. The images were a little softer. But with the RF 400 mm lens, the 2x extender seems to have very little degradation in IQ. This image of a Cattle Egret shows very good feather detail with no apparent softness to the sharpness. In fact I applied very little sharpening during the processing. It was shot wide open at f/5.6 (being the widest aperture of the 400mm f/2.8 with a 2x extender). I did a few shots at f/8, which reduced the shutter speed to 1/2000 sec., and there was virtually no difference.

The lighting conditions for this image was near perfect.  The sun had just risen and was directly behind me.  The bird had settled on the side of a pond which was still in deep shadow – hence the big contrast. The histogram showed some underexposure which I knew would be OK to avoid blowing out any of the white.