Due to dramatically changing life experiences, I've downsized my photography equipment (and moved to a new residence) but at the same time, I haven't given up!

So, over the past couple of days, I've gotten some "stuff" out of "hiding" and have been putting together a new "kit" to do some interesting stuff! My initial "aim" is to get shots of some of the area critters that come into the neighborhood here.

My challenges: even though I have a nice long "zoom" lens (the Canon 100-400mm lens) the fact is that the "long" is often not long enough! So, I dragged out a "teleconverter", which is an attached "magnifying lens". The one I've hooked up is a "2x TC", meaning that it doubles the magnification of your shot. It does the job, but with some disadvantages:

First off, with this "TC", my cameras will not auto-focus, so that I have to manually focus. This is OK, although with moving critters it's a disadvantage.

Second, the "effect" of the magnification and optics is to seriously cut down on the amount of light that gets in, meaning that the exposure needed has to be "multiplied", meaning either a very high (noisy) ISO amplification or a very slow shutter speed (think blurry shots of the moving critters).

My solution to approaching this problem involved first attaching a flash to my trusty ol' 30D camera. Then, because at a distance the flash illumination can be pretty weak, I dug out a Better Beamer "flash extender". This bit of kit has a lens at the end of a "holder" that focuses the flash light onto a relatively small "field of view", resulting in a brighter smaller "beam". It's designed to be used for longer focal lengths, meaning it's just right for my "kit" here. The 2x TC with the 100-400 lens results in an "effective" focal length of 800mm, good for getting those critters.

So finally today I had it "together", on a tipod, hooked up to a cable release so I wouldn't have to move around and startle the critters and I wouldn't have to "handle" the camera/shutter release, causing vibrations!

So finally, I took the gear outside in the wintery afternoon (not good lighting) and set up. My plan was to do some quick testing of things like bushes and fences, making sure that the flash/extender would "perform", but a squirrel showed up!

My quick manual focusing was, well, "so-so", but at least I got the result I was after...