Well then, I got out this afternoon with my "revamped" gear, but this time with an added "twist"!

There are a lot of little birds who hang out here, typically in an apple tree behind our yard/fence, In fact, they are small enough and at least 10 yards from where I can shoot from without causing them to scatter that they were in fact a primary reason for steering toward getting and using the Kenko 2x TC -- as you will see it does give enough "reach" to get an "OK" shot with the 800mm "effective" focal length (using my 100-400mm lens)!

But then, these birds were "back-lit", the afternoon sun coming from behind them, a bit to the side, but not giving me good lighting. The day was mostly overcast, bits of blue sky, all of which would combine for a lousy "normal" exposure (which you shall see), with the sky ugly and blown out...

Well, these were conditions that I had in mind when I pulled out my Better Beamer flash extender and wrapped it around my Canon 580EX SpeedLite! The flash extender "focuses" the flash beam, concentrating it for a longer focal length, and is excellent for "fill" in this type of scenario, I could keep my exposure "toned down" for the bright skies but still have some illumination for the birds!

My other "challenge" was that with this "rig" I need to manually focus, and boy, having these little critters zoomed in to 800mm, surrounded by little tree branches. The "task" of manually focusing is "fun", you have to keep your eye glued to the viewfinder as you slowly turn your focusing ring, and realize that at 800mm every little jiggle shows up, which can disrupt your view!

Speaking of "jiggle", a bit of good news it that with this rig the Canon Image Stabilization does work, and even mounted on a tripod it makes a noticeable positive difference~

Anyway, here are some shots, some got "tossed" but these were the best and for a couple I'm tossing in "100% crops" so you can see what kind of detail the lens/TC optics came out with...enjoy!