It's been a tough few weeks for photography as work pressure and turbulent weather has got in the way of employing the camera. I recently got a Sony 2x Teleconverter (off Trademe) and have been hoping to test it out. I've been happy with the 1.4x TC for a while but appreciate that image quality does take a small hit with a TC. On the other hand, my longest lens is a 300mm G prime. While this has superb image quality it isn't always long enough for nature photography. The 1.4x TC extends it to a useful 420mm focal length. The 2x takes it out to 600mm.

Once you start shooting at these kind of focal lengths (my rule of thumb, 500mm or more) stability is an issue. This is why tripods are normally used as an adjunct for the big lenses.

I didn't really have time to pack and setup a tripod however on Sunday, so I did it the hard way with a handheld shot. I'm usually pretty steady with a camera and lens (which helps with a lot of the macro shots I do), but cranked the shutter speed up to 1/1000 sec and ensured the camera stabiliser was working. This should buy me a few extra stops of stability.

Tuis are starting to increase in abundance our way, so I went out for some snapshots. Lighting conditions weren't ideal. I like to have a bit of directional light with our native birds, especially as they often have a metallic sheen to them when the sun hits them at certain angles.

Anyway, this is my hand-held, manual focus shot of a local tui.