Testing the Phase One 240LS & Schneider 2x extender

f/9 1/250 ISO200 handheld

 

The 240LS and Schneider 2x extender arrived late yesterday.  I wanted to get comfortable with it before heading out this morning.  What I've noticed is that the lens and extender combined is very near the same length as the Mamiya 300 4.5.  The extender is just a little over 2" (5.1 cm) and the lens is almost 7" (17.8 cm).  The lens, extender and DF with my IQ160 combined weigh a ton!  This is one heavy lens.

f/9 1/250 ISO200 handheld



The one drawback to using the extender is you loose auto focus.  The other drawback is the change in aperture, doubling the 4.5 to f/9.  I figured I try a work around by raising the ISO from 50 to 100 and quickly found 200 worked better.

 

Crop from above

 

So, we have a very heavy lens/camera body combination; can it be used handheld? The short answer is yes.  The much longer answer is that you really need to be use to working with heavy equipment and be on your A-game.  To be totally truthful I ended up shooting 71 frames today and have what I expect 23 files that are workable.  Not bad for the first day out.  Some of the problems stemmed from focus problems and some from shake.

 

 f/12 1/320 ISO200 monopod

 

I began today on the back side of the National Elk Refuge in Jackson WY.  There's a saying of "aim small miss small" and this can be carried over to photography.  I ended up shooting 3-sizes of wildlife; Big Horn Sheep, Buffalo and Moose.  I also tried a little landscape.  All told, the first image was captured at 8:47 a.m. (and 4 degrees) with the last at 11:57 a.m. (and 16 degrees).  The Big Horn and Buffalo were shot handheld and I used a monopod with the Moose.

The 4-images included are just a sample of what was accomplished this morning.  The files were opened in Capture One before sending them to Photoshop CC.  Little post processing was performed other than using the new camera shake filter (which I use on most all images). 

 

Stay tuned for more.

 

Don