Winter Wren, 300 2.8 x 2 thoughts

http://www.jnphoto.net/winterwren-a3257.jpg

This is my first songbird image taken with a Canon 300mm f2.8 and Canon2xmkII converter. Shot from parked auto from beanbag. Fill flash, but shot at f5.6. I am not pleased with the sharpness and assume this would have been sharper had I stopped down to F8. But at ISO 800, the dimly lit forest scene would have had too slow a shutter speed for this frantic but beautiful singer. Perhaps i could have stopped down more but shot with flash as main light. I'll leave as posted but do see some artifacts close to the bird, resulting from my roughly selecting the background to apply CS3 noise reduction. A small region close to the bird still has background noise.

FYI. not sure the ID of the perch stick, but I do love the color and patterns of it.

Jeff,
I rarely use the 2x converter even on the 300 f/2.8 although the 300 2.8 is very sharp in my experience either alone or with the 1.4. You are probably right that stopping down to f/8 or f/10 will make the image sharper with this combination but then you get more sharpness in the background as well. I think the pine branch behind the bird's beak would be more distracting at f/8 or f/10 which puts you on the horns of the dilemma that is one of the reasons I don't like to put the 2x on the 300 f/2.8. I think you did well under the limited light conditions.

Hey Jeff!! Compared to other images that you've made, this isn't as sharp as what I'm used to. I've talked to a few folks that have used the 300mm f/2.8 + 2Xtc combo and to get high quality sharpness they have to shoot around f/8. I'm sure f/8 wouldn't have worked well with the background. I'm with you on the perch, I like it a lot.

Jeff,

Great looking bird but I have to agree on the 300mm issue as a former owner and user of one.