# Can you stack Canon 2X plus 1.4 Extenders?



## LovePhotography (Nov 28, 2014)

I'm almost certain I've seen moon photography where people say (can't think of his name, but has that website where he explains astrophotography, etc), they daisy-chained two Canon extenders, but, unless I'm not doing it right, it doesn't seem physically possible... Thx.


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## privatebydesign (Nov 28, 2014)

You need to put a 15mm extension tube between them.


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 28, 2014)

The MkI and MkII versions of them can be stacked, the MkIII versions cannot.


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## TexPhoto (Nov 28, 2014)

As Above, the Mk 1 and Mk II's can be stacked. for 2.8X

The Mk III's cannon stack, unless you put an extension tube in between. This is because the elements will touch before the noun is together. 

But, I doubt this will result in better picture quality than 2X by itself. At X2.8, your f2.8 lens is going to be an f8, and probably a lousy blurry f8. This is the case when I do this with my 400mm f2.8 IS. The photos at 800mm are of a better quality then the photos at 1120mm. There is more detail at 800mm and that is in the daytime. At night, shooting the moon, no way 1120 is going to be better than 800mm in my opinion. The moon (and the Earth under you) are moving remember. You can't take a long exposure unless you have some way to track the moon. 

Find a friend with a telescope that will follow the moon.


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## Aichbus (Nov 28, 2014)

TexPhoto said:


> The moon (and the Earth under you) are moving remember. You can't take a long exposure unless you have some way to track the moon.


Objection! While at night it is dark here on earth, on the visible moon it is day. I have successfully photographed the moon with a 600 L II, a Canon 2x III and a Kenko 1.4 x (in this combination you don't need any extension tube). I used the 6D @ ISO 1600 and f 13 and 1/320 s. At this magnification, you clearly see the moon moving, but believe me, 1/320 securely freezes that movement!


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## LovePhotography (Nov 28, 2014)

Got this last night with just the 300 2.8 plus the 2X iii. Sure had to crop a lot of perfectly good sensor out of it, though. Have seen 2X added to 1.4X possibly on a 1.6 camera that looked better than this, despite all the glass it had to go through. But this ain't bad. DxO only used to crop, not change anything else.


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## Marsu42 (Nov 28, 2014)

Aichbus said:


> At this magnification, you clearly see the moon moving, but believe me, 1/320 securely freezes that movement!



Great shot - could do with some more contrast and sharpening, but this really makes me envious of this gear combination. Unfortunately, there's only one moon to shoot around here


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## DominoDude (Nov 29, 2014)

Years back I saw Liquidstone (a.k.a. Romy Ocon) who showed an insane stacking on a Sigma 800mm lens. He turned it into a 12800mm monster.

A picture of the beastly arrangement can be found here -> http://www.pbase.com/liquidstone/image/59586426


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## meywd (Nov 29, 2014)

DominoDude said:


> Years back I saw Liquidstone (a.k.a. Romy Ocon) who showed an insane stacking on a Sigma 800mm lens. He turned it into a 12800mm monster.
> 
> A picture of the beastly arrangement can be found here -> http://www.pbase.com/liquidstone/image/59586426



there is this one as well http://gizmodo.com/5716810/how-do-you-reach-the-moon-with-your-slr-strap-on-five-huge-lens-extenders


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## Aichbus (Nov 29, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Aichbus said:
> 
> 
> > At this magnification, you clearly see the moon moving, but believe me, 1/320 securely freezes that movement!
> ...


True. The point of the picture was to show that you don't need a tracking device to photograph the moon. And this is gear talk. I posted 100 % (small crop) with just a bit sharpening to allow evaluation of the combination. I don't see the point of presenting downsized sharpened, often over-sharpened, pictures in a gear's talk, because they don't prove anything.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 29, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> The MkI and MkII versions of them can be stacked, the MkIII versions cannot.


 
And, you can stack a 1.4X III with a 2X I or II.


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## neuroanatomist (Nov 29, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > The MkI and MkII versions of them can be stacked, the MkIII versions cannot.
> ...



Thanks! I was pretty sure that was the case, but not positive so I left it off.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 29, 2014)

neuroanatomist said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > neuroanatomist said:
> ...


 
I kept that combination just because I could stack them. I was going to stack a Kenko 1.4 with my Canon 1.4 when I ran into the issue of the Kenko locking up my 5D MK III (Some have now had it lock up their 7D MK II's as well.


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## 2n10 (Nov 29, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> neuroanatomist said:
> 
> 
> > Mt Spokane Photography said:
> ...



I haven't had my Kenko lock up my 7DII or 7D but at 1/500ss and faster the mirror doesn't always return and hangs.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 29, 2014)

2n10 said:


> I haven't had my Kenko lock up my 7DII or 7D but at 1/500ss and faster the mirror doesn't always return and hangs.


 
The Kenko Pro 300 DGX locks up any Recent Canon DSLR with certain lenses only, and when AFMA is turned on.

I'm not sure what the total list of lenses is.

My 100mmL is one of them.

I've heard the 300mm f/4 and the 400mm f/2.8 mentioned, but did not test them. It worked fine with all my other lenses, but I really wanted it for the 100mm L.

http://photography.forumsee.com/a/m/s/p12-19203-0352717--5diii-locks-with-kenko-dgx-pro-and-some-lenses.html


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## antonioleandro (Nov 29, 2014)

I have stacked a 2x II and a 1.4x II with my 70-200 f/2.8L IS II and my 6D. The combination worked perfectly, including AF, as the 6D only recognized the 1.4x. The items were stacked in this order: 70-200 f/2.8 L IS II + 2x II + 1.4x II + 6D. I tried the same combo with my T2i, but the AF failed most of the times. Adding the 1.4x to a lens with 2x degraded image quality, which made me think that it would be better to shoot with only one TC and crop, but in some situations you may need as much reach as possible, then stacking TCs would be necessary. I was wondering if a 2x III with my lens would produce better IQ altough not stackble or if buying the 1.4x III would improve the combo (lens + 2 TCs) quality.


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## Marsu42 (Nov 29, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> The Kenko Pro 300 DGX locks up any Recent Canon DSLR with certain lenses only, and when AFMA is turned on.



Are there any news on this? I was hoping for a new tc that works with newer Cameras, it's strange they don't do anything about it. Or maybe they did / will do a "silent" firmware update so newer tcs work, but word hasn't gotten around?


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## dgatwood (Nov 30, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> Mt Spokane Photography said:
> 
> 
> > The Kenko Pro 300 DGX locks up any Recent Canon DSLR with certain lenses only, and when AFMA is turned on.
> ...



Experimentally, it works fine on my 6D with the following lenses:


70–300L
24–105L
16–35 L II
Helios M44 (adapted)


It fails with the following lens:


Shorty 40


When it fails, the main camera CPU is *not* frozen. I can do anything with the camera that doesn't involve the lens, such as reviewing existing photos. I cannot put it into live view mode, because it can't talk to the lens, and I can't get it to focus. And it remains in that state until I remove the battery. Given that the 6D uses only a single CPU for operation and focusing, this strongly suggests a bug in whatever hardware the 6D and 5D Mark III are using to talk to the SPI bus for the lens.

To add further bizarreness, that lens is on Kenko's supported list, and so is the 6D. So either they've silently updated the Kenko hardware or Canon silently updated the 6D hardware to fix this bug, or both.


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## Marsu42 (Nov 30, 2014)

dgatwood said:


> To add further bizarreness, that lens is on Kenko's supported list, and so is the 6D. So either they've silently updated the Kenko hardware or Canon silently updated the 6D hardware to fix this bug, or both.



Thanks! It would be interesting to know about the 100L, if you can get hold if it.

Kenko did silent fw updates in the past, so it's very well possible they fixed some of the problems. The pita here is that there's no way to track down what tc is old or new, they don't mark them :-(


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## dgatwood (Nov 30, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> dgatwood said:
> 
> 
> > To add further bizarreness, that lens is on Kenko's supported list, and so is the 6D. So either they've silently updated the Kenko hardware or Canon silently updated the 6D hardware to fix this bug, or both.
> ...



I don't think any of my photographer friends have that lens. Not many of them do a lot of macro shooting, as far as I know, and the one who does is a Nikon user.

With that said, I'd be willing to bet that any lens that exhibits the behavior does so on all bodies, so it is probably safe to say that it would wedge on my 6D just like it does on the 5D Mark III. Incidentally, the 100L is on the list of compatible lenses, too:

http://www.kenkoglobal.com/pdf/TELEPLUS_DGX_series_CompatibilityList.pdf

So either Canon fixed the problem silently in their latest 6D firmware update (which I didn't apply because according to the official bug fix list, it only fixes language problems in non-English languages and an occasional glitch with Wi-Fi that I've never encountered), or Kenko revved their firmware, or Canon revved their hardware, or some combination thereof.

You know what I'd kill for Canon to do? Provide support for updating third-party lens firmware, so that all the various lenses and adapters can support updates for these sorts of issues. With that said, Canon really needs to fix the hang, too. And with that said, I'm not sure how you'd update the firmware of a teleconverter, which by design is supposed to be transparent as far as the camera is concerned—maybe some magic process of pressing the shutter and setting specific F-stops to put it into nontransparent mode. *shrugs*


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## TexPhoto (Nov 30, 2014)

Aichbus said:


> TexPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > The moon (and the Earth under you) are moving remember. *You can't take a long exposure* unless you have some way to track the moon.
> ...



No argument here. 1/320 is not a long exposure.


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## Marsu42 (Nov 30, 2014)

dgatwood said:


> Incidentally, the 100L is on the list of compatible lenses, too:http://www.kenkoglobal.com/pdf/TELEPLUS_DGX_series_CompatibilityList.pdf



Now look at that, this means they really fixed it with a silent fw update! Thanks for the link.

It's a fact that the 100L was broken with newer cameras, but this pdf saying otherwise means Kenko changed their fw with newer revisions. It surely wasn't Canon, and Kenko obviously doesn't want to announce the update too much to prevent people trying their old versions exchanged.


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## Mt Spokane Photography (Nov 30, 2014)

Marsu42 said:


> dgatwood said:
> 
> 
> > Incidentally, the 100L is on the list of compatible lenses, too:http://www.kenkoglobal.com/pdf/TELEPLUS_DGX_series_CompatibilityList.pdf
> ...


 
The 100L has always been on the compatibility list, but it does not work with newer Canon cameras. I bought a 2nd Kenko TC to try it a couple of months ago, but it does not work.

Kenko tech support does not even respond to my polite inquiries, so I've written them off.


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## dgatwood (Nov 30, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> The 100L has always been on the compatibility list, but it does not work with newer Canon cameras. I bought a 2nd Kenko TC to try it a couple of months ago, but it does not work.
> 
> Kenko tech support does not even respond to my polite inquiries, so I've written them off.



Without knowing more, it's a little premature to blame Kenko. It may not be possible to prevent the freeze without seriously breaking normal operation.

Now that I know that I have an affected lens (albeit one that I never would use with a 1.4x TC), I'm half tempted to wire a cheap extension tube to an Arduino and sniff both data buses so I can see what's happening. In particular, I'd like to know why it affects only some lenses and not others.

The nice thing about the Canon lens protocol is that (assuming the info I have is correct) it is both documented and basically human-readable, so it should be really easy to figure out what's going on.


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## dgatwood (Dec 1, 2014)

I occasionally stack 1.4x and 3x Kenko TCs. Here's a shot with the 70–300L and the stacked TCs (1260mm):








And the stock 300mm shot:







And for fun, the same angle (approximately) at 70mm, 35mm, and 16mm (all unprocessed):


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## Marsu42 (Dec 1, 2014)

Mt Spokane Photography said:


> Marsu42 said:
> 
> 
> > Now look at that, this means they really fixed it with a silent fw update! Thanks for the link.
> ...



* The 100L has always been on the list, but did the list include the 5d3 and 6d back then? The pdf linked is a newer version from January 2014.

* When you tried your your 2nd tc, are you positive it was a new revision? I know it's near impossible to say as the fw update is really "silent" and you probably can only recognize small differences in the packaging or something like it. But you can ask the dealer for the delivery chain, i.e. when this specific tc left Kenko?

* Kenko not responding: Doh, that's annoying. They do respond though, I remember reading in a CR thread on 5d3 release time that they advised a customer not to buy the 5d3 with lens xyz because they ack'ed it won't work. That's for the "old" revision. If there is a "new revision" at all :-\


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## antonioleandro (Dec 11, 2014)

Has anyone tried to stack one 2x II, one 2x III and one 1.4x II? I don´t know how they could be stacked, if it is lens + 2x III + 2x II + 1.4x II or Lens + 2x II + 1.4x II + extension tube + 2x III?


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## Canon1 (Dec 11, 2014)

Aichbus said:


> TexPhoto said:
> 
> 
> > The moon (and the Earth under you) are moving remember. You can't take a long exposure unless you have some way to track the moon.
> ...



Yes, it can be done... But this is pretty soft even for web viewing. Drop the 1.4 and shoot with the 600+2x and crop a little and your final image would be much sharper and allow for two full stops lower ISO or faster shutter speed.


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