www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

I hand hold my 150mm Sigma with my 40D often for butterflies.I use a 430EX mounted on a flash bracket with diffuser to get faster shutterspeed etc.I dont find the setup particularly heavy,and often a tripod would mean I would miss opportuities altogether.I use the flash first, then if I get the chance I switch it off and go for natural light with tripod. I have posted these before on here,but here they are again for examples.These were taken with the flash and hand held.

I am impressed. The large white shot especially. I wouldn't often get keepers at 1/250 handheld. Perhaps I just have very shaky hands or don't practice it as much. I progressed from tripod with my old sigma 70-300 + 1:1 filter setup to monopod with my 150. Maybe if I had neither I would be better at handheld shots. I don't often ged bad results shooting on a monopod down to 1/100s. Occasionally I fluke some good ones below this!

I miss my image-stabilised FZ50 with Panasonic close-up lens for hand-held. It was also v light and flexible - but limited and noisy above ISO 100.
(Dropped it and just got a note back - uneconomic to repair )
Enclosed Heath Frit hand-held at 1/100th, f3.6, ISO 100

Hello SuperFly,

Welcome to the Tamron 90mm club, I'm sure you're be very happy with your decision and the sharpness of the lens. Sorry for not replying earlier.

I have used mine with a kenko Pro 300 2x converter on my 400D - autofocus gets a little clunky but it is useable and it enables you to get close to the flighty butterflies. Chasing Walls up and down the chalk banks of Pewsey Vale comes to mind.

I do however use it more of a last resort much prefering to find an amiable butterfly not put off by my fieldcraft, that will allow me a frame filler with the 90mm alone. The issue being that the 90mm sharpness does spoil you so the softness in IQ with the Kenko attached can "disappoint". Maybe I'm just getting too picky.

I've not tried butterfly pictures with my Canon 1.4x as i only have a 25mm extension and the focus length is too foreshortened but attached is the kind of image quality you can get.

Colin

The Pro300 series of TCs are probably the best of the generics but a 2x of any make will stretch the best prime lens. Remember a 2x focal length magnification is actually a 4x area magnification, so the prime lens has to outresolve the sensor by 4x in order to appear sharp when using such a TC. A true macro lens such as the Tamron 90mm should have enough in reserve to still look pretty good with a 1.4x (2x area magnification), but a 2x will appear soft when viewing at 100%. If you process a shot taken with a 1.4x TC in photoshop and upsize it to match the the size of a straight shot with an equivalent quality 2x TC, you will still probably find there is some benefit in using the 2x, but it won't be twice as good.

On my Sony A700, probably the biggest drawback in using the 1.4x Pro300 TC is that it is unchipped and therefore doesn't correct the changed focal length and aperture information passed to the camera. I believe that this affects the in-camera image stabilisation, lowering its effectiveness by around a stop. I have no idea what effect this has on in-lens IS/VR. The 2x version is chipped and passes on the correct information.

Practicing with my Tamron 90mm + Kenco Pro 1.4TC at the weekend. No butterflies but found something to take....(v small dof to play with tho')
Enclosed is 800x560 crop from original. (Thread seems to have become the Tamron and TC owners club....oh, pic was taken with a monopod, not hand-held!)

N