I agree with most of what you say - I have the same camera and lens, but the 1.4x adaptor instead of the doubler. But I disagree on autofocus. Too often, an intervening twig or leaf is in focus and the bird is out. I manually focus everything. With practice, I think anyone can manually focus faster than autofocus.

And with the f/2.8 lens, the shutter speeds are much higher than with our f/5.6 lenses. It's much easier to get sharp, clear pictures with a fast shutter speed, due to decreased "hand" shake. Even with a doubler, the fast lens is f/5.6 while ours go to f/8 if using a doubler.

Mac Knight
Home Page - http://www.macknight.addr.com
Gallery - http://www.pbase.com/macknight

----- Original Message -----
From: carenp
To: tweets
Sent: Friday, July 16, 2004 9:56 AM
Subject: RE: Digiscoping with SLRs


<snip>

. . .for action nature photography, or even photography of small
and very "nervous" birds, autofocus is almost mandatory

i've seen others, like chuck bartlett, shoot a 400 F2.8 prime with doubler,
and he gets superb shots

00 caren
http://www.parkgallery.org
usually found at juanita bay park, kirkland, WA
carenp somewhere near the vicinity of yahoo and dot com