These arrived today although house events meant I didn't spend much time with them. Consider these my first impressions. More detailed reviews to follow at a later date. One note I'll make before I go on. None of these items came packed with silica gel like everyone else does.
150mm f/2.4 EX DG macro
The 150mm lens looks and feels nice. The body is a fine black with flecks of sparkles in it, but thankfully not on the parts which face the light path like the hood interior.
The usual controls are there. A three way switch limits the AF range. Separately there is the MF/AF switch. No IS or VC on here though. Focus is internal so the length of the lens does not change. The lens has HSM which is equivalent to Canon USM, including full time manual. This lets you use AF to get close, and fine tune manually before completing the shot. The focus ring takes about 3/4 of a turn to go from end to end.
The tripod mount can be removed without dismounting the lens from body, which is a nice plus over the Canon version that came with the 100-400L. Likewise a plus over Canon, the lens cap is has center pinch points so you don't need to find the edges. Handy when the hood is mounted. Hood is unremarkable round type, which I found it rather stiff to fit or remove. It comes with a padded carry case.
Only fired some quick test shots in poor lighting. Images look great regardless, as far as my use of lighting allows in this rushed test. In a macro size test, I think this goes fractionally over 1x magnification but essentially does what it should.
APO Teleconverter 1.4x EX DG
Again it does what it says it does. Mount it on a compatible lens, and your focal length goes up 1.4x as does the f-number range. It looks solidly build. The lens side elements protrude outside the mount ring so it will not fit all lenses. A quick look at what I have around gives the following:
Will fit:
Canon 100-400L
Sigma 150mm f/2.8 macro
Wont fit:
Canon 50mm f/1.8
Canon 60mm f/2.8 macro
Tamron 18-270 VC
In the case of the lenses it wont fit, the lens rear element is flush or even sticks out behind the last part of the mount, which would conflict with the front element of the TC. The two lenses it does fit have their rear element quite far inside the lens.
Looking at the EXIF, the images report the correct focal length but the aperture value remains that of the main lens only. Initial impressions are it does not noticeably degrade the image although I have not tested in detail at this time.
I handheld a test shot with the Canon 100-400L with TC, giving 560mm of length. The IS worked correctly although at this stage even small movements are getting quite bad. AF did not work, as the effective aperture is getting on to f/8 which is too far.
With the TC fitted on the 150mm f/2.8 macro, at minimum focus distance it indeed gave more magnification.
The TC comes with a carry case which seems far too big for it. A little cushion takes up the bottom half of the case. I suspect this is the same case used for the 2x TC which would be bigger.
EM-140 ringflash
This is bigger than it looks in pictures! The ringflash fits on the lens with its own dedicated adapters. These have a standard filter thread on the lens side, and a ring depression on the ringflash side, which clips to the ringflash. It only comes with adapters for 55mm and 58mm filter size lenses so I can't fit it on the 150mm (72mm) until I get a bigger adapter.
The ring is connected to the flash body by a thick curly cable. The flash body appears similar to typical external flash units, except instead of having a flash light on the top the cable goes out to the ring.
The only macro lens I can fit it on is the 60mm borrowed from work. I haven't got to grips with the settings yet so results have been unpredictable. It does light, but for close up I'm finding I get a lot of overexposure unless I turn flash comp right down. I'm sure this will improve once I RTFM.
The flash comes with its own carry case. The two parts of the flash go in the main compartment. There is also a front pouch area. Inside this zippable area are four smaller pouches which are too small to hold the adapter rings.
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The main question is still the 1.4x's impact on performance so yes, once I find other interesting subjects I'll try the proportionate scaling for the comparison too.
