2x teleconverter or Crop?

[DugSorensen]

I've got a 70-200mm 2.8 Lens on a a7iii.    Looking at shooting high school sports ie. soccer, football, volleyball etc.    I'm often not close enough with the 200mm to fill the frame.   At the 200mm I end up doing some heavy cropping.    I have a 2x teleconverter but using it I lose 2 full stops.    Shooting fast in low light those 2 stops are huge.   I saw a suggestion to under expose and then use lightroom or PS to lighten the image. 

My question is this is it better to have proper exposure and crop a picture or to under expose and then lighten after.  I'm told both introduce noise.   I've not done enough to make the call myself.   Do any of the experts here have a suggestion or a solution?    

 

[Chrissie]

Since you have all the equipment at hand already and this is not a question of "to buy or not to buy", why don't you try either way and compare the results by yourself, instead of trusting strangers whose expertise you cannot judge?

 

(Note my tagline ...)

[DugSorensen]

So,   After Chrissie told me not to be lazy  ?.   I have taken a few shots at this.   I'm still not an expert on the subject, this is my take on answering my own question.   If you have a full frame camera and a large sensor you capture enough information that you can crop without introducing noticeable noise.  I'm using a a7iii.  In low lighting every time the cropping appears to produce better pictures then underexposing and trying to fix it in processing.  So in this situation leave the 2x converter off, proper expose and crop. 

On the flip side if I use my old a33 I don't capture the same amount of information due to the sensor quality and size.   Heavily cropping almost always destroys the shot.    The under exposing does put a serious hit on the quality but it does appear to  produce better results then Cropping. 

Obviously if your not in low light lose the 2 stops and shoot away.  

 

[LiveShots]

I’ve wondered about this myself, thanks for posting your findings.