Interesting history, fine shot, but those are the most but ugly 'sculptures' I've seen in a long time.

Let me understand this. You want to see how not changing the exposure changes the exposure? That is not a reasonable question. As to the reaction "Oh my, EC does not work in manual mode!": give your head a shake, it is manual mode and you wish to specify the exposure without having other things change it against you will. In manual if you want one stop difference feel free to dial it in by changing aperture, shutter or iso *manually*

I've had both those cameras... I'd go for the 1DmII in an instant.

The advice above is a practical solution that gets both subjects equally out of focus in a way that is often acceptable from a reasonable viewing distance.

In fact there is only a single plane of best focus and your subjects need to be in that plane for them to both be optimally in focus. Otherwise they will be, at best, tolerably (and perhaps not noticeably) out of focus.

If that works for you, great! How to maximize the result is covered above. but there are other approaches that work better (at least for things that are not going to fly away).

First, move so that the plane of focus falls on both subjects. Even if you can't get this perfect it will improve the result when added to the advice above.

Second, use a tilt lens and angle the plane of focus so that both subjects are in it. This is used all the time to shoot a distant landscape with the nearby ground also in focus. It can also allow shooting a line of trees along a roadside

Well, macroscopic simply means is visible to the unaided eye. In other words, not microscopic or smaller.

So, while I agree with you in the sense of a photographers use of the term, legally anything that isn't microscopic is macroscopic. So, one could reasonably label any normal lens macroscopic.

I use both. The 1Dx has better high ISO performance but my impression is that they are not much different with respect to noise at low ISO. The MkIV is just fine up to about 3200.

If you can't get what you want from a MkIV, then you are doing something wrong. You have not really said what you are doing with enough detail to comment on in any specific way. I'll take a wild guess and assume you are underexposing and raising the level in post processing. My advice is: do not do that.

You already have your answer but, since you used IS (a Canon term) you might like to know that virtually all recent IS lenses manage to deal with this.

Also, while many have a mode 2 setting for panning, you are usually better off with it turned off, particularly for erratically moving subjects.

I didn't recommend it in any absolute way but mine is nearly as good as the the 70-200F2.8LIS+TC2x and it costs a lot less. Since the price seemed to be a factor from your first post, then it is worth considering.

Well, firstly, I don't think the camera will autofocus with an F8 lens (ie: and F4 lens + 2xTC)

With a non Canon TC (or a Canon TC with taped pins) it will try to autofocus but your results will be mixed at best.

The 1.4x TC will autofocus.

Note that the Canon TCs are only compatible with selected lenses because they extend into the real of the lens.

I'd suggest that, at the price of the lens+TC you consider something like the Sigma 150-500 zoom instead.

I'm not familiar with that particular Canon model but on mine one can cycle through what is seen on the liveview (which is used for movies) screen by pressing info. This might be a menu (cf) setting on the T3i. The top lcd will also show the information.

If you want to prioritize the shutter speed then you can use Tv mode. Clearly the setting needs to be faster than the frame rate. A film-like result can be had at lower shutter rates (up to about 1/50). Faster shutter speeds will give a strange 'jumpy' look because there is no motion blur. This look has been (over)used in some recent action movies.

The other consideration is if this is optical or digital zoom or both. Digital zoom (which is quite laughable really) is just cropping

If you are thinking of the canon 8-15, be sure to examine the specific lens you buy. I could not find one where the cap / hood did not fall off and so I did not buy one.

I have the canon 15mm and quite like it. For normal x-wide I use a Tamron 14mmF2.8 which I find to be better than the canon and a lot less money.

I would agree with many above. A rule about processing not required or useful. If people do not like the image they simply won't respond. If people do like it what does it matter how it was created?

eek - Well, I'd not be owning many lenses

Some kit lenses are really quite good and are often a step up from what one might have had on earlier cameras.

The answers above cover most points I'll add a couple of points. These are general statements (not universal truths) about budget lenses (and some more expensive ones for that matter).

Lighter can be an advantage and smaller is also less conspicuous.

A tendency to darken in the corners can be corrected in post

Barrel and pincushion distortion can also be corrected

Lower contrast can be made better (but not completely dealt with)

Resolution (sharpness) issues are not really fixable but may not be all that noticeable at smaller sizes (ie: downsizing an image tends to mask this issue)