Good or bad, it depends on what you plan to mount on it.

Discard that tripod from your shopping list then.

Well, not really. You'll still need a tripod should you are shooting landscapes with 70-200. To me, monopod is quite useless for 70-200 considering it's not that heavy unlike 300mm f2.8 lenses which really need a monopod.

No offense but that doesn't seem like minor manipulation. It's more like very the kaw kaw PP-ed and the eyes seems like gone case already.

The 5th pic is epic. Nice shot!

If you don't want to fake it and want it to look more natural, use GND filters and CPL.

That's not they are trying to imply. What they were actually saying is, you might face over-expose issue when you shoot at big aperture especially during bright day light due to the max you can go is ISO 200.

Yeap. Smart. Forgot about that

Don't underestimate macro close up filters. They can give you results like this

Nothing fancy, just a cheapo 100mm macro and Raynox 250 filter.

Here's another one using Raynox. Nice and cheap macro filter.