Cost Effective Ultra-Long Lens Solution

[Peeb]

Do I recall that teleconverters don't play particularly well with zooms?

Any teleconverter work adequately with a 55-300? (TC-201 or TC-301 for example?)

EDIT: I always thought of a converter as going between the body and the lens,but I guess some screw in as a filter on the end.... did not know.

 

[ak_]

@wyogirl - Less than $300 is cheap to me.

I have a 4/3rds camera mainly for long lenses. It has a 2x crop factor. The bodies are $100-$150, manual focus lenses (200/300/400) are between $50 and $250.

 

[robbins.photo]

Do I recall that teleconverters don't play particularly well with zooms?

Any teleconverter work adequately with a 55-300? (TC-201 or TC-301 for example?)

EDIT: I always thought of a converter as going between the body and the lens,but I guess some screw in as a filter on the end.... did not know.

Teleconverters will cause you to lose 1 fstop for a 1.4x, or 2 fstops for a 2x. Most autofocus lenses won't allow enough light into the camera for it to autofocus properly once you hit around F8 or so, so most slower telephotos won't autofocus with a teleconverter. Of course a lot of these lenses are going to be manual focus only anyway, but I think once you throw a TC on something like this the results would probably be a bit sketchy even in very bright sunlight.

My advice, save yourself the $200-$300 you'd spend on something like this, save up some extra dough until you hit around $500 or so, and get yourself a used Sigma 150-500 or something in that range. There are a lot of them on the market since a lot of folks using them went to the Tamron 100-600's,

Just my two cents worth of course, but unless your shooting at stationery objects with a tripod I think your going to find using something like this difficult at best. YMMV of course.

 

[Overread]

Do I recall that teleconverters don't play particularly well with zooms?

Any teleconverter work adequately with a 55-300? (TC-201 or TC-301 for example?)

EDIT: I always thought of a converter as going between the body and the lens,but I guess some screw in as a filter on the end.... did not know.

Teleconverters that attach to the front of the lens are really only made for the fixed-lens camera systems where they have no other choice; and they also tend to be pretty poor performers too.

Teleconverters that fit between body and lens are generally better, but even they have their limits. Most zooms can't take a telconverter - if they can take one then its only the 1.4TC. Now there are some outstanding zoom lenses coming out now which can do really well with a teleconverter - but they tend to be right up there in the higher price brackets.

I wouldn't use a 150-500mm with a teleconverter for anything but a record shot - because image quality is going to suffer a lot.



Of course if all you do is post photos online then you can get away with a lot more because by resizing and sharpening in stages you can claw a lot back; online display is very forgiving when processed right and as such sometimes people will shoot with a "softer" setup because at the end of the day it makes little difference to their chosen display medium.