Any Members Have Experience With Tele Converters?

[Dean_Gretsch]

Please give me your input on tele converters or doublers. Good, bad or ugly please !

 

[jaomul]

I have never got a photo using a teleconverter that would not have been better if I had used just the lens and cropped

 

[480sparky39 38]

Some are good. Some are bad. Some are horrendous. Some are utterly useless.

Some are good with certain lenses and terrible with others.

And, on a few occasions, there are some TC/lens combos that truly shine.

 

[robbins.photo]

Well using a tc the first thing to consider is the lens. A tc does reduce the amount of light coming in and as a result unless your using fast glass like a 2.8 or f4 the autofocus system will start to hunt a lot or could even lose the ability to autofocus entirely because it just isn't getting enough light.

Image quality wise it's a bit of a crap shoot as sparky mentions. Some tc work well with some lenses and not so great for others. Like most things photographic the really cheap ones aren't worth buying at all.

I've had pretty good results using a sigma 1.4x and 2x on a sigma 70-200mm 2.8. But mileage varies a lot

Sent from my N9518 using Tapatalk

 

[fmw]

I have done OK in most cases with a 1.4x TC. I've never done well with a 2x. Whether you will benefit or not depends to some degree on the pixel density of your sensor. You may be able to crop your way to a similar or even better result if you have enough pixel density for the final image size. Overall my experience with TC's is a ho hum.

 

[table1349]

Teleconverters can be good, but generally they are at best barely ok or horrible. Teleconverters are designed to be used with focal lengths of 100mm and above. They are not designed to make a 50mm into a 100mm lens.

Truly good teleconverters are expensive. Look at the Canon and Nikon versions. This goes along with the fact that the teleconverters are made to work with only their very best lenses. These lenses are also quite expensive. If you go to Canon or Nikon's site you will see that they have a list of lenses that they will work on. The vast majority of those lenses are fast glass, f2.8.

Teleconverters magnify. That means they magnify the image coming from the lens. It also means that they magnify ever flaw and defect in the lens. Soft lenses become softer, CA is magnified etc. With cheap teleconverters not only will they magnify the flaws and defect in the lens they will throw in their own flaws and defects.

As already mentioned, you loose a degree of light gathering ability with a TC. 1 stop with a 1.4X TC and 2 stops with a 2X TC.

Frankly unless you are willing to spend big money on good lenses then a teleconverter will probably be a waste of money. I have both Canon's 1.4X TC and 2X TC and get quite good results with both. But then I am putting them on either their 300mm f2.8 or 400mm f2.8. Both lenses as good as they come and both quite expensive.

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

Thanks so much to you all for your input. I value your opinions and experience greatly!

 

[sniper x]

I have a pretty good one, a sigma multi element 2x. I've used it with great results but only on fast lenses when shooting field photo at mum football games when kts still light. After the sun started to go down, I switched to a 1.4x canon l series TV... Excellent all the way round. I did use them on a 300 2.8, and a 70 200 2.8.....using them on a slower lens was a pain with the 2x..... Too dark to see to focus well and auto focus wouldn't work. It was OK using the 1.4x on the slower lenses though as long as the light was sufficient. You lose 2 stops thru a 2x, 1 thru a 1.4x....