Derrel
Mr. Rain Cloud
- Joined
- Jul 23, 2009
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Your 70-300 will probably not work with any Nikon AF converter because of the rear element position on the 70-300, and the front elemnt placement on the Nikon AF-S TC units. Pretty sure it'd be what I call "crash and bash". The Nikon AF-S TC units are designed for tele primes, and zooms, where the rear element of the lens is NOT right at the back, close to the mount. This is why the Nikon TC units have the non-AF-S lens blocker tab, to prevent incompatible lenses from physically mounting.
As far as the use of TC's by the big wildlife shooters...sure...on big super-teles that is very common, and again, for BIRD work, the loss of edge quality is often hard to spot, especially over water or with a sky backdrop. Loss of quality, yes: but is it acceptable loss, or too much loss? Well, it depends.
Speaking of a guy who loves bird photography, on the D800e:
Image Degradation with Nikon Teleconverters
Image Degradation With Nikon Teleconverters, by Nasim Mansurov, Photographylife blog founder and wildlife/bird shooter.
Excerpts: "The Nikon TC-14E II is excellent. I have not seen it degrade image quality on any Nikon lenses to the level where I could see obvious loss of contrast or sharpness. I have used it with the 105mm VR, 70-200mm f/2.8G VR (the old one, as well as VR II), 300mm f/4 and pretty much on every expensive super telephoto lens. I take it with me everywhere and mine stays pretty much glued to my favorite Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S the majority of the time – that’s what I use primarily for birding."
"The Nikon TC-17E II is a mixed bag. It works with many Nikon lenses, but it slows down AF and impacts AF accuracy. Not as good of a TC to be used with slower f/4 lenses, which includes the 300mm f/4, 200-400mm f/4 and 500mm f/4 lenses. I tried to use it with my 300mm f/4 and it makes the lens hunt a lot, especially in anything but good light environments. The same thing with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4, even with the latest camera bodies like Nikon D4."
"The Nikon TC-20E III is much better than its predecessor (which was very disappointing with many lenses). I was pretty shocked to see it perform very well with the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II (stop down to f/8 for best results), because the 2x TC was always known to be bad with zoom lenses. It works like a champ with the 300mm f/2.8 and 400mm f/2.8 lenses. On slower f/4 lenses, however, it is still pretty disappointing. It is unusable on the Nikon 300mm f/4 and 200-400mm f/4 lenses and while it will work with the 500mm f/4 and 600mm f/4 lenses, you will have to stop down to f/11 to get anything reasonably good and you will need to use one of the latest Nikon DSLRs like D4 that can handle f/8 lenses. Not a great setup for fast action, but could work for large animals from a very long distance."
*********
So, as Nasim points out, the new $446 TC-20 E-III Aspherical 2x converter works great on Nikon's f/2.8 lenses, but even on Nikon's very expensive 500mm f/4 AF-S and 600mm f/4 AF-S, it requires quite a bit of stopping the lens down to get decent image quality. Keep in mind, the Nikon TC-20E III is a pretty new converter...the world's first aspherical element converter that I have ever heard of, and it is just now coming in to its early stage of being discounted by $50, so it is now a $446 converter new from the big retailers. I owned a Nikon TC-20 E-something, the earlier one, for about one day...shot it on my 70-200 VR, 200/2 AFS-VR, and 300/2.8 AFS-Mark II. Craaaaaaaaaapy. I took it back for a refund. Looked really poor on the 200 and 300 primes, even worse on the zoom....I deemed it utterly un-useful.
Nasim's sharpness loss figures he lists as 5% loss , 17% loss, and 26% loss of quality, in order from 1.4 to 1.7x to 2.0x.
*******
So....once again, back to, "It depends."
As far as the use of TC's by the big wildlife shooters...sure...on big super-teles that is very common, and again, for BIRD work, the loss of edge quality is often hard to spot, especially over water or with a sky backdrop. Loss of quality, yes: but is it acceptable loss, or too much loss? Well, it depends.
Speaking of a guy who loves bird photography, on the D800e:
Image Degradation with Nikon Teleconverters
Image Degradation With Nikon Teleconverters, by Nasim Mansurov, Photographylife blog founder and wildlife/bird shooter.
Excerpts: "The Nikon TC-14E II is excellent. I have not seen it degrade image quality on any Nikon lenses to the level where I could see obvious loss of contrast or sharpness. I have used it with the 105mm VR, 70-200mm f/2.8G VR (the old one, as well as VR II), 300mm f/4 and pretty much on every expensive super telephoto lens. I take it with me everywhere and mine stays pretty much glued to my favorite Nikon 300mm f/4 AF-S the majority of the time – that’s what I use primarily for birding."
"The Nikon TC-17E II is a mixed bag. It works with many Nikon lenses, but it slows down AF and impacts AF accuracy. Not as good of a TC to be used with slower f/4 lenses, which includes the 300mm f/4, 200-400mm f/4 and 500mm f/4 lenses. I tried to use it with my 300mm f/4 and it makes the lens hunt a lot, especially in anything but good light environments. The same thing with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4, even with the latest camera bodies like Nikon D4."
"The Nikon TC-20E III is much better than its predecessor (which was very disappointing with many lenses). I was pretty shocked to see it perform very well with the 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II (stop down to f/8 for best results), because the 2x TC was always known to be bad with zoom lenses. It works like a champ with the 300mm f/2.8 and 400mm f/2.8 lenses. On slower f/4 lenses, however, it is still pretty disappointing. It is unusable on the Nikon 300mm f/4 and 200-400mm f/4 lenses and while it will work with the 500mm f/4 and 600mm f/4 lenses, you will have to stop down to f/11 to get anything reasonably good and you will need to use one of the latest Nikon DSLRs like D4 that can handle f/8 lenses. Not a great setup for fast action, but could work for large animals from a very long distance."
*********
So, as Nasim points out, the new $446 TC-20 E-III Aspherical 2x converter works great on Nikon's f/2.8 lenses, but even on Nikon's very expensive 500mm f/4 AF-S and 600mm f/4 AF-S, it requires quite a bit of stopping the lens down to get decent image quality. Keep in mind, the Nikon TC-20E III is a pretty new converter...the world's first aspherical element converter that I have ever heard of, and it is just now coming in to its early stage of being discounted by $50, so it is now a $446 converter new from the big retailers. I owned a Nikon TC-20 E-something, the earlier one, for about one day...shot it on my 70-200 VR, 200/2 AFS-VR, and 300/2.8 AFS-Mark II. Craaaaaaaaaapy. I took it back for a refund. Looked really poor on the 200 and 300 primes, even worse on the zoom....I deemed it utterly un-useful.
Nasim's sharpness loss figures he lists as 5% loss , 17% loss, and 26% loss of quality, in order from 1.4 to 1.7x to 2.0x.
*******
So....once again, back to, "It depends."
Coopers Hawk
_69Y2090
