Teleconverter?

[Happy Hour]

I have been looking into teleconverters and I noticed that there are 2 different types. one that screws onto the tip of the lens and one that goes between the lens and the camera body. Is there a difference between these 2? I have a cheap one that goes on the front of the lens, it is not any help at all. It makes the pic very distorted. It's so cheap it doesn't even have what size it is or anything on it. Just made in Japan. I have read that I should stick to name brands when buying one. But what is a good brand for these? I'm looking for a 2x with a 46mm screw for a Minolta AF lens.Any suggestions?

 

[Sideburns]

the filters are crap.
The one that goes between the lens and the body...you can barely tell it's there other than it's longer. It takes away a stop or two, but you can't have everything...

Don't buy the screw ones...not really worth it.

 

[Helen B]

Teleconverters that go in front of the lens tend to be expensive (hundreds of dollars, up to $1000), large and heavy if they are any good. They tend to be used for non-interchangeable lens cameras, and the good ones rarely exceed 1.6x. If properly designed they have the advantage of keeping the same aperture, unlike a behind-the lens teleconverter which changes the aperture. They also leave all the lens functions, like autofocus, unchanged. They probably won't work at the wide angle end of a zoom's range.

A behind-the-lens 1.4x teleconverter turns an f/4 lens into an f/5.6 lens, and a 2x turns an f/4 lens into an f/8 lens: the F-number gets multiplied by the same factor as the focal length.

In general, the behind-the-lens converters are much preferred to the ones that go in front of the lens, as already mentioned by Sideburns.

Best,
Helen

 

[Happy Hour]

the filters are crap.
The one that goes between the lens and the body...you can barely tell it's there other than it's longer. It takes away a stop or two, but you can't have everything...

Don't buy the screw ones...not really worth it.

So is this one ok? Or is it crap? BTW You reply to almost everyone on my posts, Thanks for helping so much! now this is going on a minolta lens on a sony alpha body 9should work fine right?)

http://www.lordofthelens.net/servlet/Detail?no=24

 

[Sideburns]

Sure. It's made for your camera, so go for it.
Just remember. IT WILL ROB LIGHT.
If you put a lens that's F4 on it...you'll get a lens that is F8
anything slower...you're gonna go even lower than that. Don't forget that.

But yes, it should be fine for your combo as long as all the mounts fit.

Perhaps look into a 1.4x and see if taht fits your needs. Only kills 1 stop of light, and usually a touch better picture quality. But if you need long, you need long...so don't listen to me too much.;

Thanks for the appreciation. I try to help as much as I can.

 

[Happy Hour]

well the main thing I would probably use it for would be at the zoo. So considering most of my shots would be in great light it should work out great.Plus we do allot of nature walks and I always want a pic of the deer we run into but there usually 2 far away to even try. So a 2x on my 300 I think would get me close enough to anything i want to shoot. I ran over 2 the camera shop and was looking at the sigma and the quantaray and threw my lens i could not see a difference. So i'm puting the quantaray on my christmas list. thanks again for all the advise.

 

[Sideburns]

well the main thing I would probably use it for would be at the zoo. So considering most of my shots would be in great light it should work out great.Plus we do allot of nature walks and I always want a pic of the deer we run into but there usually 2 far away to even try. So a 2x on my 300 I think would get me close enough to anything i want to shoot. I ran over 2 the camera shop and was looking at the sigma and the quantaray and threw my lens i could not see a difference. So i'm puting the quantaray on my christmas list. thanks again for all the advise.

Just remember that with a 600mm lens, you'll need either a shutter speed of around 1/500 or greater...
or you'll need a tripod.