Teleconverter

[saandipng]

Hi
I am new to bird photography. I have Nikon D60 mount with kit lens of Nikkor 55-200 AF lens & Tamron AF70-300mm F/4-5.6 Di LD Macro. Since the camera body doesnt have motor i am limited to buying lenses with motor, As you know for birding requires focal lenght of more than 300mm(sometimes when the subject is far & unable to move closer), i am planning to buy a teleconverter of 2x. Please guide me who is using a good TC for above lenses & Nikon D60 mount. I want to use autofocus not manual.

[Canonball]

Hi saandipng

I think your wasting your time with the gear you have,you must upgrade your glass if you require decent images for wildlife,your Nikon body will be adequate but not your lenses for quality shots,also i have heard nothing good about Teleconverter 2x,1.4 much better as far as images quality go on canon or nikon,hopefully someone else will fill you in on that

[WooD]

I agree with Canonball, I doubt you could even use a converter on a 70-300 lens.

I use a Nikon Nikon TC-14EII 1.4 converter, but I use it on a Nikon 300 f/4 lens. It gets me out to 420mm at f/5.6

[OsmosisStudios]

Dont. Stop what youre doing, put your wallet away and step back from the TC counter.

TCs are great, on the super-long fast primes. 300, 400, 500+ f/2.8 or f/4 lenses. Not for consumer-level, variable-aperture, f/5.6-at-the-long-end zooms.

Your money would be better spent on a proper tripod or a different lens. 300mm is still too short for birding, but birding (along with spots) is one of the most expensive realms of photography because of the requirements.

You can try (and I stress TRY) with a 500mm f/8 mirror lens, but theyre iffy at best.

[sHIMUZUKi]

yes don't go further than 1.4*

[kirbinster]

I tried a Kenko 1.4 and 2.0 TC on my Nikon 70-300VR lens (just to see) and in the end I found that I got a better picture using a 50% crop on the bare lens than with the 2x converter.

Lens quality is the key here. I have a Tamron 200-500mm lens and find I can get almost as good a picture with my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 by just blowing it up by a factor of 2.5 compared to the 500mm on the Tamron.

Bottom line - if you want long glass you need to spend a lot of money

[Aegea]

I've had a similar experience with the Tamron 1.4x and the Nikon 70-300 VR - although I think there was a little more detail in the shots with the converter, especially at infinity, it wasn't worth the degradation in AF performance.

[saandipng]

Hi Canonball.
Thanks for reply.. 1.4x at my max 300mm will give 420mm. which will be still less.
Do you suggest any lens of decent make & also less price.

[inkista]

Take a look at Sigma lenses, if you can't afford to go supertele on the Nikon side. Sigma makes a 150-500 OS HSM (Sigma VR, AF-S), 120-400 OS HSM, and 50-500 HSM that are all just around $1k. That's probably the lowest price supertele glass you're going to find.

And as everyone states, teleconverters are no substitute for an actual supertelephoto lens. The main reason you don't want to use a tc with an f/5.6 consumer zoom is because of what it will do to the autofocus (not to mention the image quality).

Remember, that your max-aperture's f-number is the focal length divided by the max aperture diameter: f/D. If you add a tc, you're going to increase f by the multiplication factor of the tc. So, if you use an f/5.6 lens and add a 1.4x tc to it, it becomes an f/8 lens. You add a 2x tc to it, it becomes an f/11 lens.

Most dSLR bodies stop autofocusing or get very very wonky when you hit f/8, because the max. aperture determines how much light the AF system has to "see" by, and f/8 is just not enough. I used a 1.4x tc on a cheap Canon 75-300 III on my XT. I could literally manually focus faster than the autofocus system could lock on. My keeper rate was not high. I do better with a Tamron 1.4x tc (doesn't report to the body like a Canon would) and my EF 400mm f/5.6L USM, but my 50D still hunts a bit, as we're at f/8, and I infinitely prefer to shoot with the naked lens. Lenses like my 135/2 and my 8/3.5 fisheye handle the tc much better.

So, ideally? You only use an 1.4x tc with an f/4 or faster lens. Which means you're probably into $1000+ lens territory, any way. There's no way around the fact that the glass required for birding is expensive. The only other option that most birders use is to digiscope--i.e., use a digital camera attached to a scope instead of a camera lens.

[saandipng]

Hi Inkista.
Your inputs are splendid... cheers to you.
I was enquiring about digiscope near my place in India, I saw KONUSPOT 100 wich is weather proof, with Zoom also, the store guy told to he will be giving a camera adapter & a ring for D60, what all the other accesories required so that i dont get circular image, do you have any idea or do you sugest any other brand which is already tested.