Are they the answer for someone wanting to do a little bit of wildlife photography, but unwilling to pay £1000 plus for a long lens?

I was looking at maybe putting one on my D70 with the 70-300 lens?

Alcazar

In general, not great. Perhaps thats a bit harsh - it depends on the lens/converter combination, some are superb, some terrible.

Teleconverters, or extenders (if you own a Canon) work best on fast (ie f2.8 or f4) prime or zoom lenses, and can give excellent results, especially the 1.4x converters.

The big problem that you will have using a 2x on your 70-300 is the 2 stops loss of maximum aperture. Assuming your zoom is f5.6 at the 300mm setting then that effectively becomes f11. You will also find, as a result of this, the viewfinder will be extremely dark, and the AF probably will not work.

I'd advise saving the money. I appreciate that spending money on a lens that you may not use much is a waste, but I think the money spent on the TC would be better put towards a longer lens. I suspect the results with the TC on your lens would be disappointing.

TCs are great additions to your kit - I often use a 1.4x on my canon L series and they work great - but they need to be used with certain lenses to get the best results.

There is plenty of discuss on this board re TCs, and I'm sure other opinions will be along.

Save your cash and crop in Photoshop :D

Gareth

To add - a 1.4x would be a more sensible addition, your 300 would become a 98-420mm, and you would only lose 1 stop (ie f8) at the 420mm.

You still may have problems with the AF and darker viewfinder however.

Gareth

Even on my old 200 F2.8 VR lens I didn't like the 2 x convertor, but the 1.4x was great making it 280 F4 (ish)...I now only have a 70-300 F5.6 VR and never really need anything any longer.

I've had a couple and didn't get on with them.

I haven't done the maths but here's a radical suggestion....

Rather than say a Nikon 1.4x, take that money, sell the D70 and add that to the pile and get a D80. The extra mega pixels will give additional room for cropping and without working it out, I reckon 300mm on a D80 cropped to 3000 x 2000 will give pretty close to D70 with 1.4x at 300mm out the camera at 3000 x 2000. Further cropping would obviously give more effective zoom (reducing the fov).

You'd also get the better sensor out the d200 and I think the processor as well.

I've had a couple and didn't get on with them.

I haven't done the maths but here's a radical suggestion....

Rather than say a Nikon 1.4x, take that money, sell the D70 and add that to the pile and get a D80. The extra mega pixels will give additional room for cropping and without working it out, I reckon 300mm on a D80 cropped to 3000 x 2000 will give pretty close to D70 with 1.4x at 300mm out the camera at 3000 x 2000. Further cropping would obviously give more effective zoom (reducing the fov).

You'd also get the better sensor out the d200 and I think the processor as well.

Now this is interesting, as I'm dallying about waiting for prices to come down just a little more before buying a D300!

Then I could crop away to my heart's content, with 12.3mp to play with;)

Yes?

Alcazar

Yep, 600 either side and 400 top and bottom to get to just the D70 size.

Didn't say D300 as I reckon D70+1.4x cash would get a D80, if you're willing to throw in more cash, even better :D.

This may be nonsense but I've given it a go anyway :D ....

300mm on a 1.5x sensor gives a fov of 5.16 degrees.

At 100 metres distance, that gives a horizontal width of 9m captured on the image (imagine it's a wall).

On a 4288 wide image, that's 0.0021m/pixel.

Chop 1288 pixels off the horizontal and the width on the image is reduced by 2.70m to 6.30m.

At 100m, to capture a horizontal width of 6.30m, the fov is 3.61 degrees

To get a fov of 3.61 degrees, on a 1.5x crop camera, you'd need a 429mm lens!!

300mm with 1.4x TC = 420mm

Soooooooo.....
(if my calculations aren't a pile of arse)

A pic taken on a D300, with a lens at 300mm, cropped to 3000 wide, will have an effective focal length of 429mm, which is 9mm more than the same image from a D70 at 300m with a 1.4x TC.

How to justify a D300 in several easy steps :D

How to justify a D300 in several easy steps :D

Oh I won't have to justify it, my wife won't notice if I replace the D70 with a D300;)

I hope:D

Alcazar