Is a TC-200 with a Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 a good option?

Hi Forum,

 

I'd like to purchase a telephoto lens with a focal length up to 200mm or so for use with FE and F2 film bodies. While the Nikkor-Q 200mm f/4 is available cheaply where I live, I've read bad things about it and everything I've seen longer than 105mm is over my budget. I have an excellent Ai'd Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5. How would this combine with the TC-200? Does anyone have experience with this combination? Also, what would the effective maximum aperture be using the teleconverter?

 

Thanks!

LINK for some data on the TC-200

 

A Google has a lot more with details on lens limitations for specific teleconverter models

There is only one basic reason not to use a TC, and it applies to autofocus cameras only. If your lens is F4 and your camera requires F6 to preform autofocus, losing a couple stops on your TC will prevent your autofocus from working. If your lens was an F2 it wouldn't be a problem.

 

Find out what your camera needs for the autofocus to work. That will give you the real information on whether a TC is the right move for you.

Thanks, I'm still living in the dark ages, all manual, the cameras and the 105mm f/2.5 that I'm thinking of teleconverting. I guess another way of putting my question is: is a Nikkor-P Auto 105mm f/2.5 + TC-200 better than a Nikkor-Q 200mm f/4?

Okay, I don't speak from experience—but I can't see how ANY prime + 2x teleconverter could have better IQ than a similar, unaugmented prime of twice the focal length. Unless they were designed as a matched pair, the TC cannot but alter the optical formula of the lens in a way not intended by its designer! The odds of the result being better than an unaugmented lens from the same generation are...I don't know, but I wouldn't take that bet. Also, the 105mm f/2.5 + TC-200 would have a maximum aperture of f/5, which is 2/3 stop slower than a 200mm f/4 lens.

 

Anyway, how much is the TC-200 you're thinking of buying? 200mm f/4 "K" and AI lenses are often available fairly cheaply on eBay, and according to Bjørn Rørslett these are vastly better than the equivalent Q lenses. Right now I see a K model in decent condition for $46 + $20 shipping from Japan to the US (eBay item number 282899358761).

there's a TC-200 for R$250 (Brazilian Real) and there's a revised 200mm Qs for R$400. Thanks for the K link, I hadn't heard of these and will look them up. With import duties on freight and shipping the ebay lens will end up costing roughly R$450 and unfortunately may end up sitting on a dock somewhere for 4 months before it's delivered. This is why I always try to buy things locally. The reason I asked if the the 105mm + 2X might be better, is that I've heard such bad things about the 200mm Q.

and thanks for the aperture info, i wasn't able to work that out

there's a TC-200 for R$250 (Brazilian Real) and there's a revised 200mm Qs for R$400. Thanks for the K link, I hadn't heard of these and will look them up. With import duties on freight and shipping the ebay lens will end up costing roughly R$450 and unfortunately may end up sitting on a dock somewhere for 4 months before it's delivered. This is why I always try to buy things locally. The reason I asked if the the 105mm + 2X might be better, is that I've heard such bad things about the 200mm Q.

 

I see. That's a big difference in price. Anyway, check out this page for Rørslett's evaluations of the 200mm f/4 Nikkors. Scroll down to the bottom; you'll see the "K" lens listed as "non-AI" in his table, second from last, and the Q lens listed last. "K" is not a well-known designation, but it refers to the last non-AI version of many Nikkor primes. K and AI lenses almost always have the same optical formula.

Before writing off the 200mm lens, think about will you actually see vs. what people are talking/complaining about?

You may not see the minute issue that people are talking about. In which case, it makes no difference.

The Nikon 43-86 has the reputation of being Nikon's worst lens optically. I used one for about 10 years, and I was happy with it. I only replaced it with a 35-105 for the extra zoom range, otherwise I would still be using it.

 

I would personally rather use a 200 than a 105 + 2x converter.

 

In my early film days, the only reason that I used a 2x converter was that I could not afford the 135mm prime lens that I really wanted. So I put the 50mm on a 2x converter.

Edited March 31, 2018 by Gary Naka

No Ks for sale here that I can find, but I found a nice looking Q.C for a good price. It's the multicoated Q version before the K and was made between 1973 and 76 according to Nikon Lens Versions and Serial Nos. If anyone knows anything about this lens, please write. But thanks everyone, yes, I'll consider the 200mm lenses and won't buy the tele-converter.

and thanks again chulkim, i just bought that K lens off ebay, sounds like it'll be worth the wait.

and thanks again chulkim, i just bought that K lens off ebay, sounds like it'll be worth the wait.

I wish you the best of luck with it. The Japan sellers always allow returns, but they know that few people will bother, especially if the buyer pays for return shipping!

The 200mm f/4 late AI multi-coated Nikkor that I have is surprisingly good on a high resolution DX body, even wide open. So you'll see no problems on film.

 

I can't speak for the early Q designation lens. IME, those old scalloped telephoto Nikkors are cheap for a reason!

 

The TC-200 doesn't impress me at all, and I think you'll likely get far worse IQ from coupling it with a 105mm than you'll get from a native 200mm lens.

 

FWIW, the AI-s 80-200mm f/4 zoom is pretty good, and those don't sell for much money either. Heavier than the little 200mm f/4 prime, but more versatile.

I agree with Rodeo Joe: the 200mm f/4 AIS that I have is excellent. You could read Bjørn Rørslett's review of it here.

I agree with Rodeo Joe: the 200mm f/4 AIS that I have is excellent.

 

I wouldn't mind acquiring one of these myself. I recently passed on an chance to buy a nice one for $85 because the seller was a jerk. Yes, he thought the same of me, but he was wrong. ;)

Edited April 1, 2018 by chulster

FWIW, I have scalloped ring Nikkor-Q with a factory AI ring. I've found mine to be an all around solid performer.

 

As a side note on the last pre-AI lenses-not too long ago I picked up an F2sb with a 35mm f/2. I paid what I thought was a more than fair price for the camera by itself(the F2sb isn't the easiest camera to find) and the lens was a nice bonus. The 35mm was in a leather pouch and-of all things-had a Nippon Kogakua rear cap-but when I first looked at it I thought it was an AI lens. On closer look, I suspected it to have been converted as it didn't appear to have a maximum aperture post. A look at real AI versions confirmed this, but I suspect a lot of sellers would have unintentionally sold it as an AI lens. Granted, I suspect the performance is indistinguishable from an AI lens, and there are only 5 cameras that can even tell its not an AI lens.

I used to have a pre-AI scalloped Nikkor O 35mm f/2 Ben. It was adequately sharp on B&W film. However I sold it for an AI'd version, and later somehow acquired an AI-S as well. They're all optically identical, with only the 'O' designation having been dropped on later versions, and the AR coatings improved.

 

They're a disaster on high res digital cameras. Near useless wide open, and only acceptable stopped well down.

 

FWIW. There's also a Soviet/Ukranian 35mm f/2 lens out there (Mir something or other) that appears to be a clone and performs about the same or even worse.

The TC-200 is known to be a bit of a dog. The TC-14a is much better. If your intent is portraits your combination will work fine. The 200mm f4 (AIs) is a gem which is often passed over because of it's speed. Try to stick with AI or AIs versions, the optical designs and coatings are much better. In the case of the 105mm, the "P" and "AIs" results are like night and day unless you want a soft portrait lens. The AIs has better optics than the AI as well.

Thanks rick_jack. I think it may have got lost in the conversation, but I did buy the "K" 200mm f/4 that chulkim suggested, which has the same optics, by all accounts, as the Ai. It's missing the coupling shoe, but I should be able to source one of these locally for use with my F2. My own Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 is a similar to the 200mm K in that it was the last of the P series and according to Bjørn Rørslett, has the "Gauss formula" shared with the subsequent Ai lenses. I've certainly been very happy with it.

They're a disaster on high res digital cameras. Near useless wide open, and only acceptable stopped well down.

—regarding the 35mm f/2

 

I have to reluctantly agree with your disparagement of this lens, of which two AI-S samples I tried behaved exactly the same: soft wide open, very sharp in the central 10mm of the frame starting at f/2.8, and the rest of the frame more or less a blurry mess until f/8. I really wanted to like the lens, which looks and feels very nice, and which Bjorn Rorslett rated highly.

 

Of the set of economical AI-S primes that includes the 24/2.8, 28/2.8, 35/2, 50/1.4, 85/2, 105/2.5, 135/2.8, and 200/4, only the 35mm stands out in my mind as an overall poor performer. (I have no experience yet of the 24 and the 200.) I finally replaced my copy of it with an AF 35/2 D. That lens is also no champion in off-center sharpness: it too requires f/8 for good results, but at least it doesn't make me wince at larger apertures.

Any of the 200mm Nikkors will beat a 105mm + TC200 combo (although a worn-out ancient 200Q pre-AI may only be marginally better). The newer 200 K version and AI/AIS successors are very very good. If you can handle the (much) heavier weight and think you might like the versatility of a zoom, I agree the 80-200mm f/4.0 is a good option at comparable cost to a 200mm AI. Late versions of the classic 80-200 f/4.5, with rectangular baffle over the rear element, can be a good bargain if you're more interested in portraits/sports than landscape (but watch out for fungus, which is impossible to clean from this optical design).

 

The 35mm f/2.0 manual-focus Nikkor has always been polarizing: people have loved them or hated them since the 1960s. It depends on what you like to shoot and what pictorial qualities you respond too. I've liked them enough to use as my primary Nikkor since 1986: over the years, I've accumulated two Nikkor-Os with factory AI ring, and two AIS. Three of them have sat in storage as backups, since my first Nikkor-O never leaves my currently-active body (F2 or FM, D700, Sony A7II, whatever). I've never been disappointed by the sharpness at any aperture on film or digital, but can see where others might not love it.

 

Friends have borrowed my spare 35mm Nikkor-O or AIS occasionally to play with on their Canons, Sony A7Rs, D600, Df or D810s: their results have been more variable than mine, but there isn't a consistent pattern (it seems to hinge more on their skill and enthusiasm at using manual lenses and 35mm POV than sensor resolution). The 35/2 Nikkor is no Leica Summicron Aspheric, but it isn't quite the total dog some make it out to be either. I'm very fond of the way it draws, so I work around flaws like really bad internal reflection (even the multicoated AIS version will produce annoying ghost duplication of street lights in night scenes: dealbreaker with film, but manageable with digital).

 

Because of the nagging ghost image issue with night-time streetscapes, I've tried replacing the 35mm f/2 with alternatives. The radioactive yellowed 35mm f/1.4 was interesting with BW but I traded it for the 35/2 AF, which I hated (no ghosting, but dead colors and crappy handling on the F2AS). A 35/1.4 AIs followed: nice, but useless at 1.4 and a beast to carry. My final experiment was a Zeiss 35/2 ZF: beautiful imagery, but not much better with ghosting and bigger/heavier feeling than the 1.4 AIS. One way or another, I always fall back to the 35/2 Nikkor-O.

 

Unless you're shooting for publication to broader expectations, favorite lenses are often a matter of subjective taste. Glass that strikes some as horrible and unusable strikes others as quite special. I have an oddly similar prefernce in my Hasselblad kit. The old black metal T* 50mm Distagon-C is widely disparaged for a multitude of sins, but I vastly prefer it over the later, much "improved" CF FLE. This irks me no end, because the CF FLE is much more pleasant to use and matches my other CF lenses. But my hit rate with the CF FLE is much worse, I just don't get on with it. The clunky. "inferior" old CT* gives me that elusive Zeiss magic, the CF FLE doesn't. To each his own: its certainly much easier nowadays to try out several options via eBay than it was when the only source for used gear was the classified section of Shutterbug magazine.

The AIs has better optics than the AI as well.

The optical construction of the 105/2.5 Ai and Ai-S are identical; there is a difference in coating though (Ai is green, Ai-S is purple). Also, there is no such thing as "the P" version since the earlier production of the lens so named is the Sonnar-type, and the later production the Gauss-type; the cut-off serial number is 407301 (first Gauss from 1971); differences in optical performance between the two types is expected.

In the case of the 105mm, the "P" and "AIs" results are like night and day unless you want a soft portrait lens.

 

Having both a older AI'ed Nikkor-P (Gauss design) and AiS version of the 105mm, I can positively say this statement misses the mark by a mile. And having seen a more than fair amount of the older Sonnar-design lens: those perform about as good. They're not soft lenses by any stretch of imagination.

I also own two versions of the 105mm Gauss design: one is indeed marked Nikkor-P as Wouter Willemse confirms, the other is an AIS. Same optical design, same performance. There has always been a lot of confusion re the switch from Sonnar to Gauss, how to identify which version is which, and what advantages each version might have over the other.

 

Perhaps the simplest way to break it down is this: Nikon did not get rid of letter designations like "Nikkor-P" until the K (rubber dash focus ring) and followup AI lenses appeared. So you do have a period of approx 4 years where the pre-AI Gauss design was labeled "P" (or "PC" if multicoated). This where many potential buyers get lost in the weeds: the previous Sonnar design was also labeled Nikkor-P, and to the untrained eye the two versions can be hard to tell apart.

 

While there may be some transitional lenses that are virtually impossible to identify accurately, I have never seen one. In every 105mm I've come across, and I've handled dozens, it has been fairly simple to distinguish Sonnar from Gauss once you know the telltale signs.. The Sonnar has a slimmer scalloped focus ring, very similar to the 50mm f/1.4 ring. The main barrel behind the focus ring is silver, and the nose is always silver. Again, there may be some transitional examples with a black nose or barrel, but I haven't run across one in 40 years using-buying-trading Nikon gear.

 

The Gauss-version Nikkor-P has a distinctive, very wide scalloped focus ring which is at least 3x wider than the ring on the Sonnar (it covers nearly the entire barrel area at infinity). The barrel behind/under the focus ring is always black, and the nose/filter threads are always black.The optics in this version are identical to the AI and AIS. BTW if the name reads "Nikkor-PC", it is definitely Gauss as none of the Sonnars were "PC".

 

Which is "better" can be a tough call. The 105mm Sonnar was the lens that made Nikon's rangefinder reputation, and it carried over to the Nikon F introduction almost unchanged, to firmly establish the F as the photojournalist standard. So it would be a gross oversimplification to say it is "inferior" to the Gauss: rather, its performance envelope skews differently. Shooting brick walls or test charts, it might appear to be somewhat "less sharp" than the Gauss overall, but as with legendary Leica glass "sharpness" does not tell the whole story. The Sonnar offers a different "look" in terms of bokeh and contrast that some greatly prefer for portraiture and stylized landscape/street (esp on BW film, with which it shines). The Gauss has more immediacy and "bite": much closer to modern lenses in terms of sharpness distribution and contrast. Most of the time (esp with digital) thats an advantage, but some feel its a bit generic compared to the Sonnar. I've known more than a few photographers who own both, because they like each one for different projects.

Edited April 3, 2018 by orsetto

I can not think of an application where the 105 x2 would make up for the hassle of less-resolution and less light!

Well: the photography of frogs perhaps * .. but then I would start with a 105-micro in the first place.

Otherwise:

- get closer to your subject!

- crop afterwards (if you have pixels to spare)

- get one of the 200's (although my 200/4.0 AI sees no use at all nowadays, since my excellent 70-200/4.0 AFS VR!)

 

* longer working distance desirable and small apertures used most often..