teleconverters

I have a d-200 and just bought a 80 - 400 vr lens. Its great, however i am

having trouble finding a teleconverter {2x} for it that will function with the

vr and af. Ordered a sigma that they said would work and the lens would not

even attach to it. Still waiting to here back from sigma about that one.

Called nikon and they were not sure. So where does that leave me. Any Ideas??

I would suggest you not to use any teleconvertor on the 80-400; certainly not a 2x type. Your lens is already a slow f5.6 at 400mm. With a 1.4x TC, it becomes a very slow 560mm/f8, which will be hard to focus. With a 2x TC, at least IMO it is essentially useless.

Most teleconverters require lens of max F-stop 2.8, and sometimes work with lens f max stop=4 for AF or AF-S to work properly. The Auto focus will not work on the 80-400/5.6 lens, except possibly in bright sunny daylight.

 

The optical quality of the lens with any teleconverter will be poor.

 

The idea is to give up any teleconverter for the 80-400 lens. If you need longer lens, you will need to spend tons of $$$$

AF on the D200 is unreliable past f5.6. A 2x TC costs you 2 stops of light, meaning the

fastest the 80-400 could be be at 400mm zoom is f11, not even close to enough for AF

and VR. Even a 1.4x TC will only get you f8 at the long end, which might be OK on a D2X

or D2Hs, but probably not on the D200

 

The lens should attach to the Sigma or Tamron TC's, but you will not get good results.

 

Might I suggest you look at the combination of a long MF prime and a TC? MF primes are

typically far cheaper than AF ones, and you will get more performance out of a good MF

Prime + TC than the 80-400 and a TC.

thanks a lot for the info guys, it makes a lot of sense. I will forget the teleconverter and start saving for a 600. Buy the way I know you have talked about this in earlier discussions but I have been waiting for an 18 - 200 for about a month and am being told that is has been shiped by nikon. Do you thing they are just pasifying me so I will leave them alone or does anyone really know what time frame it will be. Thanks again for the converter info you just saved me $380.00 !!

by the way guys i meant that i would be saving for a very long time for the 600, say about 10 years

(d200 1.5) + (kenko pro 300 1.4) + (nikon 300) = ~630mm and good image quality or so I've read :)

 

 

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=001w6S

 

Been doing some research on TC's lately for my 80-200 f2.8 and settled on the Kenko. I have no direct experience though since it is still in the mail.

 

Dan