tele-extender

[jerry_milroy]

<p>I have a nikon d300 and a sigma 70-200 lens. I have friends that would like me to take photos of their kids playing soccer (full size field/outside, in Arizona plenty sunny). I am thinking i will need an 2x extender. Will extenders work with my gear, what is a good one, what do i need to concern myself with going this route.</p>

[Wouter Willemse]

<p>Hi Jerry,<br>

It depends on quite some things, and there are indeed concerns going this route.<br>

The main thing is a 2x TC makes your lens 2 stops slower. If it's a f/2.8 lens, it means you end up with a 140-400 f/5.6. If your lens is a slower lens than f/2.8, you need to expect problems with AF (slow, less accurate, more hunting).<br>

Also, image quality takes a serious hit with most 2x TCs. Typically lower contrast and less sharpness. Whether it's worth it... depends on your requirements. Sometimes cropping may work just as well if you do not need to print very large.<br>

If you have the Sigma 70-200 f/2.8, Sigma has a matching pair of TCs (1.4x and 2x). If you feel a bit more reach is needed, I'd consider the 1.4x TC first (for a lens going to 280mm at f/4), since that will suffer less than a 2x TC.</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>You can use the latest of penultimate Nikon TCs with your camera and 70-200 VR lens with good results. They are far cheaper and smaller than longer lenses, and probably better quality (and definitely faster focusing) than the 80-400 VR. You lose a stop or two, but the 70-200 has plenty to go around, especially on a sunny Arizona day.</p>

<p>Do you have to wear oven mits with a black camera in the Arizona sun? Even a chrome wrench will raise a blister if you touch it with your forearm after 10 minutes on the driveway.</p>

[jerry_milroy]

<p>Hi Wouter<br>

Thank you for your reply. You guested right, the lens is the f2.8. I thought about the 2x because my wife has a 28-300 f3.5 -6.3. and that comes up short often. I did not know about the contrast and sharpness isssue. Knowing that now the 1.4x sounds like it might be the better choice along with cropping.</p>

[jerry_milroy]

<p>I forgot to mention the lens is not the VR one.</p>

[Peter_in_PA]

<p>Jerry, how big do you print? Reason I ask is that if you're making 8 x 10s, cropping a 200mm might look better than using a 2X, because some of the third-party lenses don't take 2X tele-converters well.</p>

[jerry_milroy]

<p>8 x 10 would be nice now and again, but most of the photos would be used for making digital photobooks and posters where most of the pictures are 5x7 or smaller. For the 8x10 stuff i could just not use the extender. Most of the pictures that get used will not go thur photoshop.</p>

[Peter_in_PA]

<p>Jerry, if you are only printing 5 x 7s and 8 x 10s from your files, just crop. You don't need any Tele-converter imho. That's what I'd do, and in fact, what I do. My longest lens is 200mm, but all I shoot right now is little kid sports.</p>

[joseph_wisniewski]

<p>Jerry, I've got some bad news and some worse news for you.</p>

<p>The bad news: you need to use a Sigma TC with your Sigma HSM lens. The Sigma HSM and Nikon VR lenses do not speak the same teleconverter signal protocol. If you put a Sigma 70-200mm on a Nikon or Kenko PRO-300 TC, the converter will not be able to tell the lens that it has a TC attached, so the lens won't report the correct AF focusing speed parameters to the camera. The ends result is greatly decreased focus accuracy. And, when you use the central AF zones on the D300, the camera will try to use the 10 degree (f2.8) sensors instead of the 5 degree (f5.6) sensors, and cause even more focusing errors, because the lens becomes f4 (1.4x converter) or f5.6 (2x converter).</p>

<p>The worse news: the Sigma 1.4x isn't too bad, but the Sigma 2X is very disappointing, nowhere near the quality of either the Nikon or Kenko 2X.</p>

<p>So, your choices involve getting the wrong TC and having a lot of images ruined by focus problems, or getting the right TC and suffering with the image quality. Or replacing the Sigma lens with the Nikon 70-200 and getting a Nikon TC.</p>

[jerry_milroy]

<p>Thank you all<br>

I have decided from the input from all of you that the TC is not the way to go. I will get the best shots I can and just crop away.<br>

Thanks</p>