Should i buy a teleconverter! (1 Viewer)

[DeeDeeG]

Hi. Looking for some advice. I want to know whether or not i should buy a tc to use with my nikon d7200. I love wildlife photography and use a sigma 150-600 contemporary, but would love to get abit closer! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[nikonmike]

The best you could use would be 1.4 converter and I think if you take into account the drop in image quality and the possible rais in ISO you would be better to crop the image.

 

[Chosun Juan]

Looking for some advice. I want to know whether or not i should buy a tc to use with my nikon d7200. I love wildlife photography and use a sigma 150-600 contemporary, but would love to get abit closer! Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

DeeDee - I'm not sure that you will see an increase in image quality at all. Yes, closer always seems just out of reach ! :-O

Do you shoot your D7200 in the 1.3x in-camera crop mode ? (That's what I do with mine using a Tammy G2 150-600). That will give you around ~1150mm equivalent (given that there is some focus breathing, and a consumer supertelephoto zoom is more like about ~580mm at the long end anyway). Resolution will be 14.2MP and you will cut out a lot of extraneous border sky or foliage. File sizes will also be smaller giving you more capacity, and importantly an increase in speed ! Top speed will then be 7fps in continuous
It's the same as cropping in post, but you get all those extra benefits. If a bird flys close or whatever it's easy to just zoom out.

As Mike said, there are a whole host of drawbacks to a TC - less light, less IQ, loss of AF points, and AF performance, if not altogether. You are also not getting rid of the atmospheric effects by not getting physically closer. It will also be more difficult to use - requiring a step up in technique.

The Sigma C can be a little soft at 600mm and wide open. It can be better to back off to 550mm and f7.1 or even f8. If you shoot in the 1.3x in-camera crop mode as I suggested, then you will be at around ~1100mm equivalent. It is also easy to switch back to normal if you want to take a shot at the wide angle end, or have a super curious and cooperative bird.

It also helps to talk to the birds ! o
Ask them if you can take their photo, and if they would like to help out by coming closer to you






Chosun :gh:

 

[DeeDeeG]

Thanks for your input, guess i still have alot to learn.!!

 

[bronze sunbird]

Thanks for your input, guess i still have alot to learn.!!

Hi DeeDee. I use a Nikon D500 and the Nikkor 200-500mm zoom lens. I have recently been experimenting with teleconverters and here's what I have learned: the 1.4 teleconverter gets me a decent increase in reach at the cost of one f-stop. In theory the image should be degraded slightly but on a large monitor I don't see any noticeable loss of sharpness. And modern Nikon camera bodies like yours and mine produce very good images at higher ISOs, so I wouldn't worry about using a TC unless I was in a very low light environment.

With the 1.7 teleconverter I do see noticeable softness in the detail of images, especially is they are cropped. I tried out the 2.0 teleconverter a few years ago and most of the images, even those taken in bright light/low ISO were too fuzzy for my liking.

So for me the 1.4 TC is a useful tool to carry when I know that I will be photographing birds at long ranges.

One thing to be aware of is that you are adding another bunch of glass to the equation so be sure the TC is very clean on both sides when you install it.

Anthony