Stack TCs

Does it make sense? It must we all know the D2H wouldn't lie. Would it?

 

It depends on the order of the converters. I did a modification a couple of years ago with the same results.

Unfortunately, my stacked converter photos are very soft - much softer than some Canon examples I have seen. I am convinced that the canon 2x converter is better than the nikon one. Perhaps stacking the 1.4 and 1.7 would be okay.

 

I have both a modified TC-14E and a modified TC-20E. The stacking is order dependent, and the TC-14 and TC-17 will not stack, due to the protruding nature of the beasts.

As to softness, I decided to give this a try a bit ago and have been incredibly surpised. Here is the latest attempt:

NIKON D2H    ---    500mm    f/4.5    1/80s    ISO 400

Perhaps I have just gotten lucky, but in the two times I have done this in the past couple of months I have gotten very good results. This image has not been cropped, nor has it had any "special" sharpening done. I shoot in NEF with sharpening off in the camera. If anyone sees "softness" here, point it out please. This was using my 500mm f4.5 Sigma, 1400mm by the time I was done. I also wanted to keep ISO down, notice the 1/80 shutter speed.

 

Pretty danged amazing Bill. I'm not usually impressed by the shots that I get with my 300mm 2.8 Nikkor and the TC-20EII. Maybe it has more to do with shaky tripod / ballhead / photographer in my case and not bad optics.

Sure bears further investigation on my part.

Thanks,

Frank

 

To be quite frank, Frank ( that was fun :wink: ) I was about to put my TC-20E up for auction to fund the TC17E, but now that I find how well this works I think I am going to keep this one. I rarely used it until now, I guess I just got a "good" one. I have to send my 500 in for repair, so I will be trying this over the next couple of weeks with the 120-300. It will be interesting to see the results. Now that I also have the Sigma 1.4TC I have lot's of combinations to try. Just for grins I put the 1.4 and 2x on the Sigma 120-300 f2.8 and it tried to AF. I'll have to see what happens in good light.

I do agree that a solid tripod is required. I have a Gitzo 1228, and many people have said that I need something "bigger", but as far as I can tell it is working quite well.