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Nikon TC 1.4x III

May 27, 2020 • Shooting Tips

Most wildlife photographers will say the same thing; I sure wish I had a bigger telephoto lens.  It just seems you can’t get close enough to wildlife, especially birds.  One way to extend the range of your telephoto lens is by adding a teleconverter.  I have all the converters Nikon makes, but generally stick to the 1.4x because there is little loss of image quality.  If I had to put a number on it, I would say around 10% image quality loss with the 1.4x, about 17% with the 1.7x, and around 20% with the 2x.  I have no data to quantify this, just a gut feeling I get when I am working on my images using converters.  But I have no hesitation using a 1.4x, especially if my subject is in the center.  Center sharpness is very good, and the slight loss of acuity on the edges doesn’t really impact my images.

But then I wondered…I have been using the TC 1.4X II, the older version of this converter.  The new version, the TC 1.4x III, was supposedly sharper.  Really?  So I bought the new version, and headed into the woods with my 600mm F4 with the new 1.4x attached, resulting in a 840mm F5.6.  But before I even left the house, I set up my lens calibration target to fine tune the autofocus.  I found a setting of -7 was about perfect…the images looked very sharp.  Another point is worth mentioning.  Starting with a fast tack sharp prime lens will obviously give you better results than using a converter on zoom lenses.  That said I get excellent results using my 1.4x with my 70-200mm F2.8.  Remember, you lose a stop of light using a 1.4x, so my F4 lens turned into a F5.6 lens.  But autofocus was still fast and crisp in good light conditions.

I can tell you right now this new converter is sharper than the older version.  Reviews have said the new TC 1.4x works better with lenses with electronic apertures (the E designation).  My 600mm is an ‘E’ lens, so maybe that helped.  But all I can say is these images were very sharp using my D5.  Center point sharpness had just a tiny loss compared to using the 600mm with no converter.  What really mattered was my camera technique.  Shooting a 840mm lens requires lots of stability and fast shutter speeds.  I never use VR on my 600mm, I just shoot it wide open and above 1/1000 as much as I can.  Cree and I are big bird photographers, and have considered the 800mm 5.6 lens for years.  But $16,000 is a lot, and you have less flexibility shooting at 800mm all the time.  But of course this lens has legendary sharpness.  I do like the flexibility of using my 600mm at F4, and then adding a converter if I need extra reach.

An interesting question is can you get better results interpolating (making your images bigger) in the computer or using a converter?  Right now I would say using a 1.4x converter on a sharp prime lens is a better choice.  But if you use a 1.7x and 2x, this might be more even in the final results.  On a side note, as I was shooting this morning with my 600mm with 1.4x I found a very rare (in Colorado) golden winged warbler.  I was giddy just standing there with my huge glass on my gimbal RRS tripod.  The bird landed right in front of me, and I just blazed away with my D5….oh yeah!

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