Patrice
No longer a newbie, moving up!
I've seen some threads on various forums discussing Kenko teleconverters and Nikkor DX 17-55 f/2.8 on a FX body. Consensus was inconclusive so I wanted to see for myself. The Nikon teleconverters are incompatible with this lens.
I ordered a Kenko 1.4x teleplus PRO 300 DGX teleconverter from B&H for $223. Came today through Purolator ground.
A very quick 10 shot test shows that this product performs as advertised. The build quality is nice and solid, metal body and lens flanges. Nice fit and finish to the quality plastic barrel, nice even glass coatings, a very professional looking product.
Mounted my 17-55 f/2.8 AFS DX on my D700 and had a go.
When that lens is mounted directly to the d700 there is vignetting at all focal lengths and all apertures, and especially so with the petal lens hood.
With the teleconverter:
The mounted lens feels solid and secure, no wiggles.
The lens does not vignette at any aperture or focal length, even with the lens hood.
The teleconverter has contacts for lens and body and it has a chip in it. All camera and lens functions work just fine.
The camera now reports this lens as having a f/4.0 max aperture and will meter as such. You don't have to fool the meter or use exposure compensation to account for the reduced 1 stop aperture. Exif data shows the increased length and reduced aperture. A shot at max aperture and lens set to 50mm gets reported in the exif as f4 and 75mm. However the lens model gets reported as 17-55 f/2.8.
Image quality does not seem to be adversely affected, but I didn't do any 400% pixel peeping. At 100% crop this teleconcerter is essentially transparent, to me anyway.
It also works just fine with 18-77 variable aperture AFS DX.
I tried it with my 70-200 f/2.8 VR-I (not the new VR-II), all works just fine, as above, but with a pleasant little surprise. The corner sharpness of the image is a little better with the teleconverter. This lens now has the same great performance on FX as it did on my DX bodies but with a one stop loss of maximum aperture, supposedly because I am now only using the central area of the projected image. Don't read more into this than there is. The 70-200 VR-I on FX is a fantastic lens, teleconverter or not. If you have this lens and a new FX body don't go selling it off at a discount because some pixel peeper on a forum says it doesn't cut the mustard. Not true!
So far so good!
Pat
I ordered a Kenko 1.4x teleplus PRO 300 DGX teleconverter from B&H for $223. Came today through Purolator ground.
A very quick 10 shot test shows that this product performs as advertised. The build quality is nice and solid, metal body and lens flanges. Nice fit and finish to the quality plastic barrel, nice even glass coatings, a very professional looking product.
Mounted my 17-55 f/2.8 AFS DX on my D700 and had a go.
When that lens is mounted directly to the d700 there is vignetting at all focal lengths and all apertures, and especially so with the petal lens hood.
With the teleconverter:
The mounted lens feels solid and secure, no wiggles.
The lens does not vignette at any aperture or focal length, even with the lens hood.
The teleconverter has contacts for lens and body and it has a chip in it. All camera and lens functions work just fine.
The camera now reports this lens as having a f/4.0 max aperture and will meter as such. You don't have to fool the meter or use exposure compensation to account for the reduced 1 stop aperture. Exif data shows the increased length and reduced aperture. A shot at max aperture and lens set to 50mm gets reported in the exif as f4 and 75mm. However the lens model gets reported as 17-55 f/2.8.
Image quality does not seem to be adversely affected, but I didn't do any 400% pixel peeping. At 100% crop this teleconcerter is essentially transparent, to me anyway.
It also works just fine with 18-77 variable aperture AFS DX.
I tried it with my 70-200 f/2.8 VR-I (not the new VR-II), all works just fine, as above, but with a pleasant little surprise. The corner sharpness of the image is a little better with the teleconverter. This lens now has the same great performance on FX as it did on my DX bodies but with a one stop loss of maximum aperture, supposedly because I am now only using the central area of the projected image. Don't read more into this than there is. The 70-200 VR-I on FX is a fantastic lens, teleconverter or not. If you have this lens and a new FX body don't go selling it off at a discount because some pixel peeper on a forum says it doesn't cut the mustard. Not true!
So far so good!
Pat
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