In an effort to understand more on teleconverters, I went back to one of my favorite books..... "John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide" John Shaw is a very well know landscape/nature photographer and his word is like gospel to me.... :~) Here's what he had to say about teleconverters, in Chapter 3 on lenses.... "A 2x converter doubles the focal length of whatever lens it's used on and at the same time slows down all marked f/stops by two. A 300mm f/4 becomess a 600mm f/8 when a 2x converter is added." Ok so what this tells me.... is that you are going to need a very fast lens in order to get a useable shutter speed. More from John Shaw..... "For best results, use dedicated converters with long lenses".... meaning by the Canon, Nikon, or whatever brand for the brand lens you are using. "Use the fastest lens you can. Unless you are working at high noon, you'll barely be able to see through the lens, let alone hit sharp focus. An f/11 lens (with that teleconverter) is totally useless for bird and mammal work in natural light since you are forced into such long exposure times." "Use the best prime lens you can. The highest quality teleconverter will yield mediocre results, if used on a mediocre lens. All converters magnify defects, optical abberations, and lack of sharpness. Use a lens that already produces these things and you'll just get more of them." "Use the best photographic technique you can." "For the most part avoid using zoom lenses. Zoom lenses are already optically complex, with many elements in the light path. If you start adding more elements, like the teleconverter, image quality quickly falls apart. There are exceptions though, specifically the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 EOS lens used with the Canon EF teleconverters, and Nikons 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-S lens mated with the TC-E converters." He also recommends... "Use a 1.4X in preference to a 2X.....because image integrity is better maintained..... part of the reason for this is because it changes the light hitting the film by one stop instead of two." "Auto-Focus may or may not work." "The exposure readout in the camera may or may not work." Uhhh..... I could go on and on.... he's dedicated 4 pages to the subject, most of it negative I hate to say. :~/

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