Nikon TC-20E III AF-S Tele Converter for Camera

Product Information

The lens is stellar and may be the perfect telephoto if you don’t need a zoom. (After using it I was reminded that I do need a zoom). Nikon has nailed it with a perfect balance of compact size, sharpness, and relatively large aperture. You can’t get f2.8 unless you are rich and a body-builder (or only shoot from a hide or vehicle), but most people can carry this lens and get 2/3 stop faster aperture compared to an f5.6 zoom. One oddity is that it has Vibration Reduction but no switch on the lens to turn it off (done in camera menu). People worry waaaaay too much about lens sharpness. It's not 1968 anymore when lenses often weren't that sharp and there could be significant differences among them; ever since about 2010 all new lenses are all pretty much equally fantastic. That goes to show what I said a moment ago! If you’re using a zoom lens, try to avoid using a wider focal length plus a teleconverter. You’ll get better results by removing the teleconverter and zooming in instead. 2. Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S at 200mm Because teleconverter compatibility is dependent upon lens use, the lenses that will work with a teleconverter are all FX lenses (those that are designed for use with the larger FX format image sensor or film SLR cameras.

When it comes to autofocus performance, the Nikon 2x teleconverters have always been the worst (when compared to other Nikon teleconverters), since they slow down lenses by two full stops and degrade image quality. The quality of light that reaches the autofocus sensor is often poor and only large aperture lenses that pass through lots of light can focus well enough with the TC-20E III. For example, the Nikon 200mm f/2.0 works very well with the TC-20E III and autofocus is often both fast and accurate. Slower f/2.8 prime lenses are a little worse, but still accurate enough in bright conditions. As lighting conditions worsen, the autofocus performance gets less accurate and lenses might start “hunting”– that’s when the lens goes from infinity to close focus, unable to stop at a particular focus mark. While the wide-open performance of the Sigma seems to be worse, the Sigma 2x actually performs better than the TC-20E III when stopped down in the center. Mid-frame and corners are weaker, but the center resolution is higher! Summary Focal ratio: Here’s the one and major disadvantage of teleconverters: TCs make your lens less bright. You lose one stop with the ZC-1.4x and two stops with the TC-2.0x. So the Nikon Z 70-200mm f2.8 VR S becomes a 98-280mm f4.0 lens on the TC-1.4x and a 140-400mm f5.6 lens on the TC-2.0x. [-] What’s the difference between “perform well” and “reasonable experience”? Perform well means that I have some expectation that these combos create image quality that is arguably better than say, the third-party telephoto zoom lenses you can buy. Reasonable experience means that, if I absolutely need the focal length, a good sample of the lens and TC produces image quality that can be used in editorial production.zoom lenses are too slow. Teleconverters are most useful if you already have a fast (f/2.8) lens to begin with.

Talking of technical, I do hear a lot of people say, especially in videography, “Well with today’s higher resolutions, why don’t you just crop in later, it’s kind of the same thing the converter’s doing.” True, in a sense, but, personally, I just don’t get that. You frame shots and react to the movement and action in front of you completely differently when you are using the viewfinder or LCD screen. Trying to think what the middle 50% of your frame would be like just feels like guesswork. Plus, you are sacrificing image quality in another way, so it’s a trade-off I don’t see any value in. With AF being so fast, even in demanding sports shoots you’ll still get a lots of fabulous shots. Basketball in a darkish sports hall might push your AF to the limit but, don’t forget, without that converter you wouldn’t even have those new camera angles to work with. The TC-20E has so much magnification that, at least on a D3, there is usually some loss of sharpness wide-open. The lenses with f/11 for both “Acceptable” and “Optimal” sharpness produce very unreliable results. NIKON D3S + 70-200mm f/2.8 @ 370mm, ISO 280, 1/1250, f/8.0 Lens Construction and Handling

Distortion

As you can see, the maximum level of vignetting with the bare lens at 400mm is 1.17 stops. Meanwhile, the maximum level of vignetting with the 1.4x teleconverter is just 0.57 stops, and the maximum with the 2.0x teleconverter is 0.43 stops! My results were similar with the Nikon Z 70-200mm f/2.8. In short, you don’t need to worry about vignetting with either Nikon Z teleconverter. Distortion It’s not as simple as saying that you lose so-and-so-% sharpness across the frame, or X amount in the center and X amount in the corners. Instead, the sharpness you get with a lens + TC combination depends on how they interact. With some lenses, you will lose a greater amount of sharpness from a TC than with others. Why you can trust Digital Camera World Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing products and services so you can choose the best for you. Find out how we test.

It was not easy to obtain the Nikon TC-20E III because of high demand/short supply and after waiting for a few weeks, I decided to just rent it for a couple of weeks instead. My objective was to try the Nikon TC-20E III specifically with the Nikon 300mm f/2.8G VR II and with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II to see how it truly performs in an outdoor environment when photographing nature. It is one thing to shoot test charts with a lens sitting on a tripod, and another to get out and do some real shooting.Nikon's Z system has always had pretty poor autofocus performance compared to Canon mirrorless and Sony. While autofocus performance isn't that great with this converter and my Z 400mm f/4.5, it isn't that great without the converter either. So if you use a 1.4x converter on a 300mm f/4 it becomes a 420mm f/5.6. And if you use a 2x teleconverter on a 70-200mm f/2.8 it becomes a 140-400mm f/5.6. In practice, though, teleconverters have disadvantages, including the effect they have on your lens’s maximum aperture and often on the overall optical quality of your photos. Lens profile: Each Z-Nikkor comes with a lens profile for lateral color aberrations, vignette control, diffraction compensation and distortion control. The profiles still work when a TC is attached. [+] Let’s have a closer look at the features and functions of Nikon’s new Z teleconverters. As usual I’ve rated the features with a [+] (or [++]), when it’s better than average or even state of the art, a [0] if it’s standard or just average, and [-] if there’s a disadvantage. For comparison I use the the Nikon AF-S TC-14E III and AF-S TC-20E III (“F TCs” for short).

The score in the “features-department” is 2[-]/5[0]/6[+]. The biggest disadvantage when using teleconverters is the reduction in focal ratio by 1 stop for the TC-1.4x and 2 stops for the TC-2.0x. But that is the laws of optics at work – and not the fault of Nikon. The other [-] is the inability to use the new TCs in combination with the FTZ-adapter. Not sure how good the image quality would have been. But Nikon deliberately precluded this combination so we will never know. You may also not like the relatively high price compared to the street price of Nikon’s F-mount TCs. But if the optics are good the teleconverters are worth their money.

Nikon 2X AF-S TC-20E III User Reviews

This means that teleconverters work best with lenses that have a wide maximum aperture to start with. You may need to accept either slower shutter speeds or higher ISO settings, and you won’t be able to reproduce the shallow depth of field effects you normally get with that lens. You may often see softer images with this converter if you look too closely, but these are usually because of higher ISOs or blur from longer shutter speeds from the loss of light or enlargement of atmospheric disturbances like haze and heat shimmer, not from any optical fault of the converter itself. Similar to other Nikon teleconverters and its predecessor, the Nikon TC-20E III has a rugged all-metal exterior and a metal mount that is built to last a lifetime. The solid construction, along with a whopping 7 elements make it one heavy teleconverter, weighing a total of 330 grams without a lens attached. As a comparison, the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G lens weighs only 280 grams. The Nikon TC-14E II and TC-17-E II weigh 200 and 250 grams, respectively. While the number of optical elements has not changed between the new and the older 2x teleconverters, two key differences to note are the redesigned layout/lens groupings and replacement of a regular lens element with an aspherical one. The aspherical element was added to improve image quality by increasing sharpness, decreasing coma and other aberrations. Like other teleconverters, the Nikon TC-20E III has fixed lens elements that do not move when focus ring or zoom ring are touched on the lens. This means that the lens is protected very well against dust and moisture. NIKON D3S + 300mm f/2.8 @ 600mm, ISO 200, 1/800, f/7.1 Autofocus Speed and Accuracy