twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO

I have a sigma 50 – 500 and really love it, good, sharp lens. I wonder how well a TC would work?
Anyone have any experience with a TC on this lens? Looking for recommendations on what to purchase.

I am willing to spend $200 - $400.

Thanks, appreciate any advice you can give.

Will

fyi: I use it with a Nikon D300S and D800.

Birdshooter Loc: Wisconsin

From experienced shooters, I have learned that you will lose stops with a TC.

xxredbeardxx Loc: San Clemente CA.

Some of the guys here use them with great success.
imagemeister is one of them. Check out his photo's.

It depends on the quality of your lens.
I was going to try it, but my lens isn't good enough.
I think yours probably is.

nicksr1125 Loc: Mesa, AZ

A 2x converter will make you 50-500 f/9-f/13 in round numbers. You'll likely lose autofocus capability as well as the lens will be rather dark and hard to focus.

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

The Sigma TC would be your best bet.

However, my advice would be don't bother - the image quality will suffer, especially beyond 450mm when the lens gets soft w/o an extender, and you can forget about auto focus. Trying to manually focus through a lens that is F9 is also an exercise in frustration.

DaveHam Loc: Reading UK

The 2x TC is not really an option with this lens; it makes it very, very difficult to use to get at best a soft image.

Kenco and Sigma both do 1.4 TC's. I've used the Kenco with the 50-500; it was OK stopped down to about F8 until getting near fully extended when it was too soft. Some DSLR's will not AF properly with a TC on this lens as well.

shagbat Loc: London

I totally agree with Dave, I have the Sigma 50-500 and a 1.4x is sensible, I have the Sigma version, it will only focus manually. Hope this helps.

twillsol Loc: St. Louis, MO

Thanks for all the input; definitely helped me decide not to get a TC.

Thanks a lot to all who replied.

Will

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

I would expect any 2X would work poorly with the lens, that image quality would be poor.

Interesting to hear the Kenko 1.4X gives usable shots.

But which one? Kenko has made a number of different 1.4X... the most recent models have been: Pro 300 1.4X DG, MC4 1.4X DG, Pro 300 1.4X DGX, MC4 1.4X DGX... the DGX versions are the current models.

Too bad that it's soft at the longer end of the zoom, since that's where you'll most likely want to use a teleconverter.

Nikon has made some excellent teleconverters... but again, many different models. And, again, the problem is you need to find someone who can cite what specific TC model has been used and works well with that specific lens model.

But, really, on your D300, that lens should "act like" a 750mm with no loss of light (i.e., "free teleconverter effect" ).... That's already the equivalent of an insanely long lens. Just how long a lens do you need?

At some point there are diminishing returns with extremely long focal lengths, however they are achieved. Too difficult to get a steady shot (even with stabilization) and shooting distant subject through a lot of atmosphere makes for pretty poor image quality on all but the clearest days.

The longest lens Nikon, Canon and Sigma make are 800mm. Canon made a 1200mm (special order only), but stopped producing it some years ago

Maybe you just need to get closer to your subject? :roll:

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

I've used the Pro 300 with a Sigma 50-500 - but it is really only "ok" and not great. In fact, I found more value in not using the TC, stopping the lens to F8 and staying away from full zoom, and cropping a little bit more in post processing, along with some careful sharpening.

imagemeister Loc: mid east Florida

Yes, this is the correct way of thinking. I would also add, that the correct and judicious use of specialized interpolation software to the cropped image can be very useful and can equal or surpass the result of using a TC.

MarkD Loc: NYC

:thumbup: I agree that you're better off stopping down a stop or two and doing a little cropping and sharpening. I tried a Kenko 300 1.4x converter with a Nikon 70-300 VR, and that's what I ended up doing instead.

carl hervol Loc: jacksonville florida

Thats not true my TC work with AF you just have to buy one with AF

rfmaude41 Loc: Lancaster, Texas (DFW area)

All of the Nikon DSLR's will focus with the Sigma extender (use the sigma 1.4 with my 150-500), not sure about the Kenko though...