Hi
Has anyone tried the 500 F4 VR II with the TC-2.0E III for birding? what is your opinion
on the acuity of your photos? I am using a D700.

Lighting being equal, I do experience that the distance and size of a
bird makes a huge difference.

For example a Common King Fisher at 10 meters is very very small and
the 500+2.0 III + D700 may not be able to resolve feather details.. whilst
at the same distance a Heron will present no problems.

Allan

Pretty much agreed that the 2x is not very good on the 500. 1.4 is by far the best and the 1.7 is very good with proper technique.

Agree with Doug. I prefer my TC17EII over the TC20EIII but not so much for the acuity difference (there wasn't much difference from what I could see) but because tacking a TC20EIII onto f4 lens means you're starting out at f8. Ideally you should be stopping down two full stops from there for sharpness which becomes essentially unusable in most situations.

I find the TC17EII works quite well on my 500VR even wide open on FX but try to stop down to at least f8 when using my D300. Keep distances relatively short though. (I don't think the 500VR is all that great at distance and TC's just make things worse due to poor CA, but that's another issue.)

The larger pixels in your D700 will certainly help, though. Bottom line is I was not all that impressed with the TC20EIII on any lens and got rid of it.

FWIW, here's an example of the 500VR w/TC17EII taken hand held, shot wide open about 20 metres.
Nikon D3 ,Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4G ED VR ,TC17EII 1/250s f/6.7 at 850.0mm iso640




and another example, here's a shot taken with the same equipment at 8 metres stopped down to f8 that I think clearly demonstrates the need to get close and stop down...

Nikon D3 ,Nikkor AF-S 500mm f/4G ED VR ,TC17EII 1/250s f/8.0 at 850.0mm iso640
http://www.pbase.com/garyirwin/image/124306709/original.jpg

In my humble opinion....superb! What the heck is the matter with this shot with a 1.7? I’ve read a lot about how the Nikon 500 f4 not doing well with anything above 1.4. I question all of it.

IMHO Nikon long glass, starting right with the 300 f2.8, is taking a lot of unsubstantiated criticisms vs Canon long glass. IMHO.....Nikon Rocks!

I owned both 500 f/4 lenses simultaneously for two years and even shot them side by side on the same subject at the same time. The 12 year old Canon is slightly better than the much newer Nikon 500 VR2 beyond about 100 feet and substantially better beyond 150 feet and they are MUCH better with Canon TCs than Nikon lenses are with Nikon TCs especially 2x converters. This is primarily based on the 500VR but I have testing experience with all lenses on both sides. I have repeated this a number of times with other Canon and Nikon super teles when doing lens calibration and shooting ISO resolution targets. The only Nikon super tele that is on par in all regimes with the older Canon super teles is the 400/2.8 but the Canon is better with Canon's 2x than the Nikon is with either the 1.7x or the latest 2x.

I have tested all the combos. I have a 300/2.8, and a 500/4 and the 1.4, 1.7 and the TC20-III. (Shoot D3) The new Nikon 2x is dramatically better than the previous version-so anyone who doesn't have the newest 2x can't make a comparison. The 1.7x and 2.0x work great with my 300-I can't tell any degradation of quality. But the 500/4 is a different story. To me there is noticeable loss of detail with the 1.7 or 2 versus the 1.4 combo. I wouldn't use just the image above-which is great by the way-but "what would it have been with the 1.4" is the real question. I've spent a bit of time in my backyard with setups that can recreate the same image with the same bird over and over. Harder to test these in the wild, so if you want to test yourself, I'd get a controlled situation, even if your ultimate goal is to shoot in the wild.

My experience with the TC 20E III is that it's great with the 2.8 lenses such as the 400, the 300 as well as the 200/2, not so much with f4 lenses.

Giulio

Yup I agree. I would classify it as unusable with the f/4 lenses but different people have different standards. For web sized reproduction you could put a coke bottle in there for an element and it would be OK (exaggeration of course )

The new D4 is "allegedly" suppose to work better with converters. Will be interesting to see if they really did something to tweak this or not.

I've had pretty good results with the D3 and 1.7 on my 600vr, not good results with the same combo on the D300s. The new x2 is very good on my 70-200 vr II but it is a 2.8 lense so I kinda expected it to work well.

George, interesting comment about the D4 working better with TC's...I wonder why that would be, unless it's just that being able to focus at f8 means the use of TC's are more feasible?

I agree entirely about FX being much more tolerant that DX....one reason I've got a D4 on order and am considering going exclusively with FX in the future.

Hey Gary!

Yeah, wondering myself and maybe the F8 thingie is key? Looking forward to finding out though! I plan on ordering a D4 myself but want to wait to see the answers to the above and the AF speed, etc. It sure looks like a winner and since I skipped the D3s will be a nice upgrade for me. I really want to see the D400 too for my bird stuff.

The digital picture allows you to compare the Canon and Nikon 500's with the latest 2.0x converters this is at f11, mouse over for the Nikon test:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=117&Camera=453&Sample=0&FLI=4&API=4&LensComp=653&CameraComp=614&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=3&APIComp=4

Wow that is pretty cool Chris, first time seeing this. Tried the 600's of both and what a difference from the 500.

I am sorry but I have to say that I do not put much value in what "the-digital-picture" has to show regarding lens comparisons......with the exception of generalizations of course.

Just one example here: Take a look at how the bare Nikon 300 2.8 compares to the same lens with only a TC 14 on. In reality they are virtually identical. But that is not what the-digital-picture shows.

In reality, I think one should take into consideration what the final images would be used for and how they would be viewed, rather than pixel-peeping, in order to determine if a lens is good for the jobs in question.

Well, pixel peeping is one thing, the Nikon 500 plus 2.0x test crop on the digital picture is another, the image is clearly mush and this seems to accord with what everyone with direct experience of the combo I've read on here reports.

I think the 100% crop test of those patterns is quite severe and it's only when it becomes very mushy that it becomes unusable with a real world image and appropriate sharpening. Slightly blurred results while not as sharp as the best lenses are likely very usable, it's just that a different lens may be a touch sharper. Basically they are a guide to what to expect and can help answer questions like the the one from the OP.

I suspect the thing with the long glass in Canon vs Nikon, could be down to the fact that Canon uses full aperture fluorite elements while Nikon does not. Fluorite is generally regarded as the ultimate in lens materials for refracting telescopes due to exceptionally low dispersion characteristics.

I also tend to take these lens test results with a big grain of salt, so to speak. The problem is that there are so many variables, like the fact that Nikon bodies tend to use strong AA filters and raw images don't appear as sharp as Canon's (or at least Nikon's firmware doesn't sharpen as aggressively as Canon's). And what about sample-to-sample variation? There are too many variables to come to a CONCLUSION about the results presented, though they may certainly be an indicator -- I can't disagree that the Nikon 2xTC's (both MkII and MkIII) aren't very impressive in my real-world experience.

Flourite crystal is very effective at controlling CA, but you don't have to use flourite. Takahashi, a Japanese manufacturer of world-class telescopes uses flourite, but Astro-physics, another famous world-class telescope manufacturer use combinations of ED glass -- both are premium brands whose scopes are are considered essentially colour-free even at extremely high magnifications. It all comes down to the design and combination of optics.

I'd certainly agree the tests are an indicator, you can readily rule out things like AA filters and the rest by looking at the images from the bare 500mm which look quite good. But I think if you get an image as mushy as the image from the nikon 500 + 2x then it's not down to AA filters or any other variables.

Regarding fluorite no you don't have to use fluorite, generally ED glasses are selected to keep costs down compared to fluorite. If you look at an optical glass chart:

http://www.edmundoptics.com/technical-support/optics/optical-glass/?&pagenum=2

You'll see CaF2 (Fluorite) is out by itself with very low dispersion. I was looking through a book I have on telescope optics and it claimed fluorite was able to produce an image of a point source half the size of ED glasses when used in an achromatic doublet. The ED glasses may produce very good images but can't help wondering if they fall apart a bit when magnified by the convertor.