Home

Please support mflenses.com if you need any graphic related work order it from us, click on above banner to order!
SearchSearch MemberlistMemberlist RegisterRegister ProfileProfile Log in to check your private messagesLog in to check your private messages Log inLog in

Tamron Adaptall 300/2.8 with teleconverters - Pictures added
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
View previous topic :: View next topic  


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 10:10 am    Post subject: Tamron Adaptall 300/2.8 with teleconverters - Pictures added Reply with quote
Today it has been pouring since the early morning, so I am stuck at home. Poilu's thread inspired me to experiment with teleconverters. As the day was so dull, I took my Tamron Adaptall II 300/2.8 SP and used it wide open. The following shots have not been sharpened at all. Sorry for the uninteresting subjects.

Here are two shots with the lens without any teleconverter:



100% crop of preceding picture:




100% crop of preceding picture:


Now, two shots with the Pentax 1.7x AF Adapter (turns the Tamron into an autofocus 510mm F/4.5 lens):



100% crop of preceding picture:




100% crop of preceding picture:


Now, two shots with the Vivitar 2x Macro Focusing Teleconverter (turns the Tamron into a macro 600mm F/5.6 lens):



100% crop of preceding picture:




100% crop of preceding picture:


Then, two shots with the Kenko 3x Teleplus Pro 300 (turns the Tamron into a big 900mm F/8 lens):



100% crop of preceding picture:




100% crop of preceding picture:


Of course the pictures with the 3x converter are fuzzy, but they have been taken handheld at 1/100sec., thanks to the image stabilization of the Pentax. And for web sized illustrations, the quality is not so bad.

Cheers!

Abbazz

Last edited by Abbazz on Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:56 pm; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:15 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
The first converter seems excellent, the second one so-and-so, the third one... hmm...


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:37 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
The first converter seems excellent, the second one so-and-so, the third one... hmm...


That's usual with teleconverters: the biger the magnification factor, the worse the result. But it's usually better to use a teleconverter than simply upsample an image to get the same magnification factor.

Cheers!

Abbazz


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
With a decent lens they Can be a worthwhile compromise.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 12:14 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I like the concept Pentax 1.7x AF Adapter who transform manual lenses in AF Very Happy
The result are very nice and it's evident the tamron 300 2.8 is a keeper.
Teleconverters are a helpful solution but have also disadvantages.
Today one other solution could be to have a bag with one 5D, one 400D and one oly to have choice between x1 x1.6 & x2 Smile


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:32 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
With MF lenses costing so little, I personally can not see the point in using teleconverters at all.
A Jupiter-37 costs only around 20 Euros sometimes less.
A x2 teleconverter probably costs more and when you add it to even the best of your 50mm or 85mm lenses, it will always give worse results than the Jupiter-37.
And this is valid for practically all focal lenghts I can think of.
And even the space taken in bag is about the same.
Only possible little advantage, to add a TC to a very long tele (like 200mm) to make it longer and leave home a big lens - but usually long teles are dark and adding a TC makes their use awkward.
So all in all... no, I'm not going to join the TC wave.

-


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 3:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
I often carry one 'just in case'. It can be handily used getting a shot that would otherwise have been out of reach and if the lens and TC are good ones there's only a slight penalty to be paid in IQ. In my OM kit I had (still have) a Komura 95 2x TC which was perfectly ok if I wasn't looking for super enlargements but now I prefer to use the SP TC where possible.
It's all horses for courses.


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 4:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
Abbazz wrote:
Tamron Adaptall II 300/2.8 SP and used it wide open

For wide open F2.8 it is very good lens Shocked


PostPosted: Sat Feb 16, 2008 5:16 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
That Tamron seems a very fine lens. Extenders behaving as one would expect - increasing deterioration with additional magnification.


patrickh


PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 12:14 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Orio wrote:
Only possible little advantage, to add a TC to a very long tele (like 200mm) to make it longer and leave home a big lens - but usually long teles are dark and adding a TC makes their use awkward.


I agree 100% with you Orio. Until recently, I had never seen the point of using teleconverters. Then my 9 years old son literally fell in love with the moon and asked me to give him poster sized pictures of the moon. As I couldn't find any in the poorly stocked bookstores of Bandar Seri Begawan, I decided to give a try to shooting it myself. My longest lenses at the time were a 500/4.5 Takumar and a 200-500/5.6 Tamron Adaptall. The size of the moon on the image plane is roughly 1mm per 100mm of focal length, which means that the moon appears as a 5mm disc when pictured with a 500mm lens. Not enough for poster sized prints. Long telephoto lenses are rather expensive and I have no other use for them than portraiting the moon, so I was not willing to invest big money.

So I bought a Pentax 1.7x converter, as it has a good reputation and can be used to add autofocus to a manual lens -- yeah, I know this is Manual Focus Lenses Forum, but autofocus can be useful sometimes, especially with longer focal lengths (the Tamron Adaptall II 300/2.8 SP makes a real neat 510/4.5 autofocus lens). The results were not bad at all, and the moon was a bit bigger on the picture. So I bought a 2x and then a 3x teleconverter. With a good lens stopped down two stops, even the 3x can produce fine images. Of course, two stops down with an f/5.6 lens means I am shooting at f/11, or an effective aperture of f/32 with a 3x converter, which is definitely not usable. Except for the moon on a tripod. And with the 3x, the moon appears almost full frame on the pictures taken with my K10d.

I am just hoping for a clear full moon night... Needless to say, I have now found a nice poster of the moon for my son. It is much bigger than the maximum paper size handled by my printer and it has much better resolution than anything I could shoot with my amateur lenses. But it's a lot of fun shooting the moon.

I have also found another use for teleconverters, that's for close-up and macro photography. By increasing the magnification, teleconverters provide a bigger image of small objects. The optical defects are less visible on macro shots because of the magnification, so the quality is really good. A Helios 40 with a 2x converter is the ultimate close up lens for dreamy effects!

Cheers!

Abbazz


PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 10:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
I was not very satisfied with the results I obtained yesterday with he converters. The pictures were much less sharp that my moon shots. I thought that the dull weather, combined with handheld shooting at low speed (1/100sec. for a 900mm lens) might have worsened the results. To be sure, I set up my camera on a sturdy Leitz tripod and took some pictures of a hibiscus flower about 10 meters away. I used the same Tamron Adaptall II 300/2.8 SP as for yesterday's photos. All pictures are shown here unsharpened.

First, the lens with a Pentax 2X-S Rear Converter. Wide open at F/2.8 (600mm/5.6 equ.):



100% crop of above picture:


At F/5.6 (600mm/11 equ.):


100% crop of above picture:


Then, I used the lens with a Kenko 3X Teleplus Pro 300 converter. Wide open at F/2.8 (900mm/8 equ.):



100% crop of above picture:


At F/5.6 (900mm/16 equ.):



100% crop of above picture:


The results are certainly much better than what I got yesterday. These new pictures confirm that to get nice pictures with a teleconverter, one has to use a good lens, a quality converter and a stable tripod. On a fast 300mm telephoto lens, an 1.4x or 1.7x converter is usable handheld, a 2x is usable handheld only if the light is good and a 3x is strictly tripod only.

Cheers!

Abbazz


PostPosted: Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
impressive results!
The hibiscus is a difficult subject to focus, the pentax and the 300mm do great job (and you also Smile)
On web size, all 4 samples look great and only 100% crop show what's going on.
Nice test, it show it doesn't cost to much to keep a converter in a bag and it could be useful.


PostPosted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 2:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
poilu wrote:
impressive results!
The hibiscus is a difficult subject to focus, the pentax and the 300mm do great job (and you also Smile)


Thanks Poilu.

poilu wrote:
Nice test, it show it doesn't cost to much to keep a converter in a bag and it could be useful.


I won't carry the 300/2.8 lens and the heavy tripod in my bag "just in case," but the Pentax 1.7x AF Adapter with the Voigländer 125/2.5 lens makes a great travel combo.

Cheers!

Abbazz
Post new topic   Reply to topic
Home   Manual Focus Lenses
Page 1 of 1