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

Product Information

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. This teleconverter will not work with the FTZ or FTZII and will not work with any F-mount lenses or cameras. When the TC-20E III is used with slow f/4 aperture lenses, autofocus stops working completely or becomes extremely unreliable. With the exception of the new Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II, zoom lenses also start acting up in daylight with very mixed results. The Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8G VR II works surprisingly well with the TC-20E III and I found the autofocus performance to be good in bright conditions, although the lens also works very well with the TC-14E II and TC-17E II teleconverters. The same cannot be said about the older 70-200mm f/2.8 lens – it is only known to work well with the TC-14E II. The above table chart outlines which lenses perform best at what aperture with the TC-20E III. When photographing sports, wildlife and other fast-action photography, you have to be extremely careful when using the TC-20E III.

Compared to the 70mm test that I showed you a moment ago, the biggest difference at 200mm is that the corners are weaker with both TCs. You can trace that result directly to the bare lens at 200mm, where it has worse midframes and corners than it does at 70mm. Teleconverters tend to exaggerate issues that are already present in a lens, and this is no exception. 3. Nikon Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S at 400mm The TC-20E has so much magnification that, at least on a D3, there is usually some loss of sharpness wide-open. TC-17E increases focal length by 1.7x and lowers maximum aperture by one-and-a-half stops. There has been only one version of this AF-S converter. Teleconverter NIKON Z 9 + NIKKOR Z 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 VR S + Z TC-1.4x @ 560mm, ISO 320, 1/1600, f/8.0 Crop of the image above

Vignetting

In the case above, both teleconverters increase the amount of chromatic aberration. However, it depends on the exact aperture you’re using – at narrow apertures, the 2.0x teleconverter is adding about a full pixel of additional chromatic aberration. Elsewhere, both TCs add about 0.5 pixels. I then added the 1.4x teleconverter, turning the lens into a 98mm lens with a maximum aperture of f/4:

The purpose of teleconverters is to increase the focal length of lenses, in other words to get closer to subjects, and the TC-20E III is the biggest and the longest teleconverter manufactured by Nikon – it doubles the focal length of a lens. While this teleconverter works with any professional Nikon lens that can take teleconverters, it is specifically designed to work with fast prime lenses with an aperture of f/2.8 and larger. The Nikon TC-20E III is targeted at sports, wildlife and other types of telephoto photography where the photographer cannot physically approach subjects. As you can tell, those are pretty small lists. Moreover, I'd strongly suggest that you perform AF Fine Tune if you're going to use a converter: the additional mount involved can add a tolerance change that makes precise focus needing adjustment. 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. Thus the many small regions of localized softness you may see are not caused by the lens, but by the heat shimmer. The lens is accurately recording it.

Lens sharpness has nothing to do with picture sharpness; every lens made in the past 100 years is more than sharp enough to make super-sharp pictures if you know what you're doing. The only limitation to picture sharpness is your skill as a photographer. It's the least talented who spend the most time worrying about lens sharpness and blame crummy pictures on their equipment rather than themselves. Skilled photographers make great images with whatever camera is in their hands; I've made some of my best images of all time with an irreparably broken camera! Most pixels are thrown away before you see them, but camera makers don't want you to know that. TC-20E III: 70-200mm f/2.8G or f/2.8E, 200mm f/2G, 300mm f/2.8G, 400mm f/2.8G or f/2.8E, 500mm f/4G or f/4E, 600mm f/4G or f/4E Some makers, such as Nikon, produce intermediate 1.7x teleconverters. 2) Teleconverters affect the maximum aperture

This is an important point. Lenses and lens mounts are far more complicated than they used to be, so you can't assume any teleconverter will fit any lens. Far from it. In fact, the list of compatible lenses is often quite short. My Nikon system works as well with or without this converter, which means this converter is doing what it should. While these waves are usually too subtle to see with our naked eyes except in extreme cases like desert mirages, ultra-telephoto lenses (and telescopes) magnify this effect and make this very obvious when shooting at long distances. First up, and most obvious, is that the addition of this extra stage into the light path reduces a lens’ maximum aperture. The reason converters are in 1.4x and 2x formats is because you end up with a one stop loss with a 1.4x converter, and two stops for the 2x.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 Nikon stopped offering 5-year lens warranties in 2021 in an effort to save themselves money at our expense. Its front elements poke out, so they are shrouded in rubber. After about ten years, this rubber develops a little bit of a gray haze on it, which wipes right off.