Pep Grimes
New member
I have a Nikon TC-14E III that seems to work well with 500 mm f5.6 PF on D500. How do the TC-17E II and TC-20E III work with the 500 mm f5.5 PF on the D500, and D850?
TC's with Nikon 500 mm f5.6
- Thread starter Pep Grimes
- Start date
If you would like to post, you'll need to register. Note that if you have a BCG store account, you'll need a new, separate account here (we keep the two sites separate for security purposes).
I tried the TC-17 on my 500mm PF and 200-500mm f/5.6 and wasn't happy with the image quality where I found the same lenses with the TC-14 iii to be pretty good in terms of image quality. I've never been happy with Nikon's 2x teleconverters even on big glass f/2.8 and f/4 lenses and wouldn't expect much out of it on a 500mm f/5.6 lens.
Image quality is definitely in the eye of the beholder so you might be happy with the TC-17 or even TC-20 on your 500mm f/5.6 lens but you can pretty much forget about view finder auto focus performance where either TC mentioned push the wide open aperture of the lens past the f/8 limit of Nikon DSLRs. With the TC-17 II mounted an f/5.6 lens becomes a wide open f/9.5 lens and with the TC-20 mounted it becomes a wide open f/11 lens.
A mirrorless camera or DSLR in Live View mode may focus adequately but through the viewfinder phase detect AF is limited to f/8 or faster glass and then only to the center most AF points. Personally I found the AF performance of my 500mm PF and TC-14 III very poor and that's with a D500, D850 or D5. I found the viewfinder AF simply didn't work at all with the TC-17 mounted and can't imagine AF would work with the TC-20 mounted to an f/5.6 lens.
Last edited:
I used a Nikon TC-20E III on a Nikon 500mm PF with a Nikon Z7 for this pelican photo.
You can only see EXIF info for this image if you are logged in.
The Sony 2xTC produces decent results in good light with a good lens with reasonable proximity.
We were thinking about getting one - which lenses have you used it with? I don't like the Nikon 2X all that much, so I've been hesitant. However, I'd like to try it on my 600 F/4GM.
The FE100-400 does OK with the provisos above Steve.
The 400/2.8 I've had very good results with on static scenes but variable ones with BIF. The shutter has to be at 1/4000s minimum and care taken with the OSS setting. Here's Morten Smedsrud's work with this combo:
Alex Phan posts quite a few shots from the 600/4 and 2xTC. Eg. https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1602662/0