I just bought a used 200-500 Tamron on ebay for a very reasonable price, in Nikon mount. Thinking I may need a little more reach for wading birds in our area, I considered a Tamron SP 1.4x extender. Concerned with compatibility, I emailed Tamron, to check compatibility. To my amazement, and surprise, I was told Tamron extenders "were not for use with digital cameras". They referred me to a technical bullitin that said image quality would be extremely degraded, and there would possibly be communication errors. Their SP series are said to be Pro -Level, so i was surprised. I was aware I would loose auto focus, but I am amazed Tamron is letting the extender market slip away. Anyone using an extender with this specific lens? Which extender?
Thanks in advance
Dave
I use a old Tamron 1.5 convertor with my 200-500 occasionally with no compatibility issues. Image is degraded but sometimes usable. On a 7d, by tha way.
It is obvious that you are trying to get the maximum output for the cheapest price.
A lot of us have gone through the same exercise.
In the long run we are all trying to get more out of less. In the long run it doesn't pay, depending on how critical you are of your own work.
When you compare it to examples presented on this forum you want to hide.
You should be able to get some decent images without and with the extender. The images are degraded with the extender because you will lose a stop. Learn to be satisfied with the better output of the lens alone.
Given that you're talking about AF, I'd guess this is the SP 200-500/5.6-6.3 LD IF version, not the older manual focus SP 200-500/5.6 LD IF [31A]. I have the older version, and it's not bad, but it has a lot more CA than I like.
As far as using Tamron AF SP TC's on modern DSLR's goes, I think "what you were told" is totally bogus. I've used a 7-element Tamron SP AF 1.4x TC with great success on a variety of Canon DSLR. It wasn't quite as good as the Kenko Teleplus Pro 300 DG 1.4x TC and Canon EF 1.4x Extender, but it was better than 'just OK'.
