Investing in a teleconverter: a bad idea?

REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE HERE

I used one all the time with my Zenza Bronica Sq-Ai for exactly the same reason: shooting portraits with the standard 80mm lens.
I also used to add cheap close up filters from Ebay for a tighter crop on the model's face.

According to everyone I should have got horrendous results because of the rubbish quality of the Chinese close up filters plus the addition of the teleconverter. I really couldn't see any problems in my prints, probably my eye isn't trained properly or the problem isn't really that evident in portraits.

I personally couldn't give two hoots about lines for millimetre and the teleconverter was cheaper and lighter than a longer dedicated lens.

If weight and portability are an issue for you, I'd say to go for it.

I read once where someone used a Teleconverter with a Hasselblad and 80mm lens and liked it. If you bought a 150mm lens you would probably want an extension tube with it and maybe a softar filter. The 150mm lenses are pretty sharp for portraiture. Any loss in sharpness with an 80 and a teleconverter may be a good thing for your portraits. It all depends upon the look that you want.

I have a 500 mm lens for my ETRSi and a teleconverter. They take great pix together!

I have 2 of them for my Nikon cameras and they do just as well but at a smaller scale. (I have two for two different indexing modes that my lenses use on different bodies)

PE

Photo Engineer said:

I have a 500 mm lens for my ETRSi and a teleconverter. They take great pix together!

I have 2 of them for my Nikon cameras and they do just as well but at a smaller scale. (I have two for two different indexing modes that my lenses use on different bodies)

PE

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Wow! A 500mm lens with a teleconverter for an ETRsi. What do you take pictures of?

Alan Gales said:

Wow! A 500mm lens with a teleconverter for an ETRsi. What do you take pictures of?

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Maybe stars and planets?

Alan Gales said:

Wow! A 500mm lens with a teleconverter for an ETRsi. What do you take pictures of?

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I have acceptable photographs with a 2X extender on my Hasselblad with the 250mm lens. I just have not had much need for 500mm on the Hasselblad.

The amateur star mappers use P67II's quite a bit, along with the 300EDIF lens. Nobody in that nitpicky of a league is going to opt for a teleconverter.

I thought maybe he was shooting birds or Bigfoot or something.

Alan Gales said:

Wow! A 500mm lens with a teleconverter for an ETRsi. What do you take pictures of?

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Anything I want to!

Holding the entire rig pointed downwards, the end of the lens touches my toes.

PE

If price is the reason you are looking at a teleconverter, forget it. The h 150's are super cheap these days.

AgX said:

Cropping will double those errors too.

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exactly and it also requires an additional optical system,which doesn't help.

AgX said:

Cropping will double those errors too.

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Yes, but I was making the point that instead of buying a 150mm lens to go with the 80mm lens, that until more money was available having a 250mm lens with a 80mm lens and then cropping the 80mm negatives for the range in between makes good sense.