Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Re: Quantaray 2x Teleconverter - Nikon

OK, because I know you all are dying to hear the intimate details of my epic struggle to find a teleconverter for my Nikon D80, here goes. Sadly, I was never able to find the Quantaray teleconverter, despite a ton of hunting on ebay, the B & H Photo Supply website, Ritz Camera all over town, and all the Samy's Camera stores as well.

The good news is, there are a lot of other brands out there: Nikon, Tamron, Sigma, Kenko, and others less well-known. The bad news is that pretty much anything except the really off-brands is more than I was hoping to spend. I could get a brand called "PRO" or a brand called "LENS" (never heard of either one) from ebay for about the same price, but without much of a safety net in terms of guarantee / warranty / return policy. Plus, who knows if it actually really fits and works with my camera/lenses. So I'm a little hesitant to make the leap of e-commerce faith with a product like this. (A little ironic actually, because I sell matted prints and greeting cards on my website, and I'm basically asking my customers to make the same leap of faith I seem to be afraid to make myself)... Thankfully, folks have so far been wiling to take the risk.

So anyway, back to this compelling and highly entertaining story. After calling around and searching websites all day last Thursday, I finally decided to go ahead and take the plunge. I found a 2x converter from Tamron at a relatively decent price, at the Samy's Camera store over near Hollywood. At the counter I took it out of the box and fit it to my camera/lens, and took a couple of quick snaps to test it out. Everything worked, so I busted out the ol' plastic and took 'er home. So now, after a bunch of searching and two (simply amazing, I'm sure...) blog posts, I now effectively have a 400mm lens for ball games, while still being small enough to be allowed into most stadiums.

Now I just need to go to a Dodgers or Angels game to test it out before the Mrs. and I go to Wrigley Field in August.

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1 comment:

Vanessa said...

Nice blog you have here, love the pics on Flickr! I am not so high tech with the camera. However, we got the best point and shoot we could recently because my fiancee went to Yankee Stadium(a lifelong dream) for 2 days and the camera did quite well. I hope you enjoy Wrigley Stadium, can't wait to see pics! And yeah...the graffiti...even the kids do it with chalk(psuedo-graffiti)! Maybe we are priming them to be 'taggers' when we tell them to go out and draw on the sidewalk?! Aha!