Hi--

I may have been the source of the "street knowledge" about the 14C, since I
have been touting their virtues for some time now.....
BTW, if you haven't seen this (it covers converters, also), you may have
fun with my "SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations (Mostly Nikkors)", version
5a, which includes a listing of all Nikon SLR lenses ever made (with a
subjective evaluation of many of them, a general description of Nikkor
lens performance characteristics by lens-type groups, and comments on
particular lenses when the general descriptions plus the subjective
evaluation numbers are not sufficient to describe performance),
can be found at these sites:

-- Jan-jaap Aue: (nice text format)
http://www.phys.rug.nl/mk/people/aue/nikon/david.html
-- Quang-Tuan Luong: (nice text format)
http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~qtluong/photography/35mm/
nikon-neuman.html
-- Niklas Nikitin: (nice table format)
http://www.cs.hks.se/~nicke/private/photo/lenstest/david.html
-- Bo-Ming Tong: (plain text format)
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/people/bmtong/nikon/c.html
(Appendix C+, number 13 in table of contents)

I have tried the TC14C with many lenses, and with all but one (500mm f8
mirror), the 14C performs better than the 14/14B at the edges and corners
(noticeable at the widest two apertures). It is amazingly good on the
80-200mm f2.8 and 300mm f2.8 AIS from f4 (good as the best primes).
Since the 14C also performed very well with the 400mm f3.5, My guess is
that it would be fine with the 500mm f4. I don't know why Nikon would
advise against it - the only problem is finding one (try Sam Dodge,
who advertised for a couple of months a couple of months ago in Shutterbug
"lenses wanted" section, seaking 300mm f2's that he converts for movie
use, leaving excess 14C's that came with them for the rest of us....;-)
And, I got only one message.......
David Ruether



Would you help me with a technical Nikkor nitpicker, please? Is the TC14C fully compatible w/most/all long MF Nikkors? The folks at Nikon give me a courteous but pat "no" (I couldn't coax the specifics out of them), but street knowledge seems to be to the contrary. I have read that the exotic/expensive 300/2 has uneven illumination problems when paired w/a TC14B - and stopped down - and wonder if the converse is true for the TC14C and other long Nikkors/non 300/2s?
I specifically want to pair the TC14C w/a MF 300/2.8 EDIF and a MF 500/4 'P' EDIF.
I'd appreciate any optical/mechanical compatibility insights you can give me.

Thanks,
Jim Toomey

p.s. Having problems with a new mailer, new server, new computer, well, everything's new except my camera equipment. Hope I'm drawing on your considerable photog exp and not on your patience from multiple identical msgs