Stacking Teleconverters -- Nikon Style

Stacking Teleconverters -- Nikon Style

I've always been a little jealous of the possibility of stacking Teleconverters which Canon shooters seem to be able to do more easily than Nikon photographers. At the same time I've been puzzling over how to get my mind around having a D300 and a D700. Then yesterday on the pier at Padre Island it hit me...Why not think of the D300 as a D700 with a Teleconverter on it? Before you laugh, bear with me. The DX sensor provides a 1.5 "multiplier" (which of course is just a crop of the image resolved by a full frame lens) compared to the D700. The cost is about a stop (give or take)--either in the form of increased noise or lower shutter speed to compensae for the D300's smaller pixels and therefore higher noise at any particular ISO. Much like a 1.4 Teleconverter.

So when the action from the boardwalk was a little far away for my taste with my D700, Nikon 600f/4 & TC 14-E II (effective 1000mm already) I was able to swap my D300 onto the rig to get 1500mm of effective focal length. That brought a lot of the happenings out in the Laguna Madre nicely into view. The attached photo of a Tricolored Heron is uncropped and shows how I was able to effectively use the combonation. Later as the sun set and a Clapper Rail came out I was able to swap back to the D700 (removing the physical teleconverter as well) and shooting at ISO3200 get some reasonable images given how little light there was. So from now on I'm not going to fret about the differences between the two camera bodies and instead just be thankful one has a built-in Teleconverter!--David