A person with way too many hobbies, but I still continue to learn new things.
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Yes you are correct on the mount, although of course the teleconverter I have isn’t all that old. Thirteen years is still quite a long time for a mount to be available and not have a wide selection of aftermarket and used components available though, none of my equipment (except the body) is that old so I would think OP should have similar items they could buy?
Yeah but from what I read, the type without glass is also cheap because of the inherent problems problems with it, like typically cutting off the corners due to the edge of your lens being visible in the view.
I would also mention that there are really cheap teleconverters you can find on amazon and such for around $20 US (the type that screw onto the end of your lens like a filter), which will be a massive disappointment. These are never actually made for telephoto lens, so like if you try to couple one of these teleconverters with a 200mm telephoto lens, you’ll never actually be able to focus your shot. Just don’t even bother with these, they are a complete waste of money even if they claim to work with a telephoto.
On the other hand, there are teleconverters that mount between your camera and lens, which have their own glass in them. For the price OP quoted, this is most likely the type they found. This is like a second stage of lens, and you’ll find a good one will not only focus perfectly without bringing the edge of your primary lens into the shot, but they also tell the camera about the change to the focus range and any other parameters so that the camera can properly adjust the shot and the EXIF data is correct.
With that said, $548 still seems really extreme? I have a Canon camera and I found a really good quality doubler on ebay (used) for $100 with Japanese glass which looked brand new when I got it. I use it with my 300mm lens to take pictures of the sun and moon, and cannot tell the difference between images with and without the teleconverter because it focuses so cleanly. Since OP mentioned this is also a new camera, maybe it’s just too new and nobody has had a chance to make aftermarket products for it yet, or the used market doesn’t exist yet? My camera is over 10 years old so there’s a ton of cheap items available.
Wow I’m glad I missed out on that… Although there was certainly a period where if you were a seller you literally could not trust paypal not to just freeze (and take) your entire account if you had more than about $2000. I think that’s what started ebay’s whole policy of being a black hole where there was literally no way you could contact them to dispute anything. I’m really not sure if that has gotten any better, but there were entire websites dedicated to discussing how much money paypal had robbed them of with no reason ever given.
Oh thank god, an actual question. I was going crazy trying to figure out what that thumbnail-sized picture was supposed to be! 😃
Honestly anybody can throw together a marketplace or auction site. That part is pretty easy. The problem comes when you start trying to deal with the money. Money attracts the hackers, and your security better be absolutely air-tight. There will always be transactional fees for handling the money which needs to be passed on so that alone means you can’t run the site for free.
After that comes the problem of scale. The bigger your site gets, the more people you need to hire to manage all the complaints. Who decides if it was the customer or the seller that got screwed in a deal? That comes down to a judgement call, meaning you need some good training for your employees. And of course all this also requires fees to be passed along to someone.
Unfortunately if you want a successful marketplace you can’t just rely on the honesty of the buyers and sellers. It takes a constant effort, good customer service, and a way to provide that cheaper than ebay so you can attract more people to the site. Several have tried and failed to do this already, and they had a lot more money than we do.
Haha fair enough!