teleconverter reliability question

I have been using a 1.7 TC on a 300 f4 lens on my Nikon D70 since shortly after the 1.7 TC came out. It's worked great until the last week.

Now I am having trouble with automatic focus and also with the metering system using the teleconverter. The camera and lens without the teleconverter are fine.

I've been advised by my camera repair guy that teleconverters are troublesome. He said I could send the teleconverter to Nikon in for repair but that his experience is that the coupling issues might, might not get resolved.

Has anybody else encountered this? What are your recommendations? Try to get the teleconverter fixed by Nikon? Buy a new teleconverter?

My camera repair guy says get a 500 lens and forget the teleconverter. I don't know that I want to carry a big lens and I also don't really want to spend thousands of dollars on a lens right now. Any suggestions?

Thanks
Paula Dittrick
Houston

While I shoot Canon, I think the principles are the same. Before sending it in I would clean the contacts of the TC as well as the lens and maybe even the camera with a clean pencil eraser. If you do the camera, you may have to clean the sensor's AA filter afterwards.

Check to see that all the mounting screws are tight. IF they are lsoe a little tightening with a small optical screwdriver will do the trick.

9 times out of 10 these things solve the problem.

What Ed said. Neither of us is inclined to sell you a new 500, so our advice might be a little "slanted," if you get my drift.

Electric contacts are notorious for getting a little grungy in humid climates, especially if it's also a coastal humid climate with salt in the air such as we have around here. As a part of our normal maintenance routine we use a plain old pencil eraser to scrub electric contacts in the lens mounts on both bodies and lenses. All our electronic contact issues have since gone the way of the dodo bird.

Hank and Ed,

Thanks so much to you both. I never would have thought of trying a pencil eraser.

Yes, Hank, my gear got a little grungy while I was out chasing spoonbills in Galveston about 2 weeks ago so now this is beginning to make more sense to me. You have me hope. I'll work on it tonight.

Regards
Paula

Paula, this happens to me often enough that I carry an eraser in my camera bag. If you swap lenses a lot in the field it's a necessity.

The pencil eraser works great on a number of electrical contacts. We learned that from a computer tech when we had a ribbon cable making poor contact in a printer. It also works great on the contacts of computer cards and other devices. Maybe they should have used the eraser on the hydrogen sensor contacts for the fuel tank of the space shuttle.