Has anybody tried this combination, or is anyone in the UK willing to try it for me. I am in South Africa and the lens is not available here. EagleEye OpticZooms UK hold open days at Sevenoaks most Saturdays and invite people to bring their cameras to try out their lenses.

I have tried the Raynox 1850, but it was not recommended for cameras with more than 3x zoom and the results were unacceptable.

I tried the EE 5x with the Olympus c-750 which has specifications that are close (but not identical) to the Minolta Z1. It works but to avoid vignetting the camera lens must be at full zoom. Here is an example of a 7 inch bird photographed at about 25ft from the camera:

Dacol, your sample pic looks pretty good. It is sharpand doesn't have chromatic abberation. Here is a picture taken a few days ago with a Cokin 2x tele on the Minolta Z1. It was taken with camera on full optical zoom 10x and the Cokin 2x (which I think worked out to more like 1.5 x). The inset of the RHS of the wheel is without the adapter ie digitally enlarged. I found that digital zoom gives me better images than the adapter! I don't know if the Minolta lens is as good as your Oly C-750's lens. I also looked at http://www.timotk.net/crystalvuetest2.htmand the images with the CrystalVue are also impressive.

Hi Eagleye,

I think that in the case of your photo the teleconverter is, obviously, the guilty part. If you can you should try the Olympus TCON-17 or perhaps the new Raynox DCR-2020 PRO (2.2). Although it seems that there is some vignetting using this teleconverter (Raynox) with Minoltas, I dont know whether the TCON-17 would work with the Minoltas but it is a very good teleconverter (although recently in the uSA ther have been some quality control problems regarding a batch sent to distributors, so be aware).

Note that the photo with using the EE5x was taken using a tripod: at full zoom (SLR equivalent toa 380mm lens) with this converter one gets an effective SLR lens of 1900mm, just too much for handheld photos. In my experience if the teleconverter produces a small amount of vignetting it is better to eliminate it using abit of digital zoom while taking the picture rather than relying only in cropping to cut out the vignetted parts.

Dalcio