'decent' extention tubes

Is there anyone that produces good quality extention tubes for Pentax ? I got one set off eb which I would not trust on my lens!

Been looking around too but quality sets seem rare as hens teeth.

Certainly Pentax tubes seem to be very expensive. Are you looking for tubes which are wholly manual or are you looking for some with contacts to enable the auto-metering, and even aperture control. The latter seem to be very expensive. I have a single manual pentax helicoid extension tube which I picked up in a second hand shop which is good quality. I have also seen SRB-Griturn tubes (link) recommended on the forum in the past as well but I have no experience of them myself...

They look the best quality I've seeen Mat... but as you say, very expensive! Will sleep on it!!

Martyn

SRS have told me that Kenko do a set, but they're out of stock at present.

Clifton Cameras - Ditto

Per the link for Griturn - not heard of them but it might be worth a trip down to Dunstable to try them out before purchase. Interesting that the price for the Pentax fit is exactly the same as the Kenko set

Bernard

There is virtually nothing to go wrong with tubes, they are the one thing paying lots of money for makes no sense, after all they are just tubes with mounts each end. I just sold some cheap tubes that cost the buyer less than a tenner (admitedly manual ones), they were of very good quality and made in Japan. As long as you buy genuine Japanese made I fail to see how you can go wrong...paying lots of money for tubes is really silly IMO.

You could do what I did - someone on the forum recommended it. I had an old 2x teleconverter laying around that was very poor quality (loss of contrast and detail was terrible). Simply knocked out the lenses and hey presto, an extension tube. It works fine and I am now vaguely on the lookout for other cheap teleconverters to make a set.

If you look in charity shops etc then I'm sure you can find some.

I had two old jessops a mount converters i took out the elements end they work great as tubes

I agree.

I would add a note regarding tubes with the "through contacts" for aperture control. the body of the lens and camera form the return path for the circuit. Some 'A' extension tubes have anodised bodies/mounts. This breaks the circuit. On my 'A' Tubes - I had to rub off some of the anodisation on the tube mounts to restore the electrical contact.