Catch in focus, again

Hey, I just got myself a set of manual tubes and put a lens on it. It works fine, but the Catch In focus refuses to work. I have enabled the CIF, set the body to AF-S enabled the aperture ring and AF-S and AF-C are set to focus priority, hence it should focus first then shoot. But never the less the camera shoots anyway the second I press the shutter, as well the usual AF confirm (red square in viewfinder) does not light up nor beep, when subject comes into focus and I'm pressing the AF button. Ouh, and it's a K5 if that matters.

What am I missing?

As well, while trying to figure out I set the body to prohibit the aperture ring on the lens, and it still fired. What is the story with that?

Cheers,
Aleks

What lens are you using Alex? What make are the the tubes? Do they have a shiny metal base where they meet the camera or a black painted one?

Could be a couple of things, but is usually fixable!

hey, I'm using a manual zoom lens, currently looking for a prime, and the tubes are cheap ones off eBay without any contacts or anything, and they are black ones the ones where the midsections can be screwed out, not the ones where there are 3 separate extension tubes. The camera meters fine though.

Cheers,
Aleks

Is the camera body set to AF? Needs to be AF, not MF for CIF to work. That's the only thing that looks obvious, everything else looks fine.

hey, I just tried the lens without the tubes, and all works perfectly. But as I put the tubes, the CIF disappears and I got a suspicion that the camera doesn't simply know that it has a lens. Any ideas? Or should of gotten proper tubes? The CIF would be really appreciated as taking a shot of anything is rather complex.

Cheers,
Aleks

Hi Aleks

You aren't getting a contact between the tube and the camera body. It might seem that you are as the stop down metering appears to be working, but it won't be working accurately.

I'm assuming that the back of the tube is anodized black paint? That or you have a poor contact. You need to remove a small bit of paint to enable the contact. Catch in focus will then work fine and the stop down metering will be more accurate. You are right in assuming that the camera can't detect the lens. Even the fully manual tubes have to make some electrical contact for the camera to be able to use the tubes properly.

2nd post from the bottom shows the area you need to remove or clean.

https://www.pentaxuser.com/forum/topic/help-needed-with-vivitar-auto-extension-t...#comm_273277

I had exactly the same problem with my Vivitar tubes and they work perfectly now.

hey, cheers for the help, got it working, makes life much easier now . I have one follow up question, when I turn on the camera, it asks for a focal length. As I'm using macro tubes, what should I enter, the focal length of the lens or the total length with tubes, or it doesn't matter what I tell it? Anyway, thanks for the help, I would of been stuck with manual focus alone

Cheers,
Aleks

I don't think it really matters, but I always enter the focal length of the lens plus the tubes (or as near as you can get)

great thank you

Cheers,
Aleks

The focal length info is important for the SR to work properly; with tubes I assume that you use a tripod and switch the SR off in which case it actually does not matter what you enter.

The other effect is that the focal length that you entered is reflected in the EXIF data.