Closer Macro

Not really, if they are good quality. A new set of Kenko PK/AF (not really AF) tubes would have cost you around £90.00

They don't seem to be available new any more, but you may find a s/h set.

I recently spotted a set of K? mount tubes for £50 in a camera shop in Skipton North Yorks, Craven Cameras I think, might be worth a phone call to determine if they still have them and exactly what they are.

I paid £35 for my K mount tubes several years ago from Jacobs (old shop) in Leeds, I've since bought KA mount on ebay and sold my old tubes on. I was lucky enough to aquire the KA mount before the price of KA mount stuff got rather silly, I also got quite a good return on the K mounts

The Top Tip I got from here was probably the best cost-performance solution : An old Vivitar x2 Teleconvertor PK, £5 off Ebay, stripped the (rubbish) glass out, and it makes a 25mm auto tube.

Repeat x3 and you've got a 2:1 solution for a 100mm macro lens. I'm thinking of reverse-mounting the 50/1.7 on the front of my 100mm as a shorter alternative though.... either way, you are putting a huge strain on the lens mount!

28 on to 100 will give you nearly 4:1. However you can mount a 28mm directly reversed onto the body with a kmount to 49mm thread adaptor and that gives about 2:1 (not 1:2 as I mistakenly said in my post) - at least with my smc m 28 2.8

Sorry Tony, you're right.
It all got me a bit confused jumping from one technique to another.

I have been considering doing that with my old Jessops PKA 2x TC - unless these are particularly good? I would naturally remove the glass with my lens spanner rather than bashing it out.

bashing it out would be more fun though.

I've just tried it as a teleconverter and the results were horrible - I get better shots by using the 200mm f4 on its own and cropping the image!

Does the fact that the open part in the TC is tiny make any difference to its usability as a macro tube? It just looks as though it might vignette as the hole would only be about 2cm across. I don't want to pull all the glass out and then find that it doesn't work as a macro tube either...

Edit, glass is out. All the elements were in a metal tube that screwed into the centre of the TC, so I just unscrewed the lot without damaging anything. If anyone needs fuzzy photos of cows (like my test shots before deciding to convert to a macro tube) then I can easily re-instate it!