You may be right! in fact I have been watching a few on eBay already! I presume the macro shots on your Flickr profile were taken using the aforementioned setup? They are impressive, and certainly inspire me to have a go too.

Happy Snapping

Paul

OK thanks for your input Peter, now that I am aware of the limitations of the setup I can start to use them accordingly. TTFN!

Took me a while...

Hi again, after playing for a while, I can confirm that stop down metering is working with my Tokina 28-105mm lens, which is fine, and I've managed to take a few interesting shots.

Shame I cant really use my DA L lenses with this, since they lack the aperture ring. The AT-23 version of these tubes would be great to play with, but I am satisfied to play with these AT-22 tubes for now.

Thanks for your help

Thanks for your excellent reply Mark, I now see that using a lens without an aperture ring is going to pose problems.

I'm going to have a play with the kit again this evening, and see if I can learn more, and then report back.

Thanks chaps, this was useful. I dont have any contacts at all on my tubes (Vivitar AT-22).

I feel my problem is that I need

1) Electrical contact through the tube for the 7th contact as shown in the link (done)
2) I also need the 3rd body contact depressed, so that the camera is happy to issue aperture commands to the lens via the tube aperture levers. The Jessops tube referred to here have a ball contact to do this, but the vivtar tubes have none.

It's point 2) where these tubes seem to be failing, so what do I need, a thin ring with a nobble in the right place to depress the 3rd contact, that fits between tube and camera body?

Thanks for your quick reply Mark.

Your image is very useful, I have done something very similar, but have extended my emery work down a little further, to where the lug (at 3'o clock position) starts.

Despite this, I cant get the thing to work as expected.

So, just to check I'm not being dense, here is my sitation:

Pentax K-r, DA L 18-55mm Kit lens, Vivitar AT-22 extension tube set

When the extension tube is connected, the aperture of the lens remains fully open at all times, either when doing optical preview with the Green button, or when taking a photo. The aperture indicator reads F -.-

Removing the black layer as you have done would allow electrical contact with all camera body contacts (it seems this is important as the 1st contact appears to require contact).
However, this does not work for the 5th contact (working clockwise from 6'o clock position on the body). This 5th contact is recessed, and requires a convex contact from the lens to tell the camera that aperture settings may be controlled automatically. As you know, while most lenses will have such a contact, the extension tubes have not, and I feel this is the problem.

This idea is supported by the fact that I see the exact same behaviour if I attach a lens with an aperture ring set to anything other than 'A', (this retracts the lens contact from the 5th position). This suggests to me that when the tubes are attached, the 'A' contact on the body is not engaged. And consequently I have no aperture control.

So am I expecting to much here? Do you have control of your aperture with your setup? or do you make do with full open aperture?

Apologies for long post

Thanks

Hey Guys,

Been removing paint from my extension tubes in order to fix this problem, but even after removing paint, I still have the problem.

The pictures above are no longer available, could anyone re-upload the pictures to show where paint must be removed from?

Thanks

Hey guys, having the same problem with my K-r and a set of Vivitar AT-22 extension tubes.

Saw this thread and a few others suggesting removing the black coating around the area which contacts with the electrical contacts on the camera body. However, the problem remains.

Could anyone post a picture of their tubes showing the places where the black coating has been removed?

THanks

Paul

Hi mate,

Would you accept an offer of 300 + delivery?

Thanks

cant receive PMs so email at aftonandpaul (at) gmail dot com

Hi Mate, I'm interested in this, is it still available?