Extension Tubes for D7200?

I posted this to the D810 forum, but I"m not sure it got there - the board seemed a bit confused as to whether I was real or not...

In an earlier topic on Kenko tubes, I stated that neither my D810, nor my D7200 will couple the autofocus properly with any lens I've tried. My elderly D300 works perfectly, as did my even MORE elderly D2X with EVERY lens I tried......

Which got me to wondering who DOES make an extension tube set that will work properly with the "current" generation of Nikon bodies and lenses.......

SO, I just sent an email enquiry to the following companies as their addresses were found on the Internet: Xit, Neewer, Kenko, Vello

I shoot Nikon. I have a D810 and a D7200. I'll be using these tubes on EITHER body, and with a variety of lenses: Nikon 70-200 VR ED and a Nikon 105/f2.8 VR. WILL YOUR EXTENSION TUBE SET ABSOLUTELY, UNEQUIVOCALLY couple the autofocus to the D810 and the D7200 using these lenses? And by couple I mean if the lighting is adequate and the distance is within the range of the autofocus, that the camera will focus, lock and MAINTAIN focus lock on the stationary subject?

I ask because I have seen entries on the Internet that people with "modern" Nikon cameras such as the D810, and now the D7200, are finding that supposedly "fully coupled autofocus extension tubes" will NOT achieve a focus lock with these bodies.

Again, I'm presuming that the metering will work accurately, stopping down the lens as necessary. My concern is specifically the ability of your equipment to achieve accurate focus lock in autofocus mode with the above bodies and lenses.

regards,

I'm making a possibly dangerous assumption - that ALL of these companies do quality control to assure that their products work across the entire line of the equipment for which they're stated to work...

If anyone has a recommendation for other (hopefully reputable, which the ones I emailed may or may not be) companies, let me know and I'll send them an email too.

When i ask Sigma a question they didnt want to answer i never got a reply,be interesting to see if you get any.

Well, I haven't asked Sigma in this case since don't appear to have extension tubes, but I had that same experience with them in the past. Their equipment isn't bad in most cases, but their corporate attitude is about as horse<bleep> as Adobe's.

Believe it or not, TODAY I got a PHONE CALL from Vello. The manager asked some questions, and decided he would go back to the people doing the development and QA and have THEM ACTUALLY TEST with current bodies (at a minimum the 810 and 7200) with various lenses to determine whether or not THEIR extension tubes couple. I'm awaiting their results. Haven't heard from anyone else - certainly not from Kenko. Again!

As in the link i posted if your tubes only have 7 pins they look to have been superseded by the latest with 8.

I looked at the link to flickr, but there's nothing about extension tubes, just a bunch of pictures........

As for being superseded, I was bored, so this time I CALLED Kenko, and when I got the voicemail instead of a human in technical support punched out and had the operator find the (apparently) one technical support person. Got him and he went OUT TO THE WAREHOUSE, grabbed a BRAND NEW BOX of Kenko DG extension tubes, brought it back, opened it, and said "YUP, THEY HAVE SEVEN CONTACT PINS." They don't have tubes with eight. SO, he's going to contact his "technical" person or tester or whoever, who will (in theory) grab one of the MANY bodies he told me they have (hopefully a D7200), strap on a lens and tube, and give it a try. I'm supposed to hear back next week...

I got an email reply from Neewer, and apparently me email to them was too subtle (see the original entry in this topic), as they were asking for the sales receipt... I sent a reply that will HOPEFULLY clear up their confusion. I also got another call from Vello. They'll be doing some testing next week and will get back to me. Their tubes APPEAR to have eight electrical contacts, and the person with whom I spoke thinks it MAY be a firmware issue - they may need to update the firmware in the tubes since they were made PRIOR to the D800, D810, D7200 era...

Hopefully, I'll have an answer next week that says they're NOT having a problem and it's me and all my equipment - in which case I'll try a different set of extension tubes. OR there IS a problem and the manufacturer will hopefully do something.

Dont know what happened to the link but there are tubes on ebay with eight connection pins,some are only plastic though with metal mounts.

Meike Metal Auto Focus AF Macro Extension Tube Set for Nikon Camera | eBay

One of the things I noticed once I started looking at extension tubes is there do appear to be a lot of different "brands" that look like the same tubes. Someone referenced the release button/knob, and I noticed that the "Meike Metal Auto Focus AF Macro Extension Tube Set" looks very much like the "Xit XTETN Auto Focus Macro Extension Tube" set, very similar to the "Vello Auto Extension Tubes" and the same as the Vivitar 3-Set Extension Tubes".

I'm guessing a whole bunch of companies that are selling the less expensive tubes buy them from some manufacturer. Maybe they do their own firmware, or whatever. But they sure LOOK the same to me. And as near as I can tell, ALL the less expensive tubes are plastic.

I received a voicemail from Vello today. They did some testing and found that their extension tubes work fine with "older" equipment, not so much with current equipment. They got hunting with the current Nikon bodies (I'm not sure which bodies they tested), although some lenses appeared to suffer less than others (again, not sure exactly which lenses worked the best as the voicemail didn't list them). They told me they'd be talking to the factory to see about a firmware update, but in the meantime recommended not purchasing their extension tubes as they are unlikely to work properly with the D7200.

I'm not sure if Vello is a unique extension tube, or as I said above, they appear to be similar to tubes marketed under some other names. If so, it looks like several of the brands I've looked at may be the same as the Vello extension tubes and may exhibit the same behavior.

Thanks for the follow up Gracie!

Week TWO. Still no word from Kenko... Perhaps not quite as driven to test as I was led to believe they were.

Week - a whole bunch.......

Finally, after three phone calls to Kenko, and being told THREE TIMES that someone would test and get back to me, I talked to yet ANOTHER person today. He went and checked with the head of "service", and informed me that - "As far as we know, all the current extension tubes in our supply chain FULLY COUPLE with the currently available Nikon bodies." This would SEEM to me, to mean that they'd work with a D810 and/or a D7200 and any of that generation or older, and the autofocus would work...

UNFORTUNATELY, the next part was: "There's no upgrade, no firmware fix, no nothing if they don't. You'd just have to buy another set once they're upgraded to work with the new body." ... Oh...

Which is somewhat concerning since the D500 recently dropped and since it uses a new autofocus system does this mean the CURRENT "supply chain" of Kenko extension tubes may as well be $40 Opteka tubes that don't autocouple on the most CURRENT D5, D500, etc bodies? If so, the short answer is "You're screwed, 'cause the factory isn't going to do what Sigma is doing with firmware upgrades on their lenses so they work with the current Nikon bodies...

If you're shooting completely static subjects and don't care about or want the autofocus to work (no focus stacking, no chasing moving subjects that are up close, etc), you should be fine. Otherwise, it's looking like it may be time to investigate other sources of extension tubes. Anybody got a brand of tubes that they can says ABSOLUTELY autocouple the autofocus on their Nikon D500 and/or D5?

It's been a while since an update, but here's where things are......... After conversations with technical support this spring, and assurances they would verify my problem with autofocusing on the D810 with the Kenko DG tubes, they FINALLY informed me (a few months ago) that "the microcode has been updated and the tubes will now work PERFECTLY with all of Nikon's cameras... You'll have to buy a new set of tubes for them to work, but they WILL WORK."

SO, at the end of June, I ordered yet ANOTHER set of the tubes. Got 'em. Absolutely expected them to work perfectly with my regular close-up lenses - Nikon 70-200 f2.8 AFS ED G <blah blah>.... NOPE. Still do EXACTLY the same thing. Try to focus, then sit there and jitter back and forth, jerking the focus point across a very small range. Tried several lenses, happens with all of 'em........ Happens on the D7200. Happens on the D810.

SO, I pulled out my cell phone, and made a video showing the focus display while it jittered back and forth. Then I stuck the cell phone camera to the eyepiece and videos what it looks like through the lens. Took picture(s) of what my setup was, what I was photographing, and so on.

Then I called Kenko AGAIN, got technical support, and told yet ANOTHER person what it was doing. AND sent the video and pictures. Got an email telling me it was EXACTLY what they needed to see what was going on. Then I got another email telling me they'd submitted everything to Kenko Japan and were waiting for a response. Then a bit later (7/19/16) I got a response telling me they were still waiting...

They're advertised everywhere as FULLY COUPLED, and WILL autofocus... Not on ANY of my equipment except my elderly D300, on which THEY WORK PERFECTLY......

Great stuff here, Gracie. Many thanks for the original post, and for continuing to follow through. Members like you make this forum a great resource.

I just got a response from Kenko USA letting me know they're still heckling 'Japan' for some kind of resolution...

The other day I was chasing butterflies and once again it was made very clear how difficult it is without food, fast autofocus. They were on tall flowers in a ditch so I HAD to be several feet away. Put the Sigma 150-600 with a 36mm extension tube on the D7200 and was able to reduce the minimum focus to about 5 feet. Which worked great for doing closeups on butterflies on flowers and even bees.

UNFORTUNATELY, having to manage both the zoom ring AND the focus ring because it won't autofocus is a HUGE pain in the neck when you're chasing very active subjects that are flitting from flower to flower and moving constantly... My failure rate was extremely high.

Hopefully, they, Kenko, will come up with some resolution.........

HAS ANYONE found a set of fully-coupled extension tubes that will actually PROPERLY autofocus a Nikon D7200 with any normal Nikon zoom? Or even a fixed focal length?