The bad news: It's green button metering only - no "A" mode - but aperature stop-down levers do work. I also haven't been super excited with the image quality so far but this may be due operator error (hand held, shake reduction on, high iso settings, hand held (did I mention hand held?), open apertures, etc), and/or to the lens I've been using so far (M 50/2 with oily blades).
The good news: As far as I can tell this IS the Vivitar tc with Ricoh's name on it. Although it has the "ricoh pin", it is of the spring loaded ball variety, and hasn't tried to get stuck on my camera body whatsoever. UPDATE: A member on pentaxforums.com said that his version of this TC DID GET STUCK on his K10D, so, ummmm, be careful, and consider doing ricoh pin removal surgery before using this device on your camera.
Here are some shots of and from the TC. Most of these macros were actually taken with a bit less than 10 or so extra mm of extension tube (just the male and fm ends screwed together) added to the front end of the TC in order to free the aperture lever of the sticky 50mm and allow me to manually stop down the lens, so the magnification is a bit more than the TC would allow by it's self, but I doubt that IQ has changed much from this. After each full frame shot is a 100% crop to show detail, but keep in mind the above reasons for poor image quality. I'm sure this TC can put out better shots under better conditions. I may update this post if I take some better examples, but since I've a Tamron 90mm/2.8 macro on the way this may go on the block (come to think of it I'll have to post some better pictures if I try to sell it cause this post will probably climb pretty high in googles "Ricoh 2x macro focusing teleconverter" ranking (welcome ebayers of the future) ;-) .
Click the thumbnail to see a bigger version in a new window...
