Faulty teleconverter? Aperture showing lower than possible

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Whitefall

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Hi there,

I’ve just bought a used Olympus MC-14 teleconverter and a used Olympus 300mm f/4 pro lens from a reputable UK camera shop for my E-M1X. I’ve got an intermittent problem and I’m not sure if it’s the lens, the teleconverter, or a bug with the camera. Please can you help me figure out the most likely culprit so that I can troubleshoot or return it? Lens and camera firmware are up to date.

When the teleconverter is on, the lens should be limited to f/5.6. Most of the time this works correctly. Intermittently it’s like the camera doesn’t recognise that the teleconverter is there and allows me to dial the aperture down lower than 5.6. It lets me select the full normal range for the lens as if the teleconverter wasn’t there, 4.0, 5.0, etc. It’ll let me take photos while the camera thinks the aperture is 4.0 and the EXIF data shows 4.0. Even after taking the photo, the camera will still think f/4.0 is selected.

Edit: after further testing it seems like the issue occurs occasionally when the camera sleeps and is then woken. The most reliable way to fix it is to unattach and re-attach the lens, just power cycling it doesn’t seem to fix it. I’m going to disable sleep on the camera and see if this fixes the issue, if so, I can live with just having sleep disabled.

What do people think is the most likely cause?
 
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Only thing that’s comes to mind is the contacts. Make doubly sure you clean them all. Camera to converter and converter to lens.
 
I have been trying to find my paperwork for the MC14 repair I had done.

It was intermittently losing contact and caused issues with the AF.

IIRC they changed the TC to body end plate but would need to find the report page that came back when it was returned.

PS I think it cost about £90
 
The camera does not allow you access to the full range of native lens apertures when the TC fault occurs; that is simply not possible.

The only thing the fault is doing is causing the camera to change what it reports as being the effective aperture. That's really not a big deal; e.g. a lot of macro lenses do not report their effective aperture when working at maximum magnification. I'm not sure I would worry about it unless it is causing some other issue as well.
 
I don’t think that’s a problem at all , personally I can’t recall the last time I stopped my 300+tc combo down .. I always shoot wide open and it’s more than sharp enough . The best way to check if it’s just a camera reporting glitch or actually happening is to download your photos and check exif data on screen
 
None of my teleconverters are taken into account in the aperture displayed on the camera. This has never proved an issue as the camera does it's TTL metering with the TC in place so just assumes the lighting is less.
 
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