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Old 06-03-2015, 04:45 AM
Renato1 (Renato)
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Join Date: Mar 2014
Location: Frankston South
Posts: 1,279
Quote:
Originally Posted by Solanum View Post
Thanks for this, I was actually going to ask about a focal reducer in a new thread, what are the downsides? Presumably there is less back-focus? Does this also affect the eye-relief? Does focussing become more difficult (the travel on the focus knob is a lot less than I am used to, which makes it a bit more fiddly)?

Everard
I've never had a problem getting any eyepiece to focus with my f/6.3 reducer. That said, I rarely use it.

While it worked fine on open clusters, I always felt that when trying to observe the really faint stuff at a dark sky site, using eyepieces that gave equivalent focal lengths, I could see the really faint galaxies better without it than with an eyepiece and it.

I did think that it would be handy for my more expensive eyepieces to get more use out of them - at the time I had a 14mm ultrawide angle, which acted like 22mm UWA with the focal reducer. Instead I found I just preferred to use my simple 20mm wide angle.

The focal reducer is certainly good for astrophotography.

Regards,
Renato
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