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G'day Morton, I have the LVW 13mm, so I'll put my 2 cents in.
IMHO there are not that many 'higher end' brand EP's to choose from in the 13-15mm 65-70 deg FOV range. The TV Panoptic 15 did not appeal to me (a bit dated now), so I tried the Pentax XW 14mm for a short while; the edge field curvature just didn't gel in my Genesis, so I sold it on.
On the other hand the LVW is much more to my liking, so I guess it's really a matter of try and see in your own scope. Edge of field performance is not as good as on-axis - but then tell me an EP where this isn't the norm. I find eye positioning to be just a bit touchy, but not overly bothersome.
LVW quality and construction are top notch, although I am surprised to hear on the adjacent 'Buy & Sell' forum that the white side writing/labelling on a Vixen LVW 5mm appeared to have worn-off; has any one (Miaplacidus?) come across this on other Vixen LVW's? I had assumed that the white writing/labelling would be higly durable, ie. essentially last forever with normal but gentle handling. I've never seen labeling loss on any of my other EP's - although the text/labeling is not 'inscribed' in the LVW.
Indeed, I am very tempted to explore the 5mm LVW to replace my 6mm Radian for planets - I am finding the Radian 6 can ghost quite a lot with the planets. In critical testing when the Genesis is well cooled and seeing is good, my Clave 6mm outperforms the Radian 6mm - the image in the Clave seems a bit brighter, tighter, and really snaps to focus better than the Radian. Subtle planetary detail is more readily evident in the Clave than Radian. I never really thought I would come to notice these things, they are subtle but real when you concentrate at the EP under good seeing conditions.
Miaplacidus, I am very interested to hear of your LVW-5/Radian-5 direct comparison - is this what you found with planets + refractor?
Cheers, Fox
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