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Hi Mike,
I know you have mentioned that you can't justify the purchase of a 30XW, but here are my thoughts anyway.
You can use all the XW series for eyepiece projection photography, not just purely visual. Under the rubber eye cup there is a 43mm thread. With the help of an adaptor (M43/T-2) you can attach a T ring and then attach your SLR directly to the EP. I was shooting the full moon on Monday night with my XW eyepieces, they work great for this purpose.
In this focal length there simply isn't anything out there that is reasonably priced that performs well in fast scopes. I did a couple of months of research and testing before I bit the bullet and purchased a 30XW and I don't regret the decision. The glass and special coatings are amazing, great contrast, excellent throughput and sharpness, the build quality is better than any EP I have ever seen. 20mm eye relief, twist up eye cups for eye position adjustment are a couple of other features.
I have tried the 28UWAN in my scope, although a nice EP also, the edge performance is not as good as the 30XW, although it's unfair to compare an 82 degree EP against a 70 degree EP. In my scope, I could only use around 70 degrees of field anyway with the 28UWAN, the rest of the field at the edge was not acceptable to me.
I know the 30XW is expensive, but you will have it for life, you will never have to upgrade and you can use it for photo and visual purposes.
I probably sound like a salesman right now, but I have no connection with Pentax at all, I just reckon it's a superb EP, worth every cent IMO. There should be more out there.
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