[skies2clear]

I found Joes comments about his Denks interesting, and of course others may have different opinions. For some time I've considered upgrading from the WO BV'er. I have assumed the Denks are better units.

My opinion of the WO unit is it has given me taste of what binoviewing is about, for not too much money. To be really honest and try and put things into perspective for me and my viewing preferences/idiosynchrosies, they have been fun, but not a serious observing tool. They are Ok at lower powers, but when I want high contrast, high magnification and sharp views, I forget about them. I keep reading how great BV'ers are on planets, but with the WO unit, I have to say the performance at high powers is pretty ordinary. I have no trouble merging views, and am using very high quality ancillaries, but they just don't have the resolution at high powers, that mono viewing gives. Planets never really snap in compared with cyclops vision, and the image is noticeably dimmer. The loss of image brightness is a bigger problem though with DSO's.

I find the BV'er is good on the moon though, and gives comfortable views. This is the great advantage with my unit, in that 2 eyed viewing in general has less strain. So, I have been researching into better BV'ers lately, trying to see which ones have higher optical accuracy to satisfy my high power needs.

The supplied 20mm eyepiece pairs do a good job though, but not up to the better premium types. I have a pair of Pentax 14XW's and a pair of Tak LE 7.5's, that are superb in mono viewing, but as I've said, the BV'er holds things back at high powers. I also acquired a Seibert Multimag OCS, which improved things over the WO 1.6X OCA quite noticeably. I don't believe anything is wrong with my WO unit, just isn't up to the optical accuracy I would like.

If I stay around 100X they are fine, but when venturing into 300X or higher territory, it ain't pretty!

So for me, where to from here? I am reluctant to purchase any other afordable BV'er because I feel the improvement will be a waste of time. My shortlist now is Denk II's or the very expensive Baader MkV (I'll be saving for a long time it seems).

Cheers
Nick