|
In my view, in the end it comes back to price a lot.
The LVWs are great - very sharp and quite nice wide field of view and work well in GSO dobs (friend of mine has a 10inch f5). The pentax and ethos may be slightly better but you pay a lot more (not sure of current prices though which are effected by exchange rate - they were around $280 and you might even pick one up 2nd hand on IIS). The main difference between ethos and LVW is dramatically wide field on the ethos which does give a very nice "space walk feel". Mind you the 68 degree field of an LVW is probably pretty close to the max of the eyes field of view. Try some out at a star party to see what you prefer.
Having said that Sky at Night magazine did a review on eyepieces (forget focal length ?8 or 13mm) and decided the LVW was surprisingly the pick of the crop.
I own LVWs and am very happy. I think the 22mm is hard to beat and the 13mm also has an excellent reputation within the LVW range. The 8 is also great and I own one of these too. High power (5mm or less) if I had my time again I'd be inclined towards nagler type 6 but the LVW is still extremely good.
If you are looking for an all in one you might consider the hyperion zoom 8-24, but Im yet to try one. Purists wont like them but Ive read some very good reports. Add in a televue barlow and you would have a very wide magnification range.
Cheers
David
|