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Originally Posted by Starkler
Something to keep in mind with eyepieces is that whilst objective comparison testing is very useful, sometimes subjective considerations overide when it comes to personal choice.
eg. I like the eye relief and comfort of a pentax, and choose it for this reason, trading off some field and a little softness at the edge for it.
Whilst reviews are very helpful, the correct choice for the individual can only be made by looking through them.
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Geoff,
What you say is very true and something someone considering the purchase of an eyepiece in this class needs to keep foremost in their thoughts.
I recently recommended to Rod Berry (Rodstar) that the eyepieces that would best suit his needs and his budget were the 13mm Nagler T6 and the 22mm TV Panoptic. Rod spent some time "clearly" specifying to me on the phone what he expected of the eyepiece and in this case the 13mm Nagler was a better choice than the 14mm Pentax XW.
Whilst the Nagler barely got the nod on an overall basis in the review IMO, the 14mm Pentax XW is superior in some respects, it depends on how important to your observing needs those respects are. The Pentax certainly has superior on axis performance, not by a lot but its better. The EOF performance in the outer 20% of the FOV is behind the Nagler and this is quite noticeable when directly alternating the eyepieces, however when using the Pentax in isolation the field curvature is not so noticeable over long periods and I certainly have no issues using the eyepiece to the field stop on extended objects.
Like you the important issue to me is comfort and eye-relief as well as on axis performance. Consequently, I would not swap the 14mm Pentax XW for the Nagler as the Pentax better suits my needs despite its one minor shortcoming. In addition the 14mm Pentax barlows superbly in the 2.5X TV powermate to give an excellent high power combo with an effective focal length of 5.6mm. Another thing I like about the Pentax eyepieces is their cool neutral colour reproduction.
In addition, as we mention in the review the shorter focal length Pentax XW's namely the 5mm,7mm and 10mm which I have used exhibit no field curvature whatsoever and provide a superb flat field view across the entire FOV and IMO are superior performers to the Nagler T6's in the shorter focal lengths. We are hoping to conduct another premium widefield review in the 7mm focal length range in the near future and in this case I am pretty confident the result will be reversed. We will also include my 7mm UO HD ortho as a planetary performance benchmark. We just need to talk Don and Mike Smith into loaning us the 7mm Nagler T6
It would also be nice to be able to include the Meade Series 4000 6.7mm UWA but I have no idea where we could get 1 of those to include.
CS-John B