Thank you all for your kind words. What I've really wanted to do with posting these pics is give an idea of how things appear not only through different apertures, but different sky conditions, dark and light polluted. And how a small aperture can actually have a large aperture over a barrel with respects to wide field viewing. Big aperture is all fine and dandy, but a lot is lost because of the narrow view it has on the sky.
I've got scopes that go from 4" through to 17.5". Which is my favourite? ALL of them are!
Each is a tool with a different set of capabilities, and are exploited as such. In other words, ANY scope is a better scope than none at all. It just takes a little bit of understanding of what one's scope is best at and making the most of that.
Matt, field curvature I can't say I noticed for sure. It could be there for the following two experiences I've had: First time I used this 4" f/5 refractor and 30mm ES 82deg combination, my eyes were well rested and focusing was easy, so any field curvature wasn't noticed. In fact the image was sharp all the way across from edge to edge! But, when I did the sketch of Eta Carina with this same combination, my eyes were already fatigued (sketch was commenced around 10pm, and after a big day of work and driving two hours to the dark site). I did notice the edges were not as sharp, but then at times even the centre of the FOV also crapped itself, but I've come to understand my eyes and know when they've had it for the day. I bit convoluted my reply, but in short I am not convinced that there is much, if any, field curvature with this scope/EP combination. I've had other EPs in this scope. The best until this Explore Scientific was a Meade S5000 34mm SWA. It did show field curvature that was obvious, but just at the very, very edge, but not objectionable which made this scope/EP still very good to use. I just got greedy with wanting a HUGE TFOV,
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the last one is especially awesome 
