Hi Rick,
Plossl and Super Plossl are the same thing - just marketing hype. These are a good optical match with Newtonians. Biggest draw back with this 100 year old design is the eye lens gets smaller and eye relief shorter as focal length shortens. Newer designs make use of more exotic glass types that give a larger eye lens and much longer eye relief in shorter focal lengths. Plossls ain't Plossls though! The orthodox Plossl design is more difficult and expensive to produce than the cheap ones, and the optical quality is hence better too. Even so, if pennies matter, the inexpensive plossls are still very good. The slower the Newtonian, the better. They do very well in slow refractors, SCTs and Maks too.
'Super' (with no plossl following the 'super') are actually Kellner eyepieces. It is an old eyepiece design that shows a lot of aberrations in fast scopes. These are only a step up from Ramsden and Huyghenian, but really are not much chop today. Better than nothing, sure, but really, a
long way down from Plossls.
'Camera Projection' is a dodgy term. It can mean that the eyepiece has an inbuilt M42 thread so a camera adapter can be used with it. These eyepieces are usually Plossls.
'SuperView' is a GSO line that are Erfle eyepieces, typically found in binos, so are better suited to refractors, SCTs and Maks, but binos they are designed for. They can show a lot of astigmatism and some field curvature in Newtonians - yeah, I know, a bit of jargon here, but it just means they are not the best in Newtonians. But for the price, they are really good value wide field eyepieces for Newtonians.
The following Wiki article will explain a many more eyepiece designs. Only problem though is many companies name their eyepieces to sound better than they are (like 'Super'...):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyepiece
The picture below shows what different eyepiece designs look like. The '*' degree figure with each eyepiece design corresponds to the typical Apparent Field Of View of the design.
Great eyepieces unfortunately do cost more. But there are a few gems out there that are modest in price, and great performers too, but not 'perfect'. You do need to look for them.
so, is there an article someone could point me to explaining features / benefits between Plossl, Super Plossl, Camera Projection, Super View etc.? I do understand that generally more $$ equals better, but I also figure that some types may suit my set-up better...
Mark
re eps
