I'm just wondering what the opinion is on the included eye pieces - are they generally pretty substandard - would they be likely to be used as part of my "collection" or would I for example get much better performance out of another 10mm EP as opposed to the included 10mm EP?
The eyepieces I got with my 6" dob, I didn't like the 10mm- the eye relief was too short and the quality was poor. But I loved the 25mm. With the 10mm, it annoyed me that I would have to wait for the image to come into the middle to get any sort of quality viewing, so was constantly having to work the dob for that sweet spot. I replaced it with a $90 Orion Expanse (recommended by Sirius Optics), in a 15mm which I barlow down to 7.5mm. It has a 66 deg fov, and is quite a good ep, and the quality pretty good edge to edge, so I could enjoy the planets for a longer time.
Ben, have a look at my thread which I posted recently, "The best 5mm ep under $200", in "Beginners Talk". It's full of really useful info (specific for dob viewing).
I don't know a great deal about barlows- I just walked in to Sirius Optics and asked for the best one they had and walked out with a Celestron 2" ED for $175. I figured at the time, getting that right (and not even having any 2" eyepieces at the time, just made good sense to do it right as it would it would be the support system for all of my eyepieces. There's probably better one's out there (can't help you there, but that was the one that came recommended).
