For me:
31, 22, 17 and 9 mm Naglers, Ethos, and 7 and 5 mm Pentax XWs. I like the slightly 'better' on-axis performance with the Pentaxes at the shorter focal lengths. The 17 Nagler might be redundant now with the Ethos, but I'll see how things go.
For the last 20 years the mainstay of the collection has been TV Plossls, these replaced a set of UO Ortho I had used for 5 years. Over the years I've added crosswire eyeieces ( for guiding the Olympus OM-1's), various Barlow's and fliters.
Based on the telescopes I had (18", 13", 10" Dobbies, 12" f 5 Newt and a couple of 8" and 10" SCT along the way) found that the Nagler was a good buy. Recently added a Clave and managed to find a full set of the Meade 4000 series Super Plossls and the "ultimate" ones.... an almost complete set of Masuyama modified orthos ( Absolutely fantastic). Now have consolidated the scopes to a 12"Lx200, 6" cometseeker, Genesis and ED80.
Here's the list:
TV Plossl's 4.8, 7.4, 10.5, 15, 21, 26, 32
TV Nagler Type 1, 13mm
Ziess 6mm Monocentric
32mm Clave
12.5 Micro guide
12mm cross wire
Meade 4000 super plossls, full set
Masuyama, full set of 1 1/4", just need the 45mm!
Barlows: x2, x2.5, Klee x2.8, TV x 5 Powermate
Chinese 40mm, 45mm Orthos
The Pretoria is a very underestimated eyepiece, especially for fast Newts.
The Masuyama's have got to be close to the "Holy Grail" of eyepieces. Maybe not as wide a field as the later Naglers etc but for clarity, tightness, crispness and feel; not sure they can be beat. If anyone knows where to find a 45mm Masuyama I'd be VERY interested.
I found my Ziess Mono in a auction sale in South Africa many years ago... a long story.... but I've just been offered us$450 for it!! Too good to sell even at that price!
Weather is pretty typical over here in the UK, but at least I've got Comet Holmes every night!! Working on the spectroscopes and caught up with Maurice Gavin ( great guy!) and joined up with the Guildford Society; they have an 1900's 20" reflector available to members.
I should point out that when I started with a 6" f8 I only had a 25mm Ramsden and a 12.5 MH; they lasted me for a few years before I could really appreciate what "good" eyepieces can do. It was only while doing the SN chart work that I really understood the difference an eyepiece can make to finding/ seeing faint objects, hence the change to TV Plossl's.
The attached list details the Masuyama family...(I wish!)
The photo show the ones I have ( plus the Klee and the Clave)
Last edited by Merlin66; 26-11-2007 at 08:24 PM.
Reason: Add photos
TV Nagler 5mm
TV Nagler 13mm
TV Panoptic 19mm
TV Panoptic 27mm
TV PowerMate 2x
Initially purchased low cost Meade & GSO eyepieces, but have now spent more on my EPs than on my Dob.
It's easy to rationalise about the please of wide/flat views, buying for the long term, and the high resale value of TV EPs .... but I think that a lot of us just get hooked on improving our setup.
An old blast from the past - a Unitron 2" 60mm and a set of 5 Edmund RKE's (showing my age).
More recently Vixen LV10, LV15, LVW22 and NLVW30.
And a couple of others that should remain anonymous.
I'm not interested in optics faster than f/7.
32mm GSO
25mm Series 500 Plossl
15mm Series 500 Plossl
15mm Bintel Wide View
13mm TV Type 6 Nagler
9mm TV Type 6 Nagler
5mm TV Type 6 Nagler
TV 2x Barlow
TV Visual Paracorr (on order)
Hopefully this is it for a while! Would love an Ethos???
After a few months of collecting my new set of eyepieces. Thanks Daniel
(frontier optics) today the last 2 arrived and now they are complete.
The volcano top Ortho's are still the best value for money eyepieces around.
IMO.
Around $90 Aus each. And very sharp and contrasty eyepieces.
No not wide field but hey you sure do pay for that wide field of view
Eyepieces
A thread like this is a good place to learn about eyepieces.
My hope for this thread is for members to ask about various eyepieces owned and used.
Some may like to share there new eyepiece experience in this thread.
My comment above about UO orthosopics still stands as great value for money.
But with most scopes these day's for visual work being F5 Newtonian on a Dobsonian base.
A wide field eyepiece is more to peoples liking.
A little tip is if you where to have only two eyepieces in your kit a wide field eyepiece of say 30mm and a medium power eyepiece say 10mm and a Barlow is all thats needed to enjoy the night sky with your scope. Spend that little extra and get a top quality eyepiece, say from Pentax or Tele Vue or Vixen plus many others. Don't get to wrapped up in buying over a dozen eyepieces, you will end up only using two or three most nights. There many opinions on this and you can spend forever reading the Internet about it, but thats fun also.
I have three sets. The "good ones" are Vixen LVW's - the 8, 13 and 22 and an NLVW 30mm, all roughly the same size (big) and weight (heavy). http://web.me.com/nicholas.loveday/S...epieces.html#3 These are mainly for an f/15 Maksutov.
Eventually I also finally decided to build up a modest set of Vixen LV's - 4, 6, 10, 15 and 25 mm - for two reasons:
- I don't want to reach for the LVW's every time at a public star party or just for friends where they won't know the difference and I'd expect to have to clean the gunk off from peoples eyes afterwards, and
- the LVW's are too heavy for when i am using my smaller and lighter 102mm refractor - I have to rebalance the mount between eyepiece changes and that irritating. The Vixen LV's are smaller, lighter and the refractor balance is insensitive to these.
The third is a set of Edmund RKE's, which i don't use anymore.
