In his classic "All About Telescopes", Sam Brown talks about using a simple lens as a "piggy-back" power booster. The idea is to place a lens over the eyepiece to increase magnification. What is acutally happening, of course, is that you are modifying the eyepiece by adding another element and thus shortening the focal length. I did this some years ago, during my poor student days when I couldn't afford an entire set of eyepieces. It worked well with the simple eyepieces of the day. I have resurrected the idea for binoculars. During my testing of the Apogee 20x80mm binos, I have used them side-by-side with the 15x70mm units for a comparison. While I can't say that one gives superior views to the other, each object having it's own aesthetic, I can say that on the moon and sun the higher magnification gives more detailed views. Tiny sunspots seen in the 20x units are invisible in the 15x unit. Small craters at the edge of detection in the 15x unit are obvious in the 20x. I have several lens pairs that I plan to try at night in both binos. Daytime tests are promising. The only hurdles are finding lenses with the optimum focal length. Magnifications can be boosted about 1.5X before unpleasant abberations are introduced, so this isn't like a full range of eyepiece focal lengths, but it should give the user of fixed-power binos a bit of magnification leeway. It also decreases eye-relief, so shouldn't be used if your binos have short e.r. to begin with. It will also accentuate any mis-collimation present in your binocular. So far I've just held the lenses in place in the eye-guards, but plan to turn some little snap-on cells in the mini-lathe soon. Has anyone else tried this? C. __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Web Hosting - establish your business online http://webhosting.yahoo.com