My personal favorite eyepieces are made by Russel optics.  He makes 2" eyepieces that perform as well as those selling for several times their price.  His 19mm SWA eyepiece has been the best I have seen from any manufacturer.  I have compared it side by side to eyepieces costing $400 or more, and it has always performed just as good, or better.  My second favorite eyepiece is his 36mm UWA eyepiece.  The only problem with this eyepiece is that the outer 10% of the field of view is a bit soft, but then you have to move your eye around or turn your head to take in the entire view.

I'll admit that these eyepieces are not a nagler or a pentax.  Both of these have beter performance.  But for the price of a single nagler, I have an entire eyepiece collection from Gary Russel, and I do not worry about using the eyepieces at a star party, or have a heart attack when someone pokes their finger in the middle of the lens asking "do I look in here?"

The best part, his eyepieces all cost around $60 each, and will compare directly to those selling for $200 - $300 each. 

John R. Zeigler
www.JohnsTelescopes.com
www.MirrorKits.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Steve Goodwin
To: Utah Valley Astronomy Association
Sent: 9/4/2003 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: [UVAA] Re: A Question

If some of us building their collection are looking for better
eyepieces but don't have $200 -$300 to sink into a single eyepiece are
there other eyepiece makers that offer similar quality to pentax or
televue? Or is it worth it to save up and buy these overpriced
eyepieces?

Steve

On Wednesday, September 3, 2003, at 06:28  PM, Richard Tenney wrote:

> Rob,
>
> I've found that everyone has their favorites, and
> finding a consensus might be rather difficult!  But
> I'll weigh in my 2 cents, and let others weigh in as
> well.
>
> On my old 6-inch Dynascope, my favorite and most used
> eyepiece is an old 20mm Erfle.  On the 16-inch, the
> one that is in the focuser probably 90% of the time is
> my 22mm Nagler -- I LOVE that eyepiece; worth every
> penny my wife paid for it! ;-)
>
> I also use and enjoy (on the 16) a 35mm Panoptic for
> wide-field stuff (found a cheap used one), and for
> higher magnifications 13mm and 8mm TV ploessls, though
> if I could afford them I would like to own a few more
> Naglers and/or Radians (I've borrowed the 9mm and 13mm
> Naglers, old and new, and several of the Radians, and
> love the way they perform).
>
> At Wolf Creek Saturday, I had a chance to look through
> Lowell's 20-inch obsession, and he swears by his
> Pentax eyepieces.  I confess the view of the Andromeda
> galaxy trio was most impressive in that 40mm Pentax.
> But I also remember directly comparing the 22 Panoptic
> with a 21mm Pentax one night in Hobble Creek with
> Debbie's 15-inch Obsession, and found the Panoptic
> view better, in my opinion.  Lowell will argue
> otherwise, and said he sold all of his TV eyepieces
> when he discovered the Pentax line.  Everyone's eyes
> and preferences are different...
>
> Chuck Hards, our resident ATM guru, doesn't favor
> these "glass sandwiches" so much (though he does like
> the TV Panoptics, just thinks all of them are way
> over-priced, which they are!), and has many of the
> University Optics eyepieces (the whole line of Koenigs
> for example), and prefers Orthoscopics for high power
> planetary work ("less glass is better").
>
> (Chuck and Lowell, sorry if I misquoted you...)
>
> Don't know if that helps or not,
> -Rich
>
> --- Rob Ratkowski <ratkwski@maui.net> wrote:
>> Hi Rich
>>
>>
>> Has anyone ever asked what an ideal set (FL, brand,
>> type,??) of
>> eyepieces would be and why??  I guess I'm asking to
>> see what you all
>> use the most and why they are useful.  I have TV's
>> of 55,40,26,21,17
>> and 10.5mm, 2.5X Barlow, a Meade 32mm 2" and a
>> Celestron Ultima 30mm.
>> Still looking for a 5mm TV Radian .............
>> Would this be
>> called a survey w/ comments??
>>
>>
>> Aloha
>> Rob
>>
>>
>> PS  What do you use??  Which is your most used EP??
>>
>
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