John

I'm cured of my eyepiece buying impulses. At least for now .

How ?

Very nice Caldwell14. Where's the case itself from?

It looks like the smaller of the Maplins ones with the cubed foam inner. They are very popular on the forum

Nice set Avtar   

.......Old vintage produced in Japan are always off best quality,not easy to obtain sometimes,but then again,there are modern equivalents available in likes of Televue,Pentax,Explore Scientific,Vixen.All these despite produced in Taiwan still have high quality controls and are off good quality.Again,that is my personal opinion and you dont have to agree with it by any means necessary.

I agree that Japanese glass is usually excellent and worth seeking out.

A number of the Tele Vue, Pentax and Vixen ranges are still Japanese made but all the ranges are subject to tight quality assurance as you would expect from those brands. 100% of Tele Vue eyepieces are tested prior to being released for sale.

Very interesting collection 

It's unusual to see a 40mm ortho.

How does the WO SWAN 40mm fare against the Meade 56mm plossl ?

That's got a lovely look to it Tim - mahogany and brass do mix well

Derek, thankfully (or not?) I'm a fair bit away from my next EP purchase, but the mind does tend to wander! I reckon I could put the high power next to the 9mm, then start a new row above where the filter case currently is. The stock SW 25mm/10mm will go once I have a low power to replace it, I've already replaced the 10mm with that HD60 so is just taking up space really, 

I guess the most important factor in how they are arranged should be how easy and safely that can be picked up and put back under observing conditions, in the dark and possibly with gloved hands.

The way that we change our minds we'd be spending more money on custom cut foam than EP's! 

If you don't remove the cut foam cubes but just separate them in the block sizes you need and press the eyepiece down into the blocks, when you want to change eyepieces the block can be pulled back into place and re-sized for the replacement eyepiece.

That way the foam stays in much better shape. 

Here are my two cases. The larger one has been subjected to lots of changes over the past 3 years and still seems to be in good shape. Worrying gap at the top right though - sort of Pentax XW 10mm shaped 

Very nice Rik   

Really cant help it but I still drool a bit over XW's....

Have to agree Mike. Rik was using them way before I "discovered" them but now I'm considering the 10mm to go with the 7, 5 and 3.5mm that I've picked up over the past 18 months. 

The 30mm and 40mm XW's are out of production now I believe and have become rather sought after. I saw a "wanted" advert not long ago that was offering $600 for a mint condition used one !

Very nice Mike - the "end on" approach fits more into a case 

Amazing how it mounts up though isn't it ?. My rough calculation is that the last 3 eyepiece collections posted in this thread would equate to around £7,500 in total on the used market and probably around £10K to replace with new  

I'm just as guilty though but it's my only hobby so   

Feng Shui applied to eyepiece case layout   

Very Nice Stu 

I'm down to two cases as well now. Maybe the compulsion is under control 

I think we have probably both reached the point where any further changes are driven more by curiosity than need. You can remind me I posted that if and when I buy another eyepiece ! 

Nice case full Stu

Using a Giro-type mount does make you focus on scope balance that bit more.  

I have less at the long FL end but a crowded short FL section:

31 - 21 - 13 - 8 - 7 - 6 - 5 - 4 - 3.5 - 3

Just made my set complete with a 36mm aspheric from Baader 

Does your TAL 125 Apolar bring 2" eyepieces to focus OK Wim ?

The one I had to test did not have enough inwards focuser travel so I had to stay with 1.25" accessories.

Very nice selection now Shane. All bases covered I'd say 

I keep saying "thats it" with mine too but somehow something else slips in now and again. I've fallen for the Pentax XW's lately and I just need the 10mm to complete my short FL line of those. I could do with a short set of orthos again too I suppose ...... oh dear it never stops !  

For some time I have thinking of improving upon the 25mm Antares plossls which I use in my binoviewers. I thought about the 25mm TeleVue as being the best option but clearly these new Vixen really look the business and provide a quality EP.

I really must have a look at the 25mm to make sure that the main body is not too wide - I need to get my nose between them.

Mark,

The bodies of the 3 SLV's that I have are all 50mm in diameter. The twist up eye cups are 48mm outside diameter. Hope that helps

What we need is a little piece of software which lets us input the nose width and eyepiece type proposed and then calculates the interpupillary range that would be available. I think "Binoconksim" would be a good name for this application 

would you say these are optically on a par with the legendary televue plossls with some added benefites - such as better eye relief?

Yes, definitely in my opinion. I've owned a couple of sets of TV plossls so I know and respect them well. 

John a very enjoyable read and quality information as always. I recall at SGL9 you had these EPs with you and I thought that they looked a quality EP. at the time.

Thanks Mark (and to everybody else for the encouraging comments) 

I did have them at SGL9 and we did have a quick peek through one. Everything was a "quick peek" at SGL9 though !

On interesting little snippet I've picked up elsewhere is that there has apparently been a recent big price hike in low dispersion glasses such as Lanthanum when it's imported to Japan. It's cost has remained more reasonable in China though which might be a reason why the SLV's are made there now rather than Japan where the earlier LV and NLV ranges were manufactured. I guess labour and other production costs in China are lower as well so there are probably a number of factors at work here. 

Quality does not appear to have suffered though as I had the opportunity to compare the 6mm SLV with a Japanese made 6mm LV recently and the SLV was as good on all counts and rather better in terms of FoV and light transmission, in my view. The "click stop" eye cup adjustment is an improvement over the rather stiff roll down eye cup of the LV too   

I used to have the 7.5mm "black top" made by Vixen but branded Celestron. It was a nice plossl but when I came to part with it I had a job to shift it even at £20. Of course the smart buyers pick up good things for a song when they fall out of fashion a bit 

I reckon the days of dirt cheap Circle-T orthos are gone now as well - I bought 5 mint ones for £80 a few years back but they seem to command more like £30+ each these days for clean ones. 

Interesting. Those were the 2nd generation ones I think. The 1st gen ones tops were all silver and in 1 piece rather than having the black section on the top. I've no idea if there were any optical differences - probably not.

Edit: The "Dude" beat me to it ! 

.....there is a competition out there in eye piece production and that only does good to us end users as we are the ones who are hunting that better eye piece or that better image quality.

Yep - great choices available today   

..... Has anyone done this side by side test I wonder??

Some have:

http://stargazerslounge.com/topic/173218-explore-scientific-82-degree-vs-televue-nagler-at-f5/

With all these excellent and lower cost alternatives available it makes you wonder why so many folks are prepared to spend their hard earned £'s / $'s / Euros on Tele Vue, Pentax, Zeiss, Leica, Nikon, Takahashi etc ?

The 31T5 is very expensive, but there are good alternatives, like the MaxVision 24mm 82 deg (bit shorter, not sure there is a 30mm) and the 28mm Nirvana, for a more reasonable price (still not cheap). The 30mm Luminos from Celestron might be worth a punt too

I believe the 30mm ES 82 is very, very close to Nagler performance too.

Even n my C8, I prefer the 31mm T5 (Panzerfaust, because it dwarfs a hand grenade and has the right tapered shape) to the LVW42 becaus the exit pupil is 3.1 rather than 4.2. In my short frac I get 5.17 with the 31T5 and 7 with the 42mm. The latter is OK in very dark sites, but I still prefer the 31T5 in most cases. It gives 5.3 deg FOV (5.7 or so with the LVW42) so it is perfect for wide-field sweeping.

The 31mm T5's are expensive Michael but I agree that they are wonderful eyepieces. I get more of a "sense of occasion" when I put my 31mm Nagler in the scope than I do any other eyepiece