Help with choice of eyepieces

[CeeDee]

I have an FLT 110 & 132 both of which are excellent refractors in my opinion. My eye piece collection was assembled when I had a C11 SCT. I recently spoilt myself and purchased a Pentax XW 10mm - what a superb eyepiece. With my aging eyes it was definitely the clarity, contrast and comfort that knocked me out. Now thinking of changing my high powered eyepieces for a small range of Pentax XWs viz: 14mm, 7mm, 5mm, 3.5mm ...as the 10mm seems to work so well with my refractors.

Any comments anyone?

Current high-power eyepiece range is:

Nagler 13mm, 11mm, 5mm, 3.5mm

Celestron Axiom 7mm

W.O. UWAN 4mm

[Ben Ritchie]

At one time I had the 3.5, 5, 7 and 10mm XWs with my AP130 f/8, which is another superb refractor. They're pretty much flawless in my opinion, so if you can afford it I doubt they will disappoint. If budget is a limitation in any way then my experience was that the 10mm and 7mm barlow very well, and there's little visual difference between a 5mm XW and a 10mm XW with a 2x barlow, although due to the length of the eyepiece the barlowed XW is a little ungainly.

The 14mm has a slightly worse reputation, apparently due to field curvature, but in my relatively brief use of one it didn't seem bothersome to me - I haven't owned one or used one extensively though.

edit: FWIW I switched to Radians for a mixture of cost and size, the XW is a much larger eyepiece than the Radian and I quite value the compact format, especially for my portable setup. The Radian isn't as good as the XW, especially for crystalline clarity that make the XW really stand out for me, but it's reasonably close.