Baader Classics - the story so far ....

[spaceboy]

35 minutes ago, John said:

I felt the 18mm Baader Classic Ortho was just a touch better than the Baader Genuine ortho and the Astro Hutech ortho of the same focal length when I compared the two, mostly on the deep sky. By better I mean that the light transmission seemed slightly more and the contrast shown on deep sky objects was just a little more pronounced. The light scatter control seemed around the same at this focal length.

IMHO the 10mm and 18mm are the best of the BCO range.

 

 

 

That's interesting to know John. Never had the chance to try the 18mm but that is certainly high praise. The 6mm is a great ep but I felt it lagged ever so slightly behind the 6mm astro hutech I had at the time. The 10mm is obviously in a FL class of it's own and great to have as most ortho are either 9 or 12.5mm. Sure you could compare the views but the fact that it's a 10mm comes in handy for me. I do find the edges lack a little in the BCO's but they have their plus points in that they have a  larger eye lens, slightly longer eye relief and better FOV and not to mention the price although Hutech are a lot more competitive than they once were..

[YKSE]

8 hours ago, Moonshane said:

An old thread but I think I have decided to go for a pair of 18mm BCOs in my binoviewers. For solar and lunar this (with a set of GPCs) will provide me with around 65x, 90x and 130x so not far off everything I'll need!

A very wise decision.

Besides the optical quality described in John's review, the extra 10mm focus compared to BGO can be very important in binoviewer too. My 120ED with BDS focuser, maxbright and T2 prism got 18BCO in focus without GPC, with less than 0.5 mm focus travel to spare, while 25mm Tak ortho (which needs only a bit more than 1mm backfocust than 18BCO) couldn't reach focus.

[jetstream]

The 18mm BCO is excellent as is the 10mm. I have barlowed the 10mm very high (over 400x, 15",lunar) and it hangs right in there with the Zeiss zoom and Docter 12.5mm UWA.

These 2 eyepieces are among the best I own, thanks to John for recommending them.

Shane, wait until you see M42 with the 18 BCO's in the binos....

[Stu]

40 minutes ago, YKSE said:

A very wise decision.

Besides the optical quality described in John's review, the extra 10mm focus compared to BGO can be very important in binoviewer too. My 120ED with BDS focuser, maxbright and T2 prism got 18BCO in focus without GPC, with less than 0.5 mm focus travel to spare, while 25mm Tak ortho (which needs only a bit more than 1mm backfocust than 18BCO) couldn't reach focus.

That's really interesting Yong. I had been looking for something around this focal length, trying to find another 10.5mm RG but these may be a better option.

EDIT I may have misread, does the 10mm have inwards focus benefits or not? I don't think I need it as I would use the GPC at higher powers anyway, but good to know the 10mm is one of the best.

[YKSE]

Yes, Stu, 10mm BCO are par focal as 18mm BCO as John's mentioned in the review, some 0.5mm more inwards focus travel than 18 BCO by my measurement.

[Stu]

5 minutes ago, YKSE said:

Yes, Stu, 10mm BCO are par focal as 18mm BCO as John's mentioned in the review, some 0.5mm more inwards focus travel than 18 BCO by my measurement.

Thanks Yong. Think I might go for a pair then  

[John]

5 hours ago, spaceboy said:

That's interesting to know John. Never had the chance to try the 18mm but that is certainly high praise. The 6mm is a great ep but I felt it lagged ever so slightly behind the 6mm astro hutech I had at the time. The 10mm is obviously in a FL class of it's own and great to have as most ortho are either 9 or 12.5mm. Sure you could compare the views but the fact that it's a 10mm comes in handy for me. I do find the edges lack a little in the BCO's but they have their plus points in that they have a  larger eye lens, slightly longer eye relief and better FOV and not to mention the price although Hutech are a lot more competitive than they once were..

I agree with you about the 6mm. It's a very good eyepiece for the money but in this case I felt the Baader GO / Astro Hutech / Fujiyama 6mms were slightly better at controlling light scatter.

The 6mm Baader CO that I reported on had a slightly fuzzy field stop as well which was more of an annoyance than anything else but the other BCO's had sharp stops.

 

 

 

[andrew63]

I had a couple a while back, and while ok, thought the HD orthos and good plossls where better planetary eyepiece - Mars in particular was not great.  However, with their slightly larger field i think they make for very good deep sky eyepieces and work really well in the Q barlow which i still have.  Ideal grab and go choice if you can handle the eye relief.

 

andrew

[John]

36 minutes ago, andrew63 said:

I had a couple a while back, and while ok, thought the HD orthos and good plossls where better planetary eyepiece - Mars in particular was not great.  However, with their slightly larger field i think they make for very good deep sky eyepieces and work really well in the Q barlow which i still have.  Ideal grab and go choice if you can handle the eye relief.

 

andrew

Interesting to hear different opinions on them Andrew

 

[spaceboy]

I think it often comes down to a lack of detailed in replies (myself included). What I mean is we often comment on eyepieces saying we feel one way or the other about them but we rarely describe the set up we used the eyepiece in unless it is a review. Some of the comments in the thread got me thinking and it suddenly occurred to me I don't think I have never tried the 10mm in a scope other than my ST120. The ST at f/5 and being a "budget" Chinese achromat (not necessarily bad but not a high end scope) is not going to give as good as results as say a TAL100RS or ED. Again there may be differences in performance when used in a slower or faster scope of different design like MAK or newt. I think my judgement on the 6mm BCO holds better ground as I did compare it to another ortho of the same focal length in the same scope but even so how the two would compare in a different scope altogether could yield totally different results ??

I guess this is where we should be grateful to the likes of John for taking the time to do such thorough reviews. On the flip side of that though I know John has some nice kit and in a recent thread of mine it has been said that a scope can play a large part in performance. Not all of us own 1/10 wave newts or top end refractors so just how much of a difference does the scope make ?

[andrew63]

Well I'm prepared to give them the benefit of the doubt John -  and try the 10 again.  Should work well in my light bucket aka st80 !

 

andrew

[John]

I used to use nice quality eyepiece with scopes such as the Skywatcher and Meade dobsonians and Evostar refractors that I've owned in the past. They seemed to do pretty well in those as well 

 

 

[YKSE]

5 hours ago, spaceboy said:

I think it often comes down to a lack of detailed in replies (myself included). What I mean is we often comment on eyepieces saying we feel one way or the other about them but we rarely describe the set up we used the eyepiece in unless it is a review.

That's a very good point

Some scopes, such short fl refractors, have FC in the scope, it will result in less sharp stars in the edge for an flat field EP, while an EP happens to have opposite curvature than the scope may have tighter stars.

Then what do we compare can vary quite a lot, the strength of Abbe ortho design, IMHO,  is less scatter in/around bright objects(Moon, planets, bright stars), i.e. the faint patch around these objects are fainter than in other EPs, this is one of the most important factor for seeing more Moon/planetary details, and splitting very uneven doubles, etc.

[spaceboy]

17 hours ago, John said:

I used to use nice quality eyepiece with scopes such as the Skywatcher and Meade dobsonians and Evostar refractors that I've owned in the past. They seemed to do pretty well in those as well 

 

 

Yeh just don't tell the wife that John or she may be none too pleased with recent scope purchases  

[Grogfish]

I've had a 32mm BCO for around a year now. Similar to many others' comments I find it somewhat sharper than a 32mm Meade4000 in the centre, but performance drops off badly towards the edge. (In comparison I find the 4000 offers consistent performance until very close to the edge of the field). 

 

As I'm a 4" Mak user many open clusters fill the view of a 32mm, and the BCO behaviours don't make it ideal for this. However, I have found a couple of really handy uses for it:

 

1.For some galaxies and nebulae it's really quite a handy eyepiece as it provides a very good central view while still allowing the object to be seen in the widest possible context, eg it'a lovely for M42, as it beautifully splits the trapezium (into 4) in the middle, allows some good nebulosity to be seen, and doesn't matter too much that the outer edge is a bit poor as it's not what I'm looking at. I'm working with 102mm at f13, and the same may well not hold true for others though.

2. Another handy application I've found by trial and error, is that the 32mm BCO with a 25mm extension is more-or-less parfocal with my GPCAM2 IMX224 with a cheapo 0.5x reducer (when put straight in the eyepiece holder). This has been very handy when having to swap between locating objects through the eyepiece and imaging them. Not sure I'd recommend buying BCO solely for this purpose (and your image train will likely by slightly different), but I suppose it shows the value of experimentation  :-)

[Paul73]

I believe the the 32mm basically a Plossl which is given the same branding to make up a decent set. The rest of the range is a proper ortho design. That would certainly account for your experiences.

Paul

[John]

Yes, the 32mm Baader Classic is a plossl. The apparent field is somewhat less than 50 degrees I thought - probably around 46 ?

At F/13 I'd have thought the field edges would be decent though - that focal ratio should be no challenge at all for a 46 degree AFoV eyepiece

[Grogfish]

Absolutely, yes, it's a Plossl design (well, that's what it says on the label anway - it's very narrow compared to most 32mm Plossl's, and I'm not really how how rigourously the name "plossl" is used by manufacturers, but I guess that's a whole different thread!). I suppose I still think of it as a BCO rather than BCP because it forms one end of the FL range for the BCOs, and I believe is the only plossl in the range

[Grogfish]

I've not measured the field myself, but I've not noticed a massive difference compared to the 52deg 32mm Meade4000 (which looking at SkySafari I've always believed Is pretty close to the advertised 52deg). Sitting here I could believe 50deg for the Baader, but I'd be a little surprised if it turned out to be as small as 46deg? I'll have to check that out next time it's not snowing

Still, regards the aberration ( I'm not up on the different kinds so forgive my lack of terminology), away from the centre stars exhibit a bit of "ghosting" at times with a fainter double visible, and also elongation in the direction of the edge. I'll make sure to note down a better description.

To be honest, yeah, it is a bit of a disappointment because I've not experienced anything like this in other eyepieces, and at f13, I would have thought most eyepiece sins would be forgiven! Do you think I've just got a diff one? From what I've read, others appear to have experienced at least somewhat similar performance (albeit possibly not at f13)

[John]

I compared the Baader Classic 32 with the Vixen NPL 30 for the forum here:

I've used another Baader Classic 32 since then and the AFoV still seemed noticably shy of 50 degrees.