Happy chappy.

[Franklin]

Had a welcome break in the solid cloud cover which gave me a chance to try out my new, to me, SSW7mm on the Moon.

Very pleased with it's performance in the SD81S, frames the whole Moon perfectly at about x90 and the shadow detail on the terminator looked etched.

[Louis D]

Any SAEP (kidney-beaning) issues when used on such a bright object?  Any finickiness holding the entire field of view at once?  I've read that SAEP is the main issue with the entire SSW line.

[Don Pensack]

18 hours ago, Louis D said:

Any SAEP (kidney-beaning) issues when used on such a bright object?  Any finickiness holding the entire field of view at once?  I've read that SAEP is the main issue with the entire SSW line.

Its presence is less noted the shorter the focal length.  It was present in all of them, but the 14mm was the worst, the 10mm a bit better and the 7mm and shorter weren't bad enough to have much impact.

But then, I didn't use them on the moon, and a smaller pupil diameter would have made them harder to use.

[Franklin]

Yes there is some "kidney beaning" but it shows more when used in daylight and keeping your eye central and at the correct distance helps a lot with this. When I first tried the SSW's I found them quite difficult to use but with practice I found it easier. There is definitely a "knack" in their use to learn, but they seem very nice optically. I can see the whole fov when viewing and the "kidney beaning" doesn't effect at all when looking at star-fields. I think @Don Pensack is correct in that a smaller exit pupil seems to help and also the shorter focal length eyepieces are less prone to this "kidney beaning". The 14mm does show some curvature at the edges which is not present in the other focal lengths, this may show less in a longer focal length scope, mine are all under F/8.