Eyepiece regrets

[bomberbaz]

3 minutes ago, Saganite said:

Anything on my list that your selling by any chance ??......

tell me what's on your list? the real one that is hidden away from prying eyes 🫢😆

[cajen2]

We should start a "Bring and buy" stall at events like Astrocamp.

[Don Pensack]

4 hours ago, Alan White said:

Regrets at buying and selling oh so many fine pieces of glass over the years.
Everything I have had, has been a learning point, clearly both good and bad, the one thing that I have found is that my eyesight has gotten worse,
I now have to use long eye relief at longer focal lengths if I wish to see stars not funny shapes.
The eyesight issue has then stopped me from trying so many fine eyepieces and dictates the direction of travel.

My true regret is not with eyepieces, its with telescopes, I should have purchased one far sooner than I did.
 

You wrote this post about me: glasses, vision, eyepieces, regrets not getting some scopes earlier in life.

Parallel paths.

[Don Pensack]

4 hours ago, John said:

I'll keep quiet about those I think because some are the very ones that others are raving about in this thread and I have learned just how personal eyepiece preferences are 🙄

 

 

As they say, "Nostalgia clouds your vision".

I have re-bought eyepieces many times, and they never were as good the second time.

You are not the same observer the 2nd time--more experienced, more knowledgeable about the performance of the eyepieces and how to evaluate them, different scopes, different eyes.

Also you develop different preferences.  I was excited when I got my two highest-power eyepieces because they were 110°.  Now I wish they were 100° instead.

Of course, I'd never have known that if I hadn't tried them.  They're still good eyepieces, but......

[Louis D]

16 hours ago, Sunshine said:

I made a stupid move a few years back, bought a mint used 14mm panoptic and didn’t really care for it in my dob back then so I sold it. That’s not the stupid part, the stupid part was I totally forgot what i paid for it and didn’t bother checking its value new and ended up selling for half of what other used ones were listed for. It’s no wonder I had several interested buyers within minutes. 

Especially considering it must have been a one-off engineering-only prototype since the shortest production Panoptic was the 15mm before it was discontinued. 😉

I can't imagine what the collector's value would be.  Probably not as high as any Nagler Type 3 would fetch, though. 😁

[Louis D]

My biggest eyepiece regret was buying a 21mm or 22mm Rini "wide field" starting out on a budget for maybe $20 in the late 90s (figure close to double that in today's dollars) to fill a gap in my lineup.

It was basically a 3 element eyepiece of some sort with terrible correction and maybe a 50 degree field, hardly what I would term "wide field" even as a beginner.  Then, the central lens came loose in storage within a year for unknown reasons, jamming at an angle.  It rattles around in there now.  Since the whole thing is sealed tight in thermal plastic, I can't do anything about it.  I felt totally duped on that purchase.  It's now a focuser plug.  Live and learn.

[Highburymark]

My problem is that I can’t sell things, even though I don’t really need them. This is a luxury that will come to an abrupt end when I retire in five years, (or when my current job finishes me off before I retire, which right now looks fairly likely.)     
I have three pairs of exceptional Zeiss and Leica 25mm microscope eyepieces - even after a year’s testing, I still find it impossible to split them. I have an excellent full set of Kasai orthos that I don’t use very much. And I have a Delite 4mm that is outshone by the TOE 4mm, but I haven’t yet summoned up the courage to sell.     
Of the eyepieces I’ve sold that I remember with nostalgia, I’d include Delos 10, Ethos 13, and Panoptic 35 (all too heavy when I downsized), Nagler T6 11mm (I had Delite and plossl 11mm, so couldn’t justify the Nagler too, though it was superb), and finally Celestron Ultima 30mms, a wonderful binoviewing pair (which I only sold because Steve/Saganite - who had originally sold them to me - wrote me a very nice note a year or two later saying if ever I thought of sellling them again, to please bear him in mind….).    
I had a pair of TV 32mm Plossls covering that focal length…… though the Ultimas were just as good…… couldn’t justify both pairs, so how could I resist Steve’s plea?

[mikeDnight]

27 minutes ago, Highburymark said:

and finally Celestron Ultima 30mms, a wonderful binoviewing pair (which I only sold because Steve/Saganite - who had originally sold them to me - wrote me a very nice note a year or two later saying if ever I thought of sellling them again, to please bear him in mind….).    
I had a pair of TV 32mm Plossls covering that focal length…… though the Ultimas were just as good…… couldn’t justify both pairs, so how could I resist Steve’s plea?

Oh you missed a trick there! You should have told him "I thought about selling them to you Steve, but decided to sell them to Mike instead"! 

I can see him now - laughing uncontrollably. 😂😂

[Sunshine]

4 hours ago, Louis D said:

Especially considering it must have been a one-off engineering-only prototype since the shortest production Panoptic was the 15mm before it was discontinued. 😉

I can't imagine what the collector's value would be.  Probably not as high as any Nagler Type 3 would fetch, though. 😁

Now that you mention, I believe it was a 14 but it could have been 15, id have to check my list history on buy and sell, now im curious. 
 

update: you see! i am an idiot, it was a 24mm panoptic and i listed it for $165 CAD (100 pounds?) 

Edited April 21, 2023 by Sunshine

[Louis D]

2 hours ago, Sunshine said:

Now that you mention, I believe it was a 14 but it could have been 15, id have to check my list history on buy and sell, now im curious. 
 

update: you see! i am an idiot, it was a 24mm panoptic and i listed it for $165 CAD (100 pounds?) 

Ouch!  They go for between $265 and $299 used on CN classifieds today.  $165 CAD equates to $120 USD today.  No wonder you had so much interest.

[John]

Talking of eyepiece regrets, one that sticks in my mind was the 55mm plossl that I bought from I R Poyser. I've nothing but admiration for what I R Poyser do regarding traditional refractors etc but I really should have realised that a plossl eyepiece in the 1.25 inch format using 55mm focal length ex-military optical components was never going to be a good idea for me 🙄

The finished eyepiece had no eye guard and the field stop was provided by the bottom end of the 1.25 inch barrel. The eye relief was probably about 40mm so I had to "float" my eye that far off the top lens of the eyepiece. I don't think any of the lens elements were coated either. I thought that a 55mm would give me a "massive" true field of view with any scope that I felt like using it in but soon found out that holding the exit pupil that far off the top of the eyepiece was very difficult and the true field was (of course I now know) no larger than a 32mm or 40mm plossl in that format could give. 

All in all a disappointing and frustrating experience in my early days of telescope use and observing. I think I did learn a thing or two from it though 😉

Some of the components of that eyepiece are still rolling around in the bottom of my "bits" box I think, just in case I could think of something better to do with them 🙄 

I R Poyser have also come along way since then and produce some mouth watering scopes:

  Brass Telescopes | IR Poyser – Telescope Makers

Edited April 22, 2023 by John

[rwilkey]

My problen is that I have no real regrets and tend not to sell any eyepiece I have enjoyed.  A good example is the Explore Scientific 82º Series, but when a 'job lot' of Naglers came up on eBay I couldn't resist them, or have the heart to sell my treasured ExSc.  The other thing is that you get different experiences from using different eyepieces, which I find stimulating, well, that's just me! Pictures below:

 

[Louis D]

I tend to be very thoughtful about my eyepiece purchases, so I rarely feel a need to sell anything.  I did buy a Meade 5000 UWA 20mm for about $50 because the price seemed too good to pass up.  It is a decent eyepiece, but the eye relief is tight and SAEP is horrible.  I'll see if my daughter wants to use it sometime.  I doubt she will, though, because she also likes to view with eyeglasses on.  I may end up selling it someday without regrets at that point.

[mikeDnight]

I regret selling my 5mm and 6mm TMB Super Monocentrics, and I regret selling them for a stupidly low price. I regret not buying the entire set of super mono's including the barlow while they were available.  I also regret being too impatient with the Astrophysics waiting time for their super planetary eyepieces.  And I regret selling my TMB 40mm Paragon eyepiece. I was also sent the entire Pentax XW range by Tom at House of Optics, so I could try before buying. I regret returning the 30mm and 40mm XW's.

[John]

59 minutes ago, mikeDnight said:

.... I regret selling my TMB 40mm Paragon eyepiece.....

I used to have a clone of the Aero ED 40mm (branded Sky Rover) which I believe has the same optics in that the TMB Paragon used. It was a very good eyepiece and well corrected even in my F/5.3 dob (though the exit pupil was a little large in that one !) That is another one that I regret letting go 🙄

I can recall visiting an experienced astronomer in my early years of observing and he had a massive collection of eyepieces including a full set of the TMB Supermono's plus the barlow in a lovely velvet lined walnut box. I guess that I regret not buying a set of Zeiss ZAO's when you could get them (in a nice wooden box again) for around £2K the set although realistically I didn't have that sort of hobby budget back then (late 1990's). 

 

 

[JOC]

I have a rainy day collection of EP's I probably don't need given the few times I go out of observe.  Out of all I've got, I'd keep the full set of Morpheus that I put together, the two unexpected decent little plossls that came with the scope, which I still drop in when all else has failed, and my Pentax XW.  The rest I'd put up for grabs if the cash ran out.

[Highburymark]

On 22/04/2023 at 20:08, John said:

Talking of eyepiece regrets, one that sticks in my mind was the 55mm plossl that I bought from I R Poyser. I've nothing but admiration for what I R Poyser do regarding traditional refractors etc but I really should have realised that a plossl eyepiece in the 1.25 inch format using 55mm focal length ex-military optical components was never going to be a good idea for me 🙄

The finished eyepiece had no eye guard and the field stop was provided by the bottom end of the 1.25 inch barrel. The eye relief was probably about 40mm so I had to "float" my eye that far off the top lens of the eyepiece. I don't think any of the lens elements were coated either. I thought that a 55mm would give me a "massive" true field of view with any scope that I felt like using it in but soon found out that holding the exit pupil that far off the top of the eyepiece was very difficult and the true field was (of course I now know) no larger than a 32mm or 40mm plossl in that format could give. 

All in all a disappointing and frustrating experience in my early days of telescope use and observing. I think I did learn a thing or two from it though 😉

Some of the components of that eyepiece are still rolling around in the bottom of my "bits" box I think, just in case I could think of something better to do with them 🙄 

I R Poyser have also come along way since then and produce some mouth watering scopes:

  Brass Telescopes | IR Poyser – Telescope Makers

This is exactly what I need now - a pair of 1.25” 50/55mm plossls, though I have the excellent TV40s. Why? Because I have a solar Ha filter that needs as slow a light beam as possible to show surface detail well - so ideally I’d stick a 2x extender in front of the 3x barlow/extender built into the filter. Trouble is, that would still give me far too much magnification with my TV40s in a binoviewer. A pair of 55mms would be perfect - though not even I am demented enough to try two TV55s in a 2” binoviewer. 
Yet there may be a solution. I believe Russell Optics in Vermont does a 50mm 1.25” plossl. But I’m sure they would be extremely challenging with eye relief. Don’t know if Louis or Don have any experience with Russell, or even more unlikely, with such an unlikely eyepiece?

Apols for diverting the thread anyway….. I liked your story John

[Astronomist]

The only eyepiece I really missed after selling it was my 26mm televue smoothside plossl, which I sold a few years ago during a ep clear-out. Having said that, I don't think I would buy another one; It wouldn't really ever get used now that I have a 28mm UWAN and an addiction to 82 degree AFOV.

[John]

27 minutes ago, Highburymark said:

This is exactly what I need now - a pair of 1.25” 50/55mm plossls, though I have the excellent TV40s. Why? Because I have a solar Ha filter that needs as slow a light beam as possible to show surface detail well - so ideally I’d stick a 2x extender in front of the 3x barlow/extender built into the filter. Trouble is, that would still give me far too much magnification with my TV40s in a binoviewer. A pair of 55mms would be perfect - though not even I am demented enough to try two TV55s in a 2” binoviewer. 
Yet there may be a solution. I believe Russell Optics in Vermont does a 50mm 1.25” plossl. But I’m sure they would be extremely challenging with eye relief. Don’t know if Louis or Don have any experience with Russell, or even more unlikely, with such an unlikely eyepiece?

Apols for diverting the thread anyway….. I liked your story John

No problem Mark  - interesting challenge🙂

In the 1.25 inch fitting, 40mm plus focal length eyepieces are scarce. Vixen used to have a 45mm version of their "silvertop" range but they are quite hard to find singly, let alone as a pair. There was a Celestron 42mm Ultima (old, Japanese series) but that might not be long enough for your needs. 

 

[Highburymark]

2 hours ago, John said:

No problem Mark  - interesting challenge🙂

In the 1.25 inch fitting, 40mm plus focal length eyepieces are scarce. Vixen used to have a 45mm version of their "silvertop" range but they are quite hard to find singly, let alone as a pair. There was a Celestron 42mm Ultima (old, Japanese series) but that might not be long enough for your needs. 

 

Very interesting - didn’t know about the Vixen 45mm. Suspect as you say it might take a few decades to track down a pair

[JeremyS]

I’ve regretted selling pretty much every eyepiece I’ve moved on. Hence I don’t do it anymore.

[jetstream]

3 hours ago, JeremyS said:

I’ve regretted selling pretty much every eyepiece I’ve moved on. Hence I don’t do it anymore.

Im in the same boat.

[jetstream]

7 hours ago, Highburymark said:

Why? Because I have a solar Ha filter that needs as slow a light beam as possible to show surface detail well

I had Siebert make me a 50mm 1.25 EP, it is actually good but it didnt get along with the Quirk. It showed part of the Quarks internals along with Ha detail.

[Louis D]

1 hour ago, jetstream said:

I had Siebert make me a 50mm 1.25 EP, it is actually good but it didnt get along with the Quirk. It showed part of the Quarks internals along with Ha detail.

Dad joke ahead warning:

So, a Quirk of owning a Quark. 🤣

[rl]

Quote

•  

I’ve regretted selling pretty much every eyepiece I’ve moved on. Hence I don’t do it anymore.

@jeremys:

I'm glad you sold your 34mm Maxvision, that has become my staple widefield finder!