Vintage eyepieces- a little chat.

[mike bacanin]

I'm sure some of you on SGL know i have a thing about older vintage not the norm eyepieces. Yes i love vintage eyepieces! But you know, some of these old timers are really superb, and can be great bargains from a price/performance aspect. Some are just great performers,but at a price!

Here's a few candidates,

1) Televue older smoothsides. Made in some good focal lengths, 10.4,10.5,13,17,21,26,32,and 40mm. Made in japan. The ones with the circle NJ are most desirable. can be found here sometimes around £35-£45. super sharp, and rated amongst the top 4 planetary eyepieces for on axis sharpness and contrast.

2)Older vintage Celestron/Vixen silvertops. Beautiful 80's eyepieces. Fantastic heavy build quality.Earliest were all silver, slightly later had black tops, see photo. Made in Japan of course! very very sharp field stop. came in 7.5,10,15,17,22,25,26,30,36,45mm. fov 36 degrees (45mm) to 50 degrees (30mm)

great performers and very attractive eyepieces.

3)Carl Zeiss Jena orthos. These are awesome performers. If you want the best planetary performance,these are your ticket. only bettered by the Zeiss Abbes. very dated looking and only in .965 inch,so need adapter, see photos, but what a performance in a small eyepiece. Fantastic sharpness, contrast and glare control. Myself and Tom Yates have compared these to Baader/UO HD, and no contest. very black background. Lunar detail is awesome in these, jet black shadows, very neutral images. App 44 degree fov.Made in 4,6,8(ultra rare) 10, 12.5(very rare) 16,25, and 40 (very rare). I'm very lucky to have found a 12.5mm. seen these for as little as £75 on Astrobuy.

4) Pentax orthos .965 inch. very close to above zeiss. made in 5,6,7,9,12,18mm. awesome planetary performance. not cheap though at £100 up.

5) Meade Research Grade eyepieces, orthos and Erfles.

these were Meade's Japan made flagship eyepieces of the 70's.

1.25 inch, very light with aluminium barrels.orthos came in 4,7,10.5,,16.8, and 28mm.

great performers, cost around £35-£45.

The Erfles or WA's came in 7, 12.4, 15.5, 20, 32mm.

wide 65+ fov, very sharp field stop with fantastic on axis sharpness and contrast. The 7mm WA is as sharp as any ortho.

lovely for deep sky work. cost £45-£75

some other great vintage eyepieces are UO Flat top orthos, Meade Flat top orthos, older celestron ultimas, Older smoothside Meade 3000/4000 plossls and SAW,UWA, especially the fantastic 14mm UWA. Also old UO Konig widefields.

Finally older Tak orthos .965 inch, very light and sharp planetary performers.

PHOTO, L-R ZEISS 12.5mm, ZEISS 10mm, VIXEN 15mm, TAK 7mm ORTHO

I hope my little piece has generated a little interest in these old but great eyepieces. PM me anytime if i can be of help

Regards

Mike

PS, keep an eye on the for sale section, i may have a Meade 20mm RG Erfle very soon available if all goes to plan.

[dweller25]

Great write up Mike.

I'm luck enough to have a TV 10.5mm smoothside Plossl, and 26 and 10mm Celestron (Japan) Silver tops Plossls from 1985 :-)

[John]

Nice piece Mike

I grew up with those eyepieces and have owned some of the less expensive ones over the years. One of my early scopes was a Vixen 4" F/9.8 achro refractor which came fitted for .96" eyepieces. So I went through quite a lot of those with the best being the Vixen .96" Ortho's and some wonderful Unitron .96" plossls which I kick myself today for parting with - the Unitrons are quite sought after in the USA.

My 1st 1.25" eyepieces were 3 smooth side Tele Vue plossls - the 26mm, 13mm and 7.4 mm I recall. Later I owned the full range (apart from the 2" 55mm) of both the smoothsides and the current plossls. Also the TV 15mm, 19mm and 24mm Widefields are fondly remembered.

Another favourite "vintage" EP was a Vixen "silvertop" 30mm. I had a Vixen Erfle 32mm at the same time but I preferred the silvertop 30 I recall. Another nice low power WA 1.25" was the Ultima 35mm but it had in-focus travel issues in a couple of my scopes due to the high positioning of it's field stop.

Like you, I also rate the Ultimas / Ultrascopics and Meade 3K's (at least the Japanese ones). I've never got on with the Meade 4K plossls or 4K SWA's though - the 24.5mm SWA in particular I thought overpriced and overrated - never a Panoptic 24mm competitor as billed occasionally.

I guess you, like me, have been eyeing up the Tele Vue T1 11mm Nagler that's been on e.bay recently - interesitng eyepiece but I just can't justify the investment already owning the T6 9mm and an Ethos 13mm !.

One brand I've yet to try are the University Optics Koenigs - I suspect they would need slower scopes to do really well through.

Nice to talk about these "oldies but goldies"

John

[mike bacanin]

Hi John,

Thanks for your interesting comments.

The 30mm silvertop is now rare and considered the best of the set, with a 50 degree fov.

Regarding the Koenigs, they seem to do very well at F8 or slower. Faster than that and you get some outer edge fall off. I suppose the eras of these eyepieces were when reflectors were mainly F8 or slower, and were therefore optimised for these focal ratios.

The older Nagler are very nice, but a bit too heavy for me.

Regarding Meade 4000, there seems to be a fair difference between the very early 5 element versions and later 4 element versions.

I have a lovely very 1st series 18mm SWA on the way from Italy, very very hard to find!

Regards

Mike

[kev]

Mmmm I'm lucky that I got the set of Vixen Silvertops from 26 down.

[AndyH]

Interesting post Mike.

I've had all sorts over the years, only recently moving most on.

Ones that I use and wont sell are the Meade RG 20mm erfle, UO 12mm and 32mm Konigs. Truly excellent eyepieces.

Andy.

ps: Anyone got a 7mm Meade RG erfle? Would love one of them.

[yeti monster]

I'm expecting some 0.965"s from a collegue next trip, plus a 2x Barlow that he no longer has any use for. My 1st scope is an old Prinz Optics 100mmm reflector, which cleaned up really well after hibernating in the shed for many a moon. The current EPs that I have for it are mediocre to say the least. Can't wait to discover how good the "new" ones turn out to be.

[mike bacanin]

Its interesting that some of the finest eyepieces ever made for planetary observation are .965 inch!

Mike

[russ]

Excellent write up Mike, had me hooked. I've owned a fair few of those on the list during the last 26 years. Been lucky enough to buy a couple from yourself. That 10.5mm Meade Ortho has proved a real winner for me at such a small outlay.

I also have one of the older Meade 3000 25mm Plossls at the moment and that is proving quite a nice performer too.

Down the years i have grown very fond of the Ultima/Ultrascopic/Elite/Gold series of eyepieces. 5 element Japanese optics with nice field and incredibly sharp on-axis. I've always rated them slightly higher than the later TV Plossls. And they go for such bargain prices, often for under £20 on Ebay. Especially if they are the Antares Elite or Orion Ultrascopic versions.

I must keep an eye out for those .965 Orthos at bargain prices.

[mike bacanin]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for those kind comments. Some of the older Meade 3000 smoothsides are reputed to be better than the 4000 series.

Mike

[mike bacanin]

Please see the for sale section regarding the Meade Vintage 20mm RG WA.

Mike

[John]

Hi Russ,

Thanks for those kind comments. Some of the older Meade 3000 smoothsides are reputed to be better than the 4000 series.

Mike

For a short while I owned a smoothside Meade 3K 40mm (1.25"). I don't normally like 1.25" 40mm's but the Meade was a very nice eyepiece and was really quite immersive despite it's 43 degree AFoV, possibly because of it's whopping great eyelens.

John

[25585]

I have a Nagler 1 13mm bought from Osborne Optics in the late 80s I think, and a Vixen 32mm Erfle bought with my first telescope (Fullerscope 8 inch F8 on Mk3 equatorial mount). Sadly the Erfle has a 36.4mm screw thread mount as the focuser was Vixen so the Erfle is not useable there being no converter for modern 2 inch focusers. 

The Erfle was all metal and all black with a large eye lens having big eye relief. 

[rl]

I have the MK1 Nagler 11mm (smoothside) and it's one of the few eyepieces I would never consider selling. If I remember correctly it cost about £170 new which was a much bigger fraction of my take-home pay than an E21 would be now! I had serious sleepless nights wondering how I was going to keep up the payments on the flexible friend. It gets used fairly infrequently now since I have both the 10 and 13mm ethos, but the eye relief on the Nagler feels subjectively better and it gives up nothing on sharpness right to the edge. The eye position is a lot more critical - you have to learn to hold the spot where there is no kidney beaning - but it's well worth the effort. A modern classic in my book.

My first TV eyepiece was the 4.8mm smoothside bought for the mars opposition of 1988. It was generally too much power for my Wildey 5" long focus refractor and I was a bit disappointed at the time. However, I kept it, and it's turned out to be the perfect high power eyepiece on 6" F/5 reflectors. Another keeper.

[John]

I seem to recall that the Nagler 11mm type 1 smoothside is a bit of a rarity.

I used to have the 4.8mm and 7mm T1's in their smoothside form - my 1st Naglers in fact. It's interesting that Roland Christen of Astro Physics fame used a 4.8mm Nagler to do critical testing of his companies apochromatic refractors. A lot of folks don't like the 4.8mm Nagler though

I've owned all the original smoothside TV plossls except for the 55mm 2" one and had a set of the 1.25" format TV Wide Field's as well. All gone to other homes now though.

[John]

Just noticed that this 8 year old thread is in the scopes section. Probably ought to be in eyepieces - can a kind Mod oblige please ?

[Mark at Beaufort]

3 minutes ago, John said:

Just noticed that this 8 year old thread is in the scopes section. Probably ought to be in eyepieces - can a kind Mod oblige please ?

John I was just reading this thread. I have moved it as you suggested.

[John]

3 hours ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

John I was just reading this thread. I have moved it as you suggested.

Thanks Mark