Barlows or lenses

[Kevdan]

Just a quickie,

Is it better to use a lens with a barlow or just use a lens which will give you the same magnification.

Kev

[brantuk]

It all depends on the quality of the ep's and the barlow and what scope you're using - in theory a single lense is better than multiple lenses. But I'm sure you can mix and match S/W and TV lenses and get conflicting results

[Rui]

As Brantuk says, it's better to use less glass. no matter how good the quality and coatings of a Barlow lens, it will always take it's share of light.

Years ago, before long-eye relief EP's came around, a barlow was very useful to allow you to use a longer focal lenght eyepiece, with it's natural longer eye relief, and getting a higher magnification.

Nowadays, you can easily get short f.l. EP's that will give you a pleasant long eye relief.

OTOH, one single Barlow lens can be used with several of yours already existing EP's, providing different magnifications and thus avoiding the need to purchase other EP's.

[E621Keith]

It depend on your eyepieces.

If you can afford expensive long eye relief eyepieces, getting multiple eyepieces will be better. However, if you can only afford basic plossl, I'd perfered having a number of long FL eyepieces and a barlow to get high power. This is because I don't like the short eye relief of short FL plossls. I haven't use my barlow ever since I replaced my shorter FL eyepiece with Radians.

[brianb]

I haven't use my barlow ever since I replaced my shorter FL eyepiece with Radians.

That says enough ... except to point out that short focus, long eye relief eyepieces invariably incorporate barlows in their structure ...