Posts Made By: david elosser

Gary,
Someone else may know of one, but other than used I don't know of any binocs under $75 not made in China or Taiwan. Actually, I wouldn't let that bother me, IMHO the Chinese are making some rather nice binoc optics for the money you spend. I have a pair of Vortex Spitfire's and really like them. Here is a lower priced pair by Vortex:
http://www.buytelescopes.com/product.asp?t=87&pid=11806&m=
Good eye relief, weatherproofed, 6º field of view. The only thing I don't like it the minimum focus distance of 15'. For nature work I prefer and shorter focus, 10' or less, but that may not be an issue with you.
Nikon's had the Action series around for quite a while, here's a nice pair:
http://www.buytelescopes.com/product.asp?t=87&pid=8315&m=
Nice optics, armoured, well priced, and the 7x35 is more appropriate than the 8x26 Vortex for casual astronomy. It's a bigger, much heavier pair than the Vortex though. Now this Nikon is apparently new, but it seems to fit most of your criteria:
http://www.buytelescopes.com/product.asp?t=87&pid=10834&m=
I don't know much about it, but it's lightweight, weatherproofed, and has the close focus I like for nature work in the field. Its small exit pupil of 3mm would limit you for astronomical work though.
Hope this helps you get started in your search.

David E

This is a very well made feeder. Squirrel-proof and holds lots of seed.

Bill,
I don't know for sure what coatings the Starblast has, but I doubt they are premium coatings. With standard coatings you will get enough light loss on two mirrors to get the 4.5" aperture down to the 3.5" (or 90mm) range in performance. Also, I don't know how large the secondary obstruction is, but subtract its diameter from the primary's diameter of 4.5". That will give you the approximate refractor size that is equivalent to the Starblast's amount of image contrast. In short, it is probably performing more closely to a 85-90mm refractor in both contrast and brightness than at 4.5" aperture. Still, I'm not blasting the Starblast (pardon the pun). I think it's a great little scope for the money, probably one of the best starter scopes out there. But your new 90mm/f7 apo, regardless of brand, is certainly going to outperform the Starblast in every category.

David E

Pay attention to the clear aperture of your binoviewers. If you have a full clear aperture of 26-27mm then you can use any low power eyepiece you want without vignetting. If your CA is around 21mm, then you are limited if you want to avoid vignetting. Some low cost options that I have used and can recommend are:

Plossls, 20 and 25mm (32mm if you have 26mm CA)
Smart Astronomy EF19mm (EF27 for the 26mm CA models)
Stellarvue 23mm FMC
Orion Epics or Celestron Xcell.
Meade 20mm 5000series plossl.

If you can swing it, a pair of 18mm Televue Radians would give you more true field of view than the 20mm plossls with more magnification, plenty of eye relief and excellent image. And I too can always recommend the Panoptics.

David E

That's a nice photo. These birds are beautiful, they visit my feeders every once in a while.
David E

If you are new to binoviewing it may take some time before your brain "figures out" what merged images should look like. This varies from person to person. I have no problems now, but I did have trouble merging certain targets at first, while others were relatively easy. It's kinda like learning to ride a bike. You are shakey at first but one day you wake up and wonder why you were having so much trouble before.

David E

Nice shot Ron. I see pairs of these House Finches all over my feeders. You did good for a cloudy day shot.
David E

Not sure if this would help you but check out Messier45 dot com. Also, if you want some real challenges, join the Yahoo group DeepSkyHunters. They would enjoy reading about any observations that you can make of their exhaustive target list of asterisms, clusters, and nebulae.

David E

That one's very nice! I like the way Mare Humboldtianum showed up in this image.

David E

That's a great photo. I love the colors of MD's and the sky blue ring around the eye is always a pretty sight in spotting scopes.
David E