CN FORUMS ARCHIVE Telescope Reviews: 22X100's after three nights of trials

I bought a pair of 22X100's back in April used & with a warranty, they arrived but appeared to have something growing in them! The retailer obviously had never looked inside so back they went and a new pair arrived at a steep discounted price.

I thought the images were great for such a cheap bino, $360 cdn. However, there were a few issues;

1.I noticed some collimation trouble, double images when I initially looked in but was able to merge things pretty fast. A fellow observer had more diffuculty.

2. I mounted the 22X100's using the Microstar bino adapter based on a recommendation at this forum, but the IPD was difficult to adjust since the optical barrells ran into the adapter before getting far enough in.

3. The eyecups were of the winged style so had to be removed for use with my eyeglasses.

So I ordered a 1.5" riser for the adapter clearance, new low profile eyecups both from Oberwerk and went to Lee Valley and picked up a complete jewelers screwdriver set.

The riser allowed enough IPD adjustment and good clearance of the bino adapter, the new eyecups allowed easy viewing of the entire field with eyeglasses on. Now i just had to wait for a clear night to collimate on some stars.

Last evening was supposed to be clear but we did get some cloud and general haze which limited our new ~mag.7 site to ~6.5. We collimated by removing the glue? from the access holes in front of the eyepieces. That proved to be the more difficult part. Collimation was simple, just look through the eyepieces at a star and merge the images, we felt that this was much easier then newtonian collimation and well worth the adjustment. No more struggling to merge images and the views were dramatically improved.

There are serveral negatives which could be listed but for the price of an eyepiece you get two 4-inch telescopes mounted in tandem with two ~60-degree oculars and Chromatic abberation isn't soo bad on the Moon.

After adjusting the alignment I put them through their paces with two other experienced observers. We looked at the M's, 94,63,51,81/82,20,21,23,24,25,11,54,80,4,3,5,69.70,6,7,28,
22,8,20,21,30,31,32,110,33,103 and NGC's, 6559, 6144,Double Cluster, 5195, B's, 91,92,93,44,78.

Every time I had the bino's I was hunting galaxies and dark nebula, I'd let one of the other guys take a look and he'd swing to open clusters. We all agreed that they were a load of fun and despite other equipment on hand they were heavily used by all observers. The most experienced of the bunch concluded by saying that he was highly sceptical of my purchase and how usefull of a fixed low power optical device but in the end said that one day he'd like to have a pair and they were the ultimate low power grab and go device.

These binos provide an alternative to my 80mm short tube APO. I've been surprised by the image brightness over the 80mm APO that the 22X100 provide. I've looked through several short tube scopes in the 3-5-inch range but these provide something unique compared to those monocular views.

-Chris

--------------------
Chris
7X50 Vixen,22X100 Antares
80mm William Optics Megrez II ED
Santel MK6
Borg 125SD f6 (Pentax/Oasis version)
Tak-Lapides
Pentax XW's 40,20,14,10,3.5, 3.8XP, Speers 5-8, 30mm Widescan III, 5mm XO (on Order)

Post Extras