I've been waiting patiently to try one of these before plunking down some serious dough for the set. I have always wanted to own the set because... 1. They are made in the USA. 2. They look good.
and 3. Some have said the views are better than Zeiss and the Supermojos!!
I attend at least 1 star party a month and the story is always the same... "You don't happen to have a Brandon eyepiece in that case do you?" . "Never heard of them... Are they nice??" or "I have a friend with a few, but he's not here tonight.. "
So far, to me it seems these eyepieces are as rare as their users.
Synchronicity!
I was about to post a 'quikie' review of the Brandon 24 (new version).
So here it is:
I bought this in 2008 from Brandon after reading all the glowing reviews here on CN.
When it first arrived I was using an f15 Mak and a TOA130.
It was pretty nice, but nothing special in the TOA.
It was rubbish in the Mak.
'Suckeeeerr" I thought and chucked it in a drawer vowing to never believe an EP review again.
Maybe I could flog it, or give it away and hope for the best. I quickly forgot all about it.
It re-surfaced last week while having a cleanout and I thought I'd give it one more chance and popped it in an LZOS lensed 80mm, not expecting much.
Son of a .......!
It's spectacular! I mean really spectacular.
It even outshines one of my top 3 EPs - the 24 Panoptic!
Last night I plonked in in a neighbour's f4 Newt using the correct Paracorr settings. Same result.
So I thought I'd give it a go in my f6 Apo. spotter- a very unforgiving scope- just to see how it'd fare in the bright of day.
You can guess the ending I'm sure
Except on the nearest objects (the cat, the garden, stampeding sheep ) it presents a beautiful, clear, flat field with lots of "bite" and no kidney-beaning, blackouts or any other optical nonsense: something only of which my TVs and Tak eyepieces are capable. And they cost twice as much or more than the Brandon.
To summarise. In a relatively fast scope, say f7 to f4, (the only scopes I've tried it in), this is absolutely the mid-range EP for you.
'Nuff said.