8 replies to this topic

[wagg]

hi, has anyone used orion's ultra or lanthanum zoom eyepieces? is it me or are they too good to be true? after all, wouldn't we all want to have that many focal lengths for 250 bucks? or are they the real deal?
peace, wagg

[Don W]

There's no such thing as free lunch. Zooms do give you a wide range of magnifications, but at a price. The field of view is very narrow and gets worse as the magnification goes up.

[erik]

most of them also add a bit of false color and ghosting as well, and the cheaper ones (like orion's explorer zoom) suffer from glare.

[Relativist]

AFAIK as you zoom in the field gets bigger in most zoom EP's I've heard of. As you zoom out, then the field gets narrower. So, for example, a 8-24mm zoom EP might seem very narrow at 24mm and relatively wide at 8mm. Somewhere in the middle it's ok to use. What I usually tell people is to try using one and see if you like it. It's nice because you can dial in the best maginfication any given night will give. Usually people have medium and low power EP's to find stuff or give wide FOV's, and the zoom is used to get higher magnification views. GL.



.......Curtis

[David Knisely]

hi, has anyone used orion's ultra or lanthanum zoom eyepieces? is it me or are they too good to be true? after all, wouldn't we all want to have that many focal lengths for 250 bucks? or are they the real deal?
peace, wagg

If you really want an eyepiece with a variable power ability, you might check out "The Canadian Cannon", otherwise known as the Antares 5-8mm Speers-Waler. It isn't a zoom (you have to adjust the focus a little as you change its equivalent focal length), but its wide apparent field (78 degrees) and nice performance makes it a nice eyepiece (does require just a little inward focus travel though). Its just a tad more expensive than the Orion zoom, but IMHO, its worth it. You can read the review of it on the Cloudynights web site. Clear skies to you.

[F.Meiresonne]

The LV zoom is great, really.I own one and i used it most of the time every clear night i watch the skies.I has a bit of a narrow view at 24mm but the field of view at 8mm is great. It delivers sharp contrasty views and it is very useful at open clusters because you can adjust the field of view in funtion of the size of the clusters. So you don't have to switch every time to another piece.
Strange that in the reviews of Ed Ting it scores not so very high. He has stated that there was a rather big quality difference between pieces, he tested three zoom ep of wich the third was the best.However a test report in some issue of Sky & Telescope also rated the LV zoom of very high quality as did it for the Televue zoom which is more or less the same ep.I find it to be a very useful ep that is worth every penny you pay for it.
Just my opinion...

[Scott Beith]

I agree with Freddy. I am very happy with the performance of my LV 8-24 Zoom. I really got lucky and won it in an Astronomy essay contest.

[Starman1]

The Vixen Lanthanum zoom must vary in quality a lot. I sold mine, because after comparing it to regular eyepieces at the same focal length, it was:
--less sharp at every focal length
--darker (noticeably less light transmission)
--noticeably less sharp from 8-10 than in the other lengths( and I mean on-axis!)
But, it was convenient. And I loved the "zooming through space" feeling of increasing the power.
When Uncle Al comes out with a zoom from 8-16, I'll stand in line to buy it.
Don