Photon man wrote about buying a used 10.5mm Pentax XL for
cdn$350.
1- Price is reasonable or not?
Hmm. Efstonscience in toronto lists the 10.5mm Pentax
at cdn$449.00. Eagle Optics sells it for us$238 (about cdn$424 plus
shipping). I'd say $350 is a so-so price.
2- How does the 10.5 do on planets - were you saying Ortho-like?
If you want the very best planetary view, you would probably be
better off with a narrow-field eyepice with less glass. Good
choices are University Optics Orthos, Televue Plossls and
Celestron Ultimas (modified plossls). The best bang for the buck
in that list is probably the University orthos. If you like used
eyepieces (assuming you can find one) the 10.5mm Meade Research Grade
ortho from the late 70s is one of the best. If you want a modern
eyepice and if money is no object,
consider Takahasi and Zeiss. The advantage of those two is that
Mike will soon have enough of them for us to have a really good
eyepice comparison party at his place. :) (Right?)
3- I still have the 10mm Speers-Waller - has comfortable eye relief
for me. Ignoring the eye relief, is Pentax 10.5 substantially
better?
Hard to tell without an A-B comparison. Juding by what I have
read, I would guess "probably". But the real question is "is it
worth the extra money to you".
Given the absence of empirical data to work with hmm....
The 10mm Speers is a good eyepice. From what I read, the 10.5mm
Pentax XL is very good. Some people prefer the pentax 10.5mm to
a 9mm Nagler (high praise indeed). The best advice would be to
look through both (which I have not done). However here are a
few web links from people who have at least looked through the
10.5mm pentax:
Short review of Pentax 7mm XL hidden here: (search for
"pentax"):
A comparison of pentax 7mm xl with others.
A really big personal review of many eyepices with several
references to 10.5mm Pentax XL.(search for "pentax"):
13 people rated the 10.5 mm Pentax XL as a 9.85 out of
10 with a 0.35 standard deviation (search for "SMC XL 10.5mm"):
In your circumstances, I'd probably keep the Speers and get a
super-high quality planetary eyepice to compliment it.
May billion (or zero) year-old photons saturate your retinas,
-ad
