Nice photos, Sout Fork, but as you probably already know they obscure rather than reveal the optical differences that would be visible at the eyepiece. After all, these are low resolution jpegs of completely different subjects, under different lighting conditions and different magnifications. Contrast is compressed compared to the real world and detail is probably limited by the medium, not the optics of the telescopes. A set of photos, all made at 60x, of the same test object under the same lighting conditions might give us a better idea about the relative quality of the scopes.
Precisely my point:
The "real" underlying optical quality is always obscured by the the fact that each image is always viewed or taken of "completely different subjects, under different lighting conditions and different magnifications" and "limited by the medium".
Thus the final ultimate quality of any given image is, more often than not, limited by the optics by only a marginal extent compared to these other practical real world factors. That is assuming at least decent quality glass.
Hi Henry,
The new Kowa 88's are getting some great reviews as far as I can tell. havent been able to find their actual focal length yet but they must be "fast" by anybody's standard and certainly by yours. So have they achieved a breakthrough?
Well, I'll mention one I have some experience with, compared only to it's siblings. The Swarovski 65mm scopes have f/7.1 objectives and the 80mm's have f/5.8 objectives of the same design. IMO the 65HD is easily the highest quality scope of the bunch, much better than the standard 80mm but also a higher quality scope (per mm of aperture) than the 80HD because of the lower aberrations from both the smaller objective and higher focal ratio. In that case, for once, everything besides focal ratio (and aperture) is equal (glass types, objective design, erecting system, eyepiece). As always, however, scopes have to be judged individually. A really good 80ED specimen would be better than a mediocre 65HD.