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Info / Advice Acuter DS65 (1 Viewer)

Dear all,

I’m looking for a light and portable spotting scope.
It will be used mostly for birding, nature observing and as a multipurpose scope (also for astronomy) when I am away for holiday and/or I feel too lazy to set up my Orion Optics VX8L dobson.

I’m quite tight on budget, and I’m considering the Acuter DS65, sold by First Light Optics at around 215€ / 230$. It comes with a good zoom eyepiece which I can use also on my dobson and it accept standard 1.25” astro EPs.

First question: is this the same zoom as the one used in Celestron Regal?

Second question: how bad is chromatic aberration (CA)? From one side, I had a TAL100 (a 100mm russian achromatic refractor) that was perfectly fine for me. I also have a 8x42 achromatic binocular, which again is fine for me. From the other side, I bought a year ago a Celestron Skymaster Pro 15x70 which showed terrible (again, for me) CA: a lot of purple fringe across trees, especially with a white (i.e. cloudy) background. I returned it after a week. If the DS65 performs like that, I prefer to buy nothing rather than getting frustrated each time I look at the eyepiece.

Any user report, comments and/or suggestions are very welcome
 
Hi,

I'm getting my Acuter GrandVista DS80A probably next week and while I'm definitely not a pro when it comes to scopes, I can give you some comments then.

Based on product pictures, I cannot tell any difference between Celestron Regal EP and the one in Acuter - they seem 1:1 to me so my guess would be it is the same EP. Being able to replace EP with standard 1.25" astro model sounds like a nice option - I'm not expecting the zoom EP to be stellar in high magnification so maybe some fixed focal astro EP would do better.

--Rob
 
Dear Rob, thank you very much.
I'm looking forward for your review! As far as I have read, this zoom eyepiece should be quite good, much better than the cheaper ones.
 
Yesterday I walked the entire day with a 1.2kg nikon zoom + DSLR. After that, I realized that I will never walk for a day with a 1.7kg spotting scope with me.

I'm considering a Nikon Prostaff 5 60mm.
Do you think I can use the SEP Zoom eyepiece also with my telescope, maybe with some home made adapter?

The 1.25" zoom eyepiece was one of the things I liked more of the Acuter.
 
Have to admit that I sell the Acuter range from my workshop but I have had customers praising the Acuter zoom and saying it is better than the one supplied with their Celestron. I'm testing the new Opticron MMS160 and have fitted it with the Acuter zoom EP and there is no CA apparent.
 
Hi Richard,
I would not expect any CA from the objective of 26mm f/6 plus.
Maybe from the eyepiece.

How about field curvature and soft edges with the Acuter zoom on the MM160 IS?
Is it the same zoom eyepiece as supplied with my old 80mm Acuter, 1990s??
Is the present Acuter zoom eyepiece a 1.25 inch barrel or maybe a screw fitting?
 
Hi,

Even though OP apparently opted for something lighter, here are few comments about the Acuter scope (DS80A). Unfortunately I had chance to use it only with an ultra-light flimsy plastic tripod but I got pretty good idea what the scope is capable of.

The scope itself is well built, everything seems to be rubber-armored metal with no apparent weak points. The case that goes over EP is also metal and the overall impression is of quality product. I like the dual-speed focuser, being able to fine tune focus with the other ring.

Image through the scope is bright and it stays bright all the way up to 60x magnification. At 20x it is very sharp and I cannot find any complaints about it. If pushed to maginifications over 45x, I could see some CA coming into picture - especially when slightly off-focus. I was on the lakeside and the sun was setting so the contrast was quite extreme with highly reflective water surface around the swimming mallard nicely acting as my test subject. So, definitely there is CA, but is there any non-ED scope that would not have any CA in these conditions with magnifications over 45? I don't know, maybe someone else can comment on that... I also quickly tried to see if there is any CA when viewing tree tops against clouds - couldn't see any, but that was just a quick glance.

Eye relief (20 mm) is adequate for spectacle-wearing people like me. I had to push the EP against my spectacle lense a bit to get full picture, but I think most people find eye relief good enough unless you have thick lenses etc.

It would be nice to get to test some quality zoom EP like Baader Hyperion with this one - most probably it would not have any effect on CA as it is caused by the scope optics, right? The supplied EP seemed good to me - I have no idea what would be improved with, say, 32x fixed EP.

Overall, I'm happy with the scope. It's a huge improvement compared to my old 60mm scope with so little eye relief it was practically impossible to use with spectacles. For someone looking for very high magnifications, some ED glass would probably be a better choice - there is an ED version available for double price.

Binastro, the EP is 1.25 inch barrel.

--Rob
 
Paljon kiitoksia Rob.

My old zoom eyepiece has probably been improved, although I am not sure.

I saw 4 Jupiter belts with the old 80mm Acuter and the 5mm eyepiece, perhaps 95x.
Through selected part of double glazing.
 
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