Alternative spotting scopes (1 Viewer)

Thanks, this is interesting. The Skywatcher eyepiece is slowly approaching my residence.
Hope it's not a big fail.

//L

By pigeon post?
Maybe a delivery drone.

The Nikon scope lens converter and the 105 f/4 Micro Nikkor is equivalent to a 10.5x26 monocular.

My much used Docter 10x25 binocular is a little better and gains about 0.3 magnitude in brightness. But it has two tubes.
The Nikon converter is certainly useful, and a photographer with a long good lens could make good use of it.
But I think dedicated scopes are better, at least the good ones.

Just found the Celestron 20mm Erecting eyepiece.

It is very strange.

With many photo lenses I couldn't achieve focus.

With the 105mm f/4 Micro Nikkor if I put the eyepiece very deeply into the lens, about 35mm into the lens, I get focus.

The AFOV is about 28 degrees.
Long eye relief, easily used with glasses.
Very difficult to position without glasses.

Severe pincushion distortion.
Severely blurred edge, possibly curved field and more.

I think the prism is just too small. It might work on a 10mm erecting eyepiece but not 20mm.

Eyepiece deep blue coating, prism uncoated.

Plastic eyepiece.
Weighs 53g.
Small rubber eyecup.

£14.99 good secondhand.

I have met few eyepieces this bad, at least with this type of set up.

I may try this at night.
But maybe not.

I have received the Skywatcher eyepiece, but haven't had the time to dissect its shortcomings.
It is clearly much better than the eyepiece you reviewed above here, though.

The Skywatcher's AFOV is not bad at all, and the eye relief is actually too much.
Either there's a lens problem with the Nikkor lens, or there is noticeable truncation from the eyepiece.
The Nikkor is fine with ordinary eyepieces, but the image is flipped and reversed. With the Skywatcher erecting eyepiece, the view isn't noticeably better than with the Hama lens scope converter.
While it's sharp even at the FOV edge, its still dull with subdued colours and contrast, and also fairly dim.
Clearly, there's good reason for the big prism unit of spotting scopes. Lesson learned.

//L