I suppose this should be under spotting scopes, but I have only ever contributed to the binocular forum.
Birdwatching Magazine for September 2014 has an article on this new piece of kit announced by Leica.
They say that they think this is the first time a quality optics firm has produced such an item.
Questar have always had an inbuilt switchable Barlow lens since the 1950s. That is for 60 years.
TeleVue have various specialised Barlows up to 5 times increase in the focal length of the objective.
There are numerous other telescopes that use Barlow lenses.
The first use of the Barlow lens, invented by Peter Barlow, not of Coronation Street, seems to be in a Dollond telescope in 1833. So this is hardly something new.
I have long wondered why the Leica Apo telescopes of 77 mm aperture and upwards have not supplied dedicated Barlow lenses.
These telescopes, I think, can easily take a top magnification of 150 times without the optical image breaking down. The only limitation is the atmosphere and the fact that the brightness of the image reduces at high magnification.
These telescopes can certainly be used for observing, for instance, the planets.
I hope that Leica also supply perhaps a 2.8 times, so-called, extender to enable say 140 times magnification.
It is quite strange how conservative some of these well-known makers are.
I would also think that image stabilisation should be common by now in even lower priced binoculars, as even the cheapest digital camera may have image stabilisation.
Anyway, Leica are certainly not the first to use Barlow lenses.
Birdwatching Magazine for September 2014 has an article on this new piece of kit announced by Leica.
They say that they think this is the first time a quality optics firm has produced such an item.
Questar have always had an inbuilt switchable Barlow lens since the 1950s. That is for 60 years.
TeleVue have various specialised Barlows up to 5 times increase in the focal length of the objective.
There are numerous other telescopes that use Barlow lenses.
The first use of the Barlow lens, invented by Peter Barlow, not of Coronation Street, seems to be in a Dollond telescope in 1833. So this is hardly something new.
I have long wondered why the Leica Apo telescopes of 77 mm aperture and upwards have not supplied dedicated Barlow lenses.
These telescopes, I think, can easily take a top magnification of 150 times without the optical image breaking down. The only limitation is the atmosphere and the fact that the brightness of the image reduces at high magnification.
These telescopes can certainly be used for observing, for instance, the planets.
I hope that Leica also supply perhaps a 2.8 times, so-called, extender to enable say 140 times magnification.
It is quite strange how conservative some of these well-known makers are.
I would also think that image stabilisation should be common by now in even lower priced binoculars, as even the cheapest digital camera may have image stabilisation.
Anyway, Leica are certainly not the first to use Barlow lenses.