Baader PlanetariumClassic Ortho 10mm HT Multi-Coated Eyepiece with Winged Eyecup, 1.25" Barrel

Love this eyepiece for the clarity, color and sharpness.

Back in the "good old days," you had this amazing choice of eyepieces: There was the Huygenian, otherwise called the blurry soda straw. Then there was the wider angle Kellner. For true quality, however you got the Orthoscopic. It featured crisp images across the "wide," 42 degree field. If you looked at rooftops, they didn't bend, or change shape. All lines were straight. If you looked through a reflector, there was no spurious color. Orthoscopics were what you aspired to.Baader used to have a fairly high end line, called the Genuine Ortho. These, like earlier Ortho brands all came from small shops in Japan. A combination of retirements and the tsunami wiped out Japan as a source. Now the Chinese are stepping in, like they have in so many other instances.Orthoscopics have also run into competition from other designs. Ploessls boast a wider field, though with less eye relief. Various companies produce eyepieces with fields up to 110 degrees. They work very well, too. So has Baader responded to these challenges? Yes, but in ways that no longer make these a "classic Ortho."Physically, they appear to have enlarged the plano-convex eye lens relative to the triplet field lens. They also gave one side of the triplet (the eye lens side) a stronger curvature than the other.The apparent field of view is now 50 degrees. Baader has introduced a lot of pincushion distortion in an effort to maintain sharpness over the field. In addition to the distortion comes a bit of lateral color (color fringing at the edge of the field). A true Abbe design Ortho would have a narrower field, essentially zero lateral color and, no distortion. Aside from the reasonable price, why would anyone want these?I compared this particular eyepiece with two eyepieces from the Baader Hyperion lineup. I compared this with the Hyperion 10mm, and using a Barlow, I compared it to the Hyperion 5.The Classic Ortho shows less color fringing than the Hyperions. Even when Barlowed, the Ortho showed more than the Hyperion 5. When looking at Saturn there was less light scatter, and I was able to glimpse Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons. It was not visible in the Hyperion.That's why you buy these things. The field of view is nothing special. The eye relief is pretty short. Still, they show more for less money.