Telescope advise please

[coasty]

As I am now looking forward to spending much more time out and about. I wish to invest in a new telescope. However I wish to purchase a draw tube type as I am not going to lug a tripod about and have used this type for many years and they are very easy to steady unaided rather than the short spotting scopes....They are also much more compact for shoving in a rucsack

However I wondered do any of you have knowledge of any that are particularly suitable for spectacle wearers? I used a Hertell and reuss for many years but the lack of eye cups and short eye focus makes it unsuitable.. Any ideas??

[richardkm]

If you're looking for someting portable, have a look at the Opticron MM2, they do a straight, ED version. The beauty of these little gems is that they telescope down and, they take a range of eyepieces. Not too expensive either. We sell a lot to birders who are travelling abroad and don't want to take their expensive, relatively heavy normal birding scopes.

[colincurry]

I considered the MM2 but an engineer connected to one of the suppliers suggested that the draw tube attracted dust (that said, I do have a Canon 100-400). This was only one view and I am sure that there are very many happy MM2 owners out there. I too did not want to lug heavy gear around. I chose a Nikon ED50 with a 13-40 eyepiece. It fits in my jacket pocket, is light, waterproof and comes in a fitted cover. We have had to adjust the cover to allow spotting and focusing without removing the cover.

I eventually took the view that as I would only be buying one scope it should be as good as I wanted reasonably to afford and would suit my circumstances.

Colin

[Perry Grin]

Originally Posted by colincurry

I considered the MM2 but an engineer connected to one of the suppliers suggested that the draw tube attracted dust (that said, I do have a Canon 100-400). This was only one view and I am sure that there are very many happy MM2 owners out there. I too did not want to lug heavy gear around. I chose a Nikon ED50 with a 13-40 eyepiece. It fits in my jacket pocket, is light, waterproof and comes in a fitted cover. We have had to adjust the cover to allow spotting and focusing without removing the cover.

I eventually took the view that as I would only be buying one scope it should be as good as I wanted reasonably to afford and would suit my circumstances.

Colin

Have a look at the Nikon ED50 too. Very small and compact, similar to the MM2, but has no draw tube and so no potential dust issue. I've only looked though one briefly but it is highly commended. There are lots of reviews of it on BirdForum - The Net's Largest Birding Community, Dedicated To Wild Birds if you want to find out more.

[Sherlock]

Hi. As I mentioned on Hello section I have a Mighty Midget 2 with ed glass. Reading about the dust problem I decided to put a film of tape round the extended section to prevent this. The scope fits easily into it`s carry bag in it`s extended position, so I see no reason to keep extending and retracting it - am I wrong?