My optometrist, her face about 3 inches from mine, uses one of these Bausch and Lomb "Coddingtons" to peer all around my retinas, telling me to look up, or down, or to the side, or straight at her ear. My internist pops a cone on it to look in my ears. You know the tool I'm talking about.

I got one of these lighted loupes today from Richard Binder, and it makes looking at minute details, on nibs, for instance, easier.

Thanks to all the information here, I bought many pens in a short time, and got into tinkering with the nibs. I have loupes and reading magnifiers already, but they were unsatisfactory because I either cast a shadow on the nib or I get the lamp's bulb reflection or beam straight in my eye. Keeping in mind that sometimes you DO want to use the reflection off metal to see where irregularities are...

I was squinting a lot to avoid reflected light. This tool casts an even, subdued light. LED-lit loupes or a loupe-and-lamp setup require you to move the nib so the light doesn't interfere with the view. Here, the even light means you can easily distinguish a burr from the edge it's on, or a rough spot that forms an edge. It's a bit like working in a north-facing room - which metalsmiths (my other avocation) prefer for its consistency.

The handle is comfortable, better than holding onto the cage of a fold-out loupe. It's a bit longer than the two AA batteries it holds, and is made of a seamless metal tube. The area you can see at a time is fairly small, and the light is neither brilliant (and therefore not blinding) nor dim.

You hold this magnifier just as close to your face and the nib as you would a jeweler's loupe.

You won't be able to peer into a pen cap or barrel, as the lens focuses at a very precise and short distance from the its surface. (I have forgotten all the optics I ever knew, so the terms may be wrong.)

I suspect that I may take this magnifier to my next pen show - sometimes the lighting in those ballrooms isn't good enough to compensate for my eyesight.

(If there's a place for tool reviews, please move it there.)