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Centurion

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I saw a 20x loupe made by Bausch and Lomb. It was $60 and it was tiny. Do loupe cost that much? It looked like a tiny magnifying glass. Tiny as in the it was very hard to see through such as small hole (about 9mm, less than half inch). Is that the way it is with loupes?

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pretty much - especially as you get into higher powers like 20X. I had a 20X and perhaps it's just me but I had trouble using it. But several folks here have said they use them just fine. That price is more than I would put into a loupe personally. B&L makes very good optics so they can ask a bit more i guess. I think I paid $20 for my 20X loupe. $12 for my 9X. I'd say keep looking for a better deal. And consider a lower power if you're just looking for something to help you evaluate a pen before purchasing or the like. You really only need 20X if you're going to be doing nib work and even then, i've made do with my 9X.

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That sounds like the same loupe I have, a small singlet B&L Coddington 20x. It is fiddly and tiny, and there've been times when it was useless since it focuses so close all usable light was blocked, but the optics are decent. $60 is rather high for it though; a quick search found it for under $20 elsewhere. I've also been hearing good things about Belomo loupes as budget alternatives, so you might hit google for those as well. Generally speaking quality optics do tend to be pricey, but lower cost/quality substitutes can be found too.

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Here's a link to the 22X Peak Loupe that Wim swears by.

 

http://www.pgiinc.com/22xpelo1.html

 

I will get one, one of these days, to augment my 10X B & L Hastings Triplet.

 

 

Edit: Punctuation

Ah, here we go. :-) Decent price at $40 and more user friendly than the B & L one which was only 20x. I will probably get this one, but will continue the search. No time pressure for me to get a loupe.

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I've also been hearing good things about Belomo loupes as budget alternatives, so you might hit google for those as well.

 

The Belomo loupes are good: sharp and undistorted across the field, and with no colour fringing. For a list of suppliers, http://www.beloma.us/internet.html

 

They go for about US$15 and are excellent vfm.

 

I think it's pretty much a law of nature that the higher the magnification, the smaller the field of view; also, the manipulation of the piece in the hand gets pretty tricky.

 

If you happen to have lying around an old 35mm camera with an interchangeable lens that isn't doing much work in the digital age, the lens from that will make an excellent low power magnifier.

 

Best

 

Michael

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Hi C.,

 

I've used many loupes over the years, different brands and magnifications, and as a result I now stick to PEAK loupes.

 

There just isn't anything better on the market right now, that is affordable, anyway. I haven't looked into really expensive loupes, lately. I have a 6X Zeiss loupe, which cost me > 60 guilders about 30 years ago (so I don't want to know how much it would be now, probably > 120 euros), and it is very good. Actually, it was the best I had, between my collection of 10X, 15X, 20X and 30X loupes I had as a former geologist. However, my PEAK 22X, the new version (triplet) has a better depth of field and focus, and is sharper.

 

As far as I can see it actually has retrofocus so that the distance between object and lens is more than you'd expect from a magnification this big. This allows for much more light to reach the object, hence clearer images. And it is incredibly sharp, is corrected for distortion and aberrations, and has a very wide flat field of focus, over the whole image.

 

It also has a (removable) transparant acrylic base, which allows for even easier focusing. Normally, I put the acrylic base at the bottom of a nib, hold the loupe to my eye, and tile the nib to get it into focus. Anything parallel to the base in the plane of the base of the base ( :D ), it is, which gives you an easy reference point.

 

And for very curved, bent or whatever objects, you can take the base off, and use it as a handheld loupe. Oh, and it comes with a little felt lined leather case.

 

Just note: there are currently 2 versions available, the chunkier one with a small base, and a much smaller one with a bigger base. The latter is advertised by PEAK as the PEAK NEW 22X, and is the one you want :D. It has 3 lens elements as compared to the 4 the older one had. It is the better one of the two.

 

Anyway, JMO and experience.

 

Warm regards, Wim

the Mad Dutchman
laugh a little, love a little, live a lot; laugh a lot, love a lot, live forever

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I have some good loupes on my website, at reasonable prices. I use a 30x ONLY for nib work. In fact, I often find a 10x sufficient even for nibwork. My favorite at this moment is a nice achromatic 10x lighted loupe (high intensity LED light built-in) that sells for only $20 and performs very well indeed.

Don't be fooled by the fact that the lens seems small, it offers very good performance and a very sharp and contrasty image.

 

 

 

http://www.tryphon.it/ledm.jpg

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In punta di penna.....

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  • 7 months later...
This is one of the reasons I recommend the 22X PEAK New loupe for nib work. Easy to focus thanks to the acrylic base, even in bad lighting a lot of light on the subject, due to the height of the acrylic base (far away from the object), and superb optical quality with high depth and width of focus.

Oh my gosh, Wim, you're ALWAYS right! I don't know why I don't always just start with whatever you recommend... I had a cheap fold-out 20x loupe that wasn't all that helpful, so I finally went and bought the Peak Loupe 22x you recommended - It's FANTASTIC! What a difference! I don't know why it's so much better (my other one has a glass lens, too, but this one's so much clearer! And the little base part just keeps the nib at the perfect focal distance AND lets light in... I'm in love!).

 

Thanks, Wim! I whole-heartedly agree with the recommendation for a Peak Loupe 22x.

I found the cheapest price was $35 from digitalfoto. :)9

 

 

[edited b/c the Peak has a glass lens, per Wim below :doh: :blush: ]

Edited by heidi
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Hi Heidi,

 

Thanks for your kind words, but I am not always right, I only wish :D. The PEAK's optics are glass BTW, not plastic. It is made of very high quality optical glass, and they just found the right optical formula, with the right amount of detail to QA when it comes to imagery.

 

It is so much clearer because it has a sharp and very well corrected image over the whole field of view, unlike any other triplets or achromatic loupes I know, where only the center of the image is any good at all, and because it is built to allow a lot of light to fall on the object of study. Also, for such a high magnification, they still managed to give it a large diameter, compared to other loupes.

 

BTW, the base can be removed (screw thread) in case you need to study objects of a shape where the base gets in the way.

 

Warm regards, Wim

the Mad Dutchman
laugh a little, love a little, live a lot; laugh a lot, love a lot, live forever

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I go with the "Peak" 22x recomendation also. I bought mine for examining the edge of slides for lens tests and consider it a first rate product. I find it works very well for the close inspection of the finest nibs.

YMMV

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