Bausch and Lomb Criterion 4000 Schmidt Cassegrain Telescope - Review
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ส.ค. 2024
- I could not resist this B&L 4000 when I saw it on an auction site. The forums suggest it may not be a classic... Bausch & Lomb didn't make astro scopes for long after this model and it's big brother had retailed in the mid 1980s. Is mine a hidden gem, as good as an old Celestron C5 or is it a poor performer as pronounced online?
In this review I see what was supplied in the box labelled "Bausch and Lomb Criterion 4000 Telescope System", and try out the scope for some birding in Cornwall and over a few nights for astro.
Any owners who can clarify if the "No.2" reducer is 0.5x or some less reduction, please let me know in the comments. It definitely reduces, but I'm not certain how much.
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I'm glad you do your own stuff and don't believe the reviews. You just say it like it is. Kudos.
Brings back memories, still have one with the wedge they made for it.
Flocking the OTA will really help the daytime contrast. My Meade 2045 makes for a good spotter and travel scope.
Welcome back Jenham 🙏🏻
Nice review. I do have the same 18mm eyepiece which I think is well above average and much better than what comes with telescope kits these days. Good contrast and sharpness and one of my often used eyepieces paired with long focal length scopes when looking at the sun and moon/planets.
It sort of seems to address some of ETX’s mechanical shortcomings but nothing spectacular optically it seems. That extension tube baffles me. I have absolutely no idea what it could be for. I hope one day to get my hands on a Questar just to see what all the buz is. This forked mini-scope design was very popular at a time. It could be practical again today and I’m confused why the market doesn’t have a fresh iteration. Plastic free hopefully
Hi Garnett, yes a scope with the 4000’s mechanics and the ETX or new C90’s optics would be a winner for me. I suppose the “need” to have GOTO might be an issue for some. The extension tube does indeed connect up to a t-ring and also to the reducer, but like you I’m unsure what it does - it doesn’t support eyepiece projection unless I’ve missed something. I imagine the Questar is nice to look at and very well made but can that justify the price? Agreed it would be nice to test one out. Clear skies, Graham
It does look cool
Thanks for the video - good to see the real world experience instead of just reputation being repeated. Small point: The eyepieces' moniker of A.S.P. is said to mean "achromatic symmetrical Plossl." Aspheric would have been out of range for the price point at the time.
Thanks for pointing that out.
Nice looking telescope. Very nice looking river.
Just picked one up for $100.00 , I like it !
Muy bonito y compacto telescopio catadioptrico
Good to see you back , would like a follow up on your Evolution 8" . Still loving my 9.25 " .
Thanks. Will have a think about another Evo video. I still really like mine.
In many respects it seems like the C90s of the 1980s, but there are also important differences.
To my mind, stacking video frames can compensate for bad seeing, but not for poor optics.
I’m wondering if the satellite you saw was Callisto, which at the moment can appear tar north and south of Jupiter and is not currently undergoing transits, occultations, or eclipses.
I’d like to investigate the optical quality further, as visually it was nice to use at lower powers and I’d collimated it. Shame B&L seems to have fallen short on the most important part of any scope.
Where you been Graham? Good to see you back.
Thanks! It took me a while to find a new subject for a video. Got a couple of ideas to work on now.
I'd forgotten about Bausch and Lomb and I don't think that they are still going?They use to make binoculars too and I had a pair which I think were 16x50 thus not easy to hold still.
Anything with that kind of minification should be on a tripod
Is there a mounting thread ?
I saw one once it felt cheap compared to my 2045, which also had bad rap for optics😢
Have the field wedge and tripod with mine
I think it can be improved by doing a top to bottom collimation.
I found one for $60, first S&C so will be fun to explore and tweak it.
I look forward to hearing your results.
Parabéns amigo.
Would a dew shield improve contrast? They seem like fairly common additions to c90s, so would think it'd help here as well.
It might yes, I can give it a try with a roll of flocking paper.
Where do I go to clean one of these?
That's a rebadged meade ex 80 or 90. It's looks identical except for the colour
The 4000 is an SCT whereas the ETXs are Maksutovs. B&L can only wish their scope matched at ETX optically! The B&L’s mount is better though, and some take the ETX OTA (when its mount fails) and put it on the 4000’s mount to make a nice hybrid scope.
Long time, no see. 😮
Yep, sometimes I just like to do visual Astro and not worry about finding new YT topics.
What planets can you see with this? Should I buy a different scope to see Mars or Jupiter?
This particular scope is not very good but I would recommend something like a Celestron C90 as an affordable small scope that can give pleasant views of the planets. You need to remember that planets are always small in an eyepiece, and that most images you see online are composed of many frames taken with an Astro camera and processed through a few programs. Visually you see less, but nonetheless seeing the bands and moons of Jupiter, the rings of Saturn and the polar cap on Mars is still achievable looking through a good small scope.
Hello,
Any chance of a review of the Questar3.5 inch, said to be a legendary instrument?
I’d like to, if someone can lend me one!
Nice video.
Sample variation is a real issue. As well as daytime tests and tests under the sky, you can do a Roddier test with an artificial star to get some numbers that are fairly close to an interferometer.
The lack of contrast and soft focus during the daytime test were bad signs. The full moon shot was really quite bad for a 4" scope. Disagree with "not the worst" for the Jupiter capture. For a 4" scope, that is really bad. Sad to see the poor reputation seems justified for these, as they are quite handsome scopes and appear to be very nice mechanically. Some images of out of focus stars would've been useful to identify if collimation was an issue, and would quickly show up higher levels of spherical aberration. From some of the out of focus images in the daylight test, it didn't look like collimation was way off, so I'd suspect it's just lots of SA due to poor figure.
I have a 4" JSO SCT (the Japan Special Optics Space-10) on the way. I suspect these are the source for the early Meade 2040's (which had "made in Japan" written on them). I will be comparing it to a couple of ETX-90s, a VMC110L, C5 and a Quester Duplex, maybe the Mizar Altair-15, and maybe some refractors. I plan to have a clear out and am basically giving up on these smaller cats, as a refractor in this aperture size range tends to quite drastically outperform them. There's not much out there on the 4" JSO scopes (later sold by Kenko). The 2040 doesn't have a good reputation, so I'm not expecting much.
On the flip side the Mizar Altair-15 is excellent. Much larger and heavier of course.
Thanks for the information. The scope was in decent collimation so probably the optics are the root cause as you say. I'll try to perform a test with an artificial star to learn more. I'd be interested to see a video of your comparisons. Clear skies.
Watch it with those forums: they talk a lot of CRAP...