Stellarvue SV80 (LOMO 80/480)
I started reviewing scopes in the early
years of the new century. It was a very different time.
Back then, quality small
refractor mostly still meant Tele Vue: their TV-76 or TV-85. Yes, there was
Takahashi’s FS-78; no it wasn’t really small. Meanwhile, Russian
LZOS triplets started at 100mm aperture.
Then an 80mm triplet appeared from
another Russian optics fabricator – LOMO. Briefly available in a variety
of tubes, it gained a reputation for superb optics then promptly ceased
production.
Back in the day, I never got to try one
and always regretted it. Here, thanks to a kind loan (thanks Alan!), I finally
get to. Let’s find out if it really was superior to those early noughties
ED doublets …
At A Glance
|
Telescope |
Stellarvue SV80
(LOMO 80/480) |
|
Aperture |
80mm |
|
Focal
Length |
480mm |
|
Focal
Ratio |
F6 |
|
Length |
390mm w/o dew cap |
|
Weight |
3770g incl ring, plate
and dew cap. |
Data from me.
The LOMO 80/480 objective was available in a variety of OTAs: here in an
A&M carbon tube (image credit: Richard Lynch).
Design and Build
For most
in the west, the acronym ‘LOMO’ means a basic Soviet film camera
that gave its name to a photography trend. Lomography revels in the limitations
of its hardware to deliver spontaneous, edgy urban images with a ‘70s
Berlin vibe.
But LOMO
(Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Association) was not just a maker of basic film
cameras. Similar to LZOS, it was (and is) a manufacturer of optics from
consumer through research to military.
There
were other LOMO astronomy objectives, including a 95/650, but all were imported
in tiny numbers and are vanishingly rare now. The only other mainstream lens
was the twin of this one – an 80/600 optimised for visual use, but it too
is much less common than the 80/480 on review.
The 80/480
was available in OTAs from various brands. The most basic (and likely highest
production) was a William Optics OTA with their single-speed Chinese focuser.
At the exotic end was a carbon-tube from A&M. The one on test combines US
maker Stellarvue’s rugged tube with a lovely
(bespoke?) Crayford Feather Touch from Starlight Instruments.
Optics
Like most
consumer triplets, this is an air-spaced objective with a centre ED crown
element flanked by flints. Exactly which crown and flint glasses I
couldn’t find out. It’s possible that – like LZOS –
LOMO melted their own. Given the performance, the ED glass is clearly a premium
high-fluoride one.
Unlike
most, this is not a simple foil-spaced design. Instead it has thick annular
spacers to give air gaps of a few millimetres between the elements. This allows
for improved correction and better star images, but it’s a relatively
expensive design. To support this, the cell is very finely engineered and has
micro-ring baffles machined in, both in front of and behind the glass. The lens
ring proudly states, ‘Super Apochromat’ and as we’ll see
that’s right.
Although
this is an older lens, coatings are of the very best. Overall, the sense here
is of a cost-no-object approach consistent with its high price at the time.
Lomo objective: note absence of foil spacers and
those superb coatings.
Tube
The tube
looks quite similar to Stellarvue’s
contemporary Nighthawk 80mm achromat, with its long dew-shield (great for
working around streetlights). Unlike that cheaper scope, here everything
threads together and the adapters are machined and anodised aluminium. Build
quality is solid and excellent.
The tube is
finished in a fetching and unusual pearl white. Internally, there is
highly-textured black paint and two knife-edge baffles to suppress stray light.
Focuser
This small
Crayford Feather Touch has a body just 1.5” long and a 2.5”
diameter drawtube with a shortish 2.5” (65mm) travel. As usual with an
FT, the dual-speed pinion has a gold fine focus knob and a locking thumbscrew
underneath. All the parts are milled from hard stainless. It’s a
beautifully fabricated, if expensive, device.
For imaging
with heavy cameras, one of the larger rack-and-pinion models might be
preferable, but for visual use (or imaging with a consumer camera) these little
Crayfords are even smoother and more precise: perhaps
the best visual focuser available.
The focuser
is mounted on a custom-made adapter, likely by Starlight Instruments
themselves. It incorporates push-pull screws for fine adjustment of tilt having
first slackened off some tiny grub screws. I didn’t disturb it because
alignment was already excellent.
Mounting
The SV80
comes with a (slightly longer) clone of TeleVue’s
classic clamshell, along with the same ¼-20 threads on the base. Tension
adjustment is easy and convenient with a big thumbscrew. SV helpfully provide a
matching short Vixen dovetail plate.
All but
the very smallest alt-az mounts should provide a
stable platform for the SV80. I mostly used it on a Vixen APZ which proved very
stable at high powers. The lighter Porta mount worked fine too, but vibes were
more of a problem – just as they were for Tele Vue’s TV-85. For
imaging, a mid-weight equatorial would be preferable.
Accessories
The SV80
comes with a nice hard case, clamshell and dovetail as described, but
you’ll of course need to add a diagonal and an eyepiece or two as a
minimum.
For
imaging, a flattener is a must. Tele Vue’s own 0.8x is the obvious
choice, but has limitations (see imaging section).
For
visual, you’ll want some short focal length (2.5mm – 5mm)
Naglers/Delos etc to give the high powers this little scope is easily capable
of.
Personally,
I don’t need a finder at this focal length – I just use a low-power
eyepiece. A simple 50mm Plössl will give a true field of around 5
degrees, much the same as 10x50 binoculars. If you don’t want to bother
with a 2” diagonal, something like a 24mm Panoptic still gives a 3.2
degree field and a more useful magnification and exit pupil for star fields and
DSOs.
If you do
prefer a finder, you can attach one to the included shoe, but note that the
clamshell doesn’t come with the TV dovetail cut into it for one of
their RDFs.
In Use – Daytime
The SV80
is compact enough, but probably too heavy for use as a daytime spotter. It
gives astonishingly crisp and fringe-free views, though, even at powers well
above spotting-scope norms. You can see this in my usual over-exposed branches
against a bright sky, which reveals no apparent false colour.
Views of
migrating ducks and geese far out on the sparkling waters of the bay are very
similar to the Stowaway. The improved correction over a fast ED doublet like
the TV-76 are very noticeable.
Over-exposed branches reveal minimal false colour,
excellent sharpness.
In Use – Astrophotography
The fast
focal ratio and wide field make finding objects and imaging them easy. As
expected, violet bloat is low. Those annular spacers give exceptionally clean
star images. The tilt-adjustment is a rare luxury feature on a scope of this
class. This scope was clearly designed for imaging.
Off-axis
curvature is quite severe at full-frame, again as expected due to the fast
focal ratio: you’ll need a flattener. Vignetting is very minor when used
with a wide-T adapter.
Focal
length (480mm) is the same as Tele Vue’s TV-76, so Tele Vue’s 0.8x
reducer (cheaply and readily available) works well to flatten the field and
give a fast F4.8, but introduces more vignetting as it terminates in a standard
T thread. On the plus side, it doesn’t introduce much extra false colour.
One small
downside of the wonderfully smooth, precise and shift-free focuser is its short
travel. That and the ample in-focus mean you’ll need an extension for
imaging.
For
comparison, I’ve included unprocessed 30s subs of the Pleiades at ISO
3200 both with and without the TV flattener. Given the tiny image scale, the
SV80 takes a fine prime-focus snap of the Moon.
M45: 30s ISO 3200 Canon EOS 6D MkII
at F6 prime.
M45: 30s ISO 3200 Canon EOS 6D MkII
at F4.8 with Tele Vue 0.8x flattener.
The Moon: 1/100th ISO 100 Canon EOS 6D MkII at F6 prime.
In Use – Observing the Night Sky
General Observing Notes
The SV80
was clearly designed with imaging in mind, but it works just as well for visual
use, giving wonderful views of everything I set it on. The only drawback is the
need for very short focal length eyepieces to get high powers.
The ultra
precise, smooth Crayford focuser gave no image shift, even at 130x - one of the
best I’ve ever tested. But the short travel means you might need an
extension for some eyepieces.
For high
powers, a 3.7mm Ethos gave minor astigmatism from ~70% field width at 130x, but
was super-sharp centre-field. An old 5mm Nagler T6 was perfectly corrected to
the edge at 96x. For DSOs and star fields, both a 13mm Ethos and a
Nikon’s ultra-premium NAV-12.5 gave beautiful, immersive views at ~38x.
Cool Down
Despite being a
triplet with wide air spaces, cool down seems only a little slower than a
TV-85. Triplet cooldown here just isn’t the issue it can be at larger
apertures.
Star Test
The star test is
really excellent, with identical sharp rings either side of focus. Large air
gaps can be prone to decentring, but not here. I found no colour in the star
test, even on Rigel at 130x.
The Moon
just after first
quarter was a wonderful view through the 80/480: crisp and sharp, just icy
whites with no false colour bleeding into black shadows. I spent a happy hour
watching dazzling dawn creep down the crater wall of Arabian astronomer
Arzachel.
Mars
The Red
Planet can challenge fast ED doublets, giving a slightly soft-focus,
low-contrast view spoiled by false colour and blur. Here there’s none of
that. Focus is ultra snappy, the 98% disk crisp and with no false colour
in-focus and just the merest trace outside focus.
At
13.4” apparent size, the view of Mars was dominated by the featureless
(to an 80mm scope) ochre deserts of Tharsis across much of the disk. Still, at
160x with the 3mm setting on a Nagler Zoom, I noticed Mare Acidalium
on the limb and a bright polar cap in the north, the broken dark stripe of Mare Sirenum
and Mare Cimmerium around the south pole.
Jupiter
Jovian views were
ultra sharp too, with lots of detail at 130x, including the Great Red (now
pink) Spot obvious at just 100x and a barge in the North Equatorial Belt too.
The polar hoods were very distinct and I noted the equatorial belt between the
NEB and SEB where the festoons drag and converge on the equator.
Deep Sky
The SV80
delivered a lovely sparkly view of the Seven Sisters. A wide field and high
contrast makes it easy to spot the dark lane in M31, or go sweeping for small
clusters around Cassiopea.
I
immediately split Rigel at 130x: impressively easy for this aperture thanks to
minimal blur from the bright white main star. Also easy was the Double Double.
SV80 vs AP Stowaway
SV80 alongside AP Stowaway, both with dew-shields
retracted.
My
original intention was to compare the 80/480 with its early-century
contemporaries from Tele Vue – the TV-76 and TV-85. But in many ways
that’s not fair. If you’re fussy about correction, the little LOMO
performs to a noticeably higher level on almost everything – night or
day, photo or visual. A much closer comparison turns out to be Astro
Physics’ current Stowaway.
These
scopes – both air-spaced ED triplets - give a very similar view. The only
difference I could find is a trace of out-of-focus false colour on Mars that
the (slightly slower) Stowaway avoids. On the plus side, for visual with
lighter eps, the Crayford on the SV80 is smoother, finer and more precise, less
‘rubbery’ feeling (ironically) than the larger rack-and-pinion
Feather Touch on the Stowaway.
The
Stowaway’s extra aperture is most noticeable on deep sky (e.g. structure
in M42). The greater image scale and resolution is discernible, but not hugely
significant, on Jupiter and Mars.
For
imaging, violet bloat is again quite similar, but the Stowaway does correct the
outer field better – a result of its slower focal ratio and perhaps its
more modern design too.
Quite close
in weight, the Stowaway is a bit longer when operational and much longer with
the dewshield retracted for storage.
Summary
Despite
being ~20 years old, the LOMO 80/480 objective is a really excellent one: quite
comparable to the best of today (e.g. AP’s Stowaway). Thoughtfully
designed for imaging, it surprises with first-class visual performance too.
The Stellarvue tube is well designed and fabricated, with a
long dewshield for stray light protection from that pesky streetlamp. The
tilt-adjustable focuser mounting ring is a great feature for serious imagers. I
just love the small FT Crayford focuser – one of the very best if you
don’t need to support a heavy imaging rig.
Downsides?
Very solidly constructed in all respects, this is quite a heavy OTA for its
size and aperture.
The LOMO
80/480 is quite rare and expensive today, but still well worth tracking down
for its all-purpose prowess, especially in one of the OTAs with Feather Touch
focuser. For a similar price, it makes an interesting classic alternative to a
modern Chinese triplet.
Again, a
big thanks to Alan for the kind loan of his scope.
The
LOMO 80/480 is
one of the finest
80mm objectives. The SV80 turns it into a great imaging machine that works superbly
for visual too.
