Zeiss Eyepieces - anyone have any info please?

[mrsonchus]

Hi all,
I just acquired these Zeiss eyepieces and wondered if anyone may be able to give me some information about them.
Incidentally - when put into a BX40 they perform absolutely the same in all aspects - quality, field-size inc, as the BX40's Olympus eyepieces.

A few images,








What 'scope are they from? What are the differences in the top rim of each eyepiece for?
From the markings I see they are 'extended plan', 10x mag, 20mm FOV (although they look to be the same FOV as my Olympus 22mm FOV 10x eyepieces when put into my BX40...) eyeglasses-capable - but what else?

I'll be selling these on, but have as yet no real info about them - help much appreciated.

[Scarodactyl]

These are stereo eyepieces for their stemi series. They made a lot of stemis over a long period so a change in styles at some point makes sense.

[mrsonchus]

Thanks Scaro' - that gives me something to go on - any idea what the series of numbers signify?

Off to look-up stemi 'scopes!

[Scarodactyl]

The three two-digit numbers are the part number, which I have found to be almost completely useless for finding information online. Zeiss is awful about that relative to eg Leica. Presumably they switched over to longer part numbers at some point between when the two eyepieces were made?

I am guessing these are maybe off one of their Chinese-made ones, given the small 20mm field of view and the E (likely economical as with Nikon). So maybe off a DV-4 or 2000. I suppose it could be off an older stemi--some of them were so modular they didn't even give them a snappy name, just a part number on whatever magnification module they happened to have.

Edit: on more searching I'm finding these installed only on compound scopes. I got fooled by the styling, which seems to have shifted to be more stemi-looking on the compounds (I am not up to date on Zeiss stuff). It seems like a pretty narrow FoV even for a compound eyepiece, so maybe the E is correctly interpreted anyway.

[mrsonchus]

Thanks again scaro' - very useful to know. I was surprised to find that they not only gave equal quality views (with UIS2 objectives), but what certainly appeared to be, equal FOV as the Olympus eyepieces, as used in the Olympus BX40.....
Tomorrow I'll check this more accurately and get back.

[Scarodactyl]

That's not too surprising. Any compound modern enough to have 30mm eyepieces is not doing any corrections in the eyepieces. At least on stereos compativility is pretty broad, though not totally universal (it will always produce a good image but sometimes you can't get them positioned to be parfocal).

[mrsonchus]

Yes, I thought the abscence of correction ALA infinity systems may be the reason.

They're 'up on e-bay' right now if anyone's interested!

I just acquired a BX50 (no objectives or condenser) with it's deliciously-bright 100W lamp and built-in filters, sooo, I will shortly have a nice trinocular BX40 with 10W LED conversion (from RetroDiode) fitted, for sale.