S&T C-6 Review

OK, I've brought this up before and it started a flame war. Let's try to
stay cool....

I read the reviews of telescopes in S&T and am always disappointed that they
don't do more rigorous testing or provide some real. The review of the C-6
is no exception. There's a bunch of "writing" about the mount and the
"optically excellent 6x30 finder" and then the write states the OTA has
"excellent optics". He determines this because he can see the Cassini
Division in Saturn. Neat. Those observations are subject to numerous
factors; seeing comes to mind. Why don't they bench test the optics? I'd
like the stats, not the impressions of an employee of the company paid to
sell the stuff.

Doink

"Doink" wrote in message
news
OK, I've brought this up before and it started a flame war. Let's try to
stay cool....

I read the reviews of telescopes in S&T and am always disappointed that
they
don't do more rigorous testing or provide some real. The review of the C-6
is no exception. There's a bunch of "writing" about the mount and the
"optically excellent 6x30 finder" and then the write states the OTA has
"excellent optics". He determines this because he can see the Cassini
Division in Saturn. Neat. Those observations are subject to numerous
factors; seeing comes to mind. Why don't they bench test the optics? I'd
like the stats, not the impressions of an employee of the company paid to
sell the stuff.

Doink,


Most reviews are not in-depth enough to satisfy me, but I would take your
comments more seriously if they made it sound like you had actually given
the review a careful reading. The comment about Cassini's division involved
a bit more than just seeing it, and was only a small portion of the optical
evaluation. Did you miss the rest of it?

I am not familiar with the author of the article, so I am not sure what you
mean when you say "impressions of an employee of the company paid to sell
the stuff." Who does Mr. Ashford work for?

Clear skies, Alan

Sure. I read it all and didn't want to bore people here with a full summary.
My point was that what the observer sees on a given night really isn't a
good optical evaluation because there are extraneous factors which would
affect what one would see. That aside, I would like to see a bench test if
someone says the optics are "excellent". I would equate it to someone who
says a car gets good mileage because they only fill it up once a week.

By employee... S&T is reviewing a product of a paying advertiser. If they
outsourced the reviews to an independent testing authority, it would have
more credibility. OR, they could bench test and state the numbers as
computer magazines do. They measure actual performance AND give the human
impression. Don't get me wrong. I appreciate the wrires impressions but I
would like to see some data to support the "excellent optics" claim. They
did measure the image shift and I found that helpful.

Doink
"Alan French" wrote in message
...
"Doink" wrote in message
news
OK, I've brought this up before and it started a flame war. Let's try to
stay cool....

I read the reviews of telescopes in S&T and am always disappointed that
they
don't do more rigorous testing or provide some real. The review of the
C-6
is no exception. There's a bunch of "writing" about the mount and the
"optically excellent 6x30 finder" and then the write states the OTA has
"excellent optics". He determines this because he can see the Cassini
Division in Saturn. Neat. Those observations are subject to numerous
factors; seeing comes to mind. Why don't they bench test the optics? I'd
like the stats, not the impressions of an employee of the company paid to
sell the stuff.

Doink,


Most reviews are not in-depth enough to satisfy me, but I would take your
comments more seriously if they made it sound like you had actually given
the review a careful reading. The comment about Cassini's division
involved
a bit more than just seeing it, and was only a small portion of the
optical
evaluation. Did you miss the rest of it?

I am not familiar with the author of the article, so I am not sure what
you
mean when you say "impressions of an employee of the company paid to sell
the stuff." Who does Mr. Ashford work for?

Clear skies, Alan

Doink wrote:
By employee... S&T is reviewing a product of a paying advertiser. If they
outsourced the reviews to an independent testing authority, it would have
more credibility.

"Contractor" would be a more accurate characterization of the reviewer,
since he isn't employed by Sky and Telescope, I don't think. But even
if he is, the question stands: If the reviewer wrote a negative review,
or at least a review that pointed out a few too many negative points,
would Sky and Telescope refuse to publish it as written (either reject
it or suggest revisions to make it more positive)? It's certainly
possible, but do they in fact behave that way?

I really don't know. The most I can say is that I don't think they
would (provided the review was done professionally), I don't have any
evidence that they do, but an outsider can never say for sure. I do
wonder, as you do, why the reviews can't be made more consistent. Some
reviewers do Ronchi testing, some don't. Some do a star test and image
the results, some don't. There should probably be some sort of standard
for reviews. I've seen some real crappy reviews (not in S&T, though).

I would also like to see more comparative reviews. The reason why so
many reviews say "excellent optics" is because so few telescopes are
dogs, except by the Golden-Eye standards upheld by the astronomical
sophisticates. That does not mean, however, that all non-dogs are
created equal. Some will likely be considerably better than others, but
we can't tell, because they all say, "excellent optics." Comparing two
or more scopes against each other is a good way to at least put the
scopes in a kind of ordering.

I've heard that the Japanese magazine, Tenmon Guide (sp?), does indeed
do bench testing in their reviews, so it is possible. Of course, that
raises the spectre of hand-selected units, but you have that problem
anyway, even without the bench testing. Bench testing merely raises
the stakes.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

Brian Tung wrote:
But even
if he is, the question stands: If the reviewer wrote a negative review,
or at least a review that pointed out a few too many negative points,
would Sky and Telescope refuse to publish it as written (either reject
it or suggest revisions to make it more positive)? It's certainly
possible, but do they in fact behave that way?

This brings up an idea. Perhaps there is a different strategy
altogether. I never see S&T reviewing crap junk telescopes. Perhaps
they focus on decent telescopes in the first place and simply decline
to do negative reviews by avoiding reviewing junk scopes.

The most obvious exception I have seen to this idea was the negative
review of the TMB eyepieces. I feel that there must have been some sort
of personal agenda involved in that fiasco. While it might be possible
to argue that a $90 TV Plossl can proffer views just as good, I think
it was unfair the way they were slammed in the review.I own several and
they are the equal of any eyepiece that I have looked through for
planetary observing through my APO refractors. And then they go on to
speak highly of the new C-6's optics, that's ironic. It was a shame to
see a small producer of high quality equipment take it on the chin in
such a way, a shame indeed...



rat
~( );

rat ~( ); wrote:
This brings up an idea. Perhaps there is a different strategy
altogether. I never see S&T reviewing crap junk telescopes. Perhaps
they focus on decent telescopes in the first place and simply decline
to do negative reviews by avoiding reviewing junk scopes.

I agree that they intentionally avoid reviewing junk scopes. The
question is, what do they do when they come across a scope that isn't
sold as junk, but nevertheless doesn't perform as well as others in the
same price range? It is possible to be flatly descriptive and not be
negative, but I prefer a more comparative approach.

The most obvious exception I have seen to this idea was the negative
review of the TMB eyepieces. I feel that there must have been some sort
of personal agenda involved in that fiasco.

Funny--I don't remember that review being nearly that negative. I'll
have to go back and review it.

It was a shame to
see a small producer of high quality equipment take it on the chin in
such a way, a shame indeed...

No one should be immune to a bad review, if that *particular* piece of
equipment happens to be bad--whether they be TMB, AP, or an anonymous
Chinese company.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

Doink wrote:
OK, I've brought this up before and it started a flame war. Let's try to
stay cool....

I read the reviews of telescopes in S&T and am always disappointed that they
don't do more rigorous testing or provide some real. The review of the C-6
is no exception. There's a bunch of "writing" about the mount and the
"optically excellent 6x30 finder" and then the write states the OTA has
"excellent optics". He determines this because he can see the Cassini
Division in Saturn. Neat. Those observations are subject to numerous
factors; seeing comes to mind. Why don't they bench test the optics? I'd
like the stats, not the impressions of an employee of the company paid to
sell the stuff.



I find no fault with the review of the optics, perhaps because I
expect the usual Celestron excellence in the C6. I have heard
worse things about the mount (ASGT) than I read there.

Phil

Doink wrote:

By employee... S&T is reviewing a product of a paying advertiser. If they
outsourced the reviews to an independent testing authority, it would have
more credibility.

But why would you expect them to start doing that now?

Was this review more superficial than past reviews? Not to me ..
pretty much what I would expect.

Of course, I'd pretty much decided my thoughts about the scope
(nice optics, limited mount) based on reading posts/reviews/etc.
at Cloudy Nights.

Phil

rat ~( ); wrote:
Brian Tung wrote:
But even
if he is, the question stands: If the reviewer wrote a negative review,
or at least a review that pointed out a few too many negative points,
would Sky and Telescope refuse to publish it as written (either reject
it or suggest revisions to make it more positive)? It's certainly
possible, but do they in fact behave that way?

This brings up an idea. Perhaps there is a different strategy
altogether. I never see S&T reviewing crap junk telescopes. Perhaps
they focus on decent telescopes in the first place and simply decline
to do negative reviews by avoiding reviewing junk scopes.

The most obvious exception I have seen to this idea was the negative
review of the TMB eyepieces. I feel that there must have been some sort
of personal agenda involved in that fiasco. While it might be possible
to argue that a $90 TV Plossl can proffer views just as good, I think
it was unfair the way they were slammed in the review.I own several and
they are the equal of any eyepiece that I have looked through for
planetary observing through my APO refractors. And then they go on to
speak highly of the new C-6's optics, that's ironic. It was a shame to
see a small producer of high quality equipment take it on the chin in
such a way, a shame indeed...

Rat, this retelling of the story is not exactly what went on, isn't it?
The (sad?) fact was the several in the same batch of the samples sent
to the S&T reviewer (Gary Seronik?) were admitedly (from T.Back) of
poor quality and, as luck had it, 2 out of the 3 sent were of
poor/average quality. In all fairness the reviewer did a darn good job
in that case. If there was any fault then it was all down to poor QC
from mfg/APM (assuming APM should have done some sort of screening
before actually sending them over to T.B., of course). Trying to put
the blame on S&T (and I'm not exactly a supporter of 'em) for some
unfanthomable "personal agenda" is ludicrous.

Regards

Andrea T.

rat ~( ); wrote:

The most obvious exception I have seen to this idea was the negative
review of the TMB eyepieces. I feel that there must have been some sort
of personal agenda involved in that fiasco.

Hmmm .. I never really considered it in that way.

Phil