Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/01/11

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Subject: Re: The Leica of... Questars.... off-topic
From: Fred Ward <fward@erols.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 09:19:41 -0400

The thread that produced so many references to Questar has prompted me
to comment on my experience with this catadioptic telescope.

Questar, made in New Hope, PA, originally did such a fantastic job in
advertising this product that I drove up to the plant and office to see
what this was all about. This was in the 70s. Questar was positioning
itself as the all-time premier small telescope, sharper than sharp, able
to define butterflyl wings at 50 paces, stuff like that. It received
some good reviews in the photo mags, which will promote anything that is
also advertised.

I bought one, with the motor to let it track stars for very long
exposures.

Big mistake.

First, to be fair, it was sharp....a 1400mm lens I recall, but not
exceptional. It certainly did not beat any good brand-name regular lens.
It was sharper than my Nikon 500mm f/5 catadioptic, my Nikon 500mm f/8,
and my Canon 500 f/8 cat. And it was SLOW. I tested it alone and then
tested it at National Geographic and the center was a full 1 1/2 stops
slower than Quester advertised. And it had edge falloff, which we
thought it should not have due to the cat design. 

But the killer was that there was going to be a fairly long solar
eclipse centered over Virginia Beach, VA. Geographic wanted this covered
for an article it was doing on eclipses and I got the assignment. In
addition to shooting the eclipse in a long sequence, I also shot it with
normal, medium, and very long lenses. To get details or the corona I
ordered from Questar their solar filter, which would allow you to look
and shoot directly at the sun. I called and explained what I was doing
and who it was for and the large filter arrived a day or so before the
eclipse. 

Geographic rented a Winnabago for me to camp on the beach. I set up a
fence around it so I could set up 6 tripods and cameras without people
tripping over them, and I discovered that Virginia Beach street lights
were on automatic light-sensitive timers and they would all come on
during the eclipse. I contacted the mayor and had them all disabled.
This was a big-deal assignment. 

Everything went perfectly with all cameras, lenses, and other gear....
except for one. All the pictures with the Questar looked as if they had
been double-exposed. There was an extra dimmer image of the sun about  
1/8 inch below the real image. I had a second image messing up every
frame. All the film was unsable with the Questar.

Next day I called and raised hell.... expecting to hear that they must
have shipped a broken unit, or something like that. Instead, the Questar
rep in PA said that the solar filter (which cost a couple hundred
dollars) was an amateur product, never intended for professional use,
and was not perfectly parallel!!

I sent the entire rig back for a full refund and have never seen nor
touched another Questar. If they are not in bankruptcy, they should be. 

Fred Ward