Collecting Essentials: The BelOMO Loupe

These loupes are very good.	Size does matter! These two photos were taken one after the other, using the same camera and lighting setup. The BelOMO loupes (and their lenses) really are that much bigger.	These loupes are better.
Bausch & Lomb Hastings triplets 10X and 20X		BelOMO triplet 10X and quadruplet 20X

For years, I used Bausch & Lomb Hastings triplet loupes (left above). Then Don Fluckinger wrote an Extra Fine Points article about loupes, and in that article Don introduced me to the BelOMO loupe (right above). Now I use BelOMO loupes — not to beat around the bush, they’re that much better than Bausch & Lomb, and they’re about half the price, too.

Don learned about BelOMO from a friend, David Fortier. Fortier is a gemologist, seeking gemstones in the Far East for Tip Top Gems. Gemologists care about color a lot more than pen collectors do, so their loupes must correct for any chromatic aberration in the lenses. Their loupes also need to be corrected for spherical aberration to best evaluate inclusions — defects — in stones they’re about to purchase.

Even if you don't care about color and inclusions in gemstones, you do care about crystallization and cracks in pens, and a better loupe means you can see them better. The lenses in BelOMO loupes are bigger than those in most other loupes, giving you a brighter view, and they’re also better corrected for optical defects than the cheap Chinese lenses in those $5.00 or $10.00 10X loupes you can pick up at the corner antique mart and everywhere on the Web.

There’s a reason BelOMO loupes are so good. They’re made in Belarus, in a Zeiss Ikon-affiliated plant that used to make lenses for Soviet spy satellites. These people know how to make superb lenses, and they know how to collimate (align) them for the best results (and less eyestrain). Individually inspected, each loupe comes complete with a detailed instruction sheet — in Russian! (Read a translation by Dr. Albina Colden here.)

So once you’ve settled on the best, how do you plan to carry your new loupe? There’s no better way than to hang it from a BelOMO lanyard like the one shown to the right.

Note If you’re buying your first loupe, we recommend the 10X for its general practicality and ease of use. The best way to use these loupes is to hook your index finger through the opened cover and then plant your thumb’s knuckle against your cheek to hold the loupe in the right place and keep it firmly in position as you bring the subject into focus. For the 20X quadruplet, you’ll get better results by turning the loupe over so that you’re looking through it “backwards.” This little trick will bring the lens closer to the subject and will also allow more light to fall on the subject.