For quite a few years I have used red dot finders exlusivly. I have owned a few Orion EZ finders and Daisy BB gun sights (quite a deal at $10). My most recent purchase was a Burges Optical unit, identical to the W.O. and Stellarvue units in the following review:
http://www.astromart.com/articles/article.asp?article_id=501
The operating instructions tell you to use both eyes, but I have never been able to use them that way. The coatings tend to dim the stars a little bit, but the most objectionable thing about these finders is that the red dot is just overwhelming next to a dim star. I have installed a resistor in series with the brightnes control on all of my finders. There is just barely enough space inside the Burges unit to add a 100 K ohm shink wrapped resistor. This makes the dot invisible in daylight, just visible on the face of the moon, and dim enough to look straight through and see the stars next to the dot. I experimented with different resistors and found that 10k did not dim the dot very much, I think I put a 40K ohm resistor in the Orion finders.
http://www.astromart.com/articles/article.asp?article_id=501
The operating instructions tell you to use both eyes, but I have never been able to use them that way. The coatings tend to dim the stars a little bit, but the most objectionable thing about these finders is that the red dot is just overwhelming next to a dim star. I have installed a resistor in series with the brightnes control on all of my finders. There is just barely enough space inside the Burges unit to add a 100 K ohm shink wrapped resistor. This makes the dot invisible in daylight, just visible on the face of the moon, and dim enough to look straight through and see the stars next to the dot. I experimented with different resistors and found that 10k did not dim the dot very much, I think I put a 40K ohm resistor in the Orion finders.
