Well, I had the opportunity to try the new upgrade model (black armour) SF's (8x42, and 10x42) at a retailers over the weekend.
I should point out that in Oz these are a ~ $3500 AU proposition -- ye gods !!! :eek!: Three and a half Thousand !!! ........
Quick impression - reasonably sharp, clearish, somewhat muted colours at the extremities of the spectrum revealing the lacking transmission, wide Fov, but ......... decidedly cheap looking and feeling. The eyecups looked and felt like they were straight off a $300 Chinbin.
I found it difficult to position the eyecups for me, and the much vaunted weight distribution and ergonomics ----- well ........
There is some minor inkling of the better weight distribution, but as for the ergonomics ---- sorry Zeiss fanboi's ---- smoke and mirrors :smoke:
Your hands are forced so far forward that the weight of your arms hangs unsupported from your shoulders with an increased moment load ...... pretty much the drawback I predicted way back when ..... o
In comparison to my similarly sized Zens, when you line up the collapsed eye cup baseline, and look at the position of the focus wheels relative to that, the SF'S focus wheel pretty much doesn't even start until the end of my Zen's larger wheel - the SF's wheel is t-h-a-t far forward . :cat:
Also, the relatively dinky rubbery focus wheel is not to my liking.
I can confidently say that the ergonomics of my Zen ED3'S (for me, and I suspect a lot of others too) are the best out of the many many bins I have handled :t:
Chosun :gh: