Albatross SHR 8x42 ED

Hello.

Here:
http://www.allbinos.com/allbinos_ranking-binoculars_ranking-10x42.html

Here in The Netherlands they sell Bynolyt binoculars.

I just bought the top model, the Albatross SHR 8x42 ED roof. Just renewd!
The optics are very very good, better than expected!

Here is a link in English about Bynolyt Albatross bins.

And here for the whole range of offered bins.

In a nutshell:

Nice 7,5 degrees field of view, 131m at 1000m.
Sharp to the edge(!) with a clean crisp view, very large sweetspot and they snap into focus, which is a sign of good optics.
Some pincushioning is noted but then there is no field curvature at all, very bright for roofs with so many optical surfaces (altough not as bright an crisp as the Swift Audubon ED porro's, but then again... these are roofs), very smooth and close (les than 2m) focus, good eyerelief and great coatings: FMC, a nice dark purple/brownish AR coating (Zeiss like?). See pictures.
Phase coated prisms, at least one ED lens (they don't state which or where, just ''at least one), water- fogg- and shockproof , Super High Reflection coatings on the prism (60 layers), maximum system light transmission 94% (wavelength unknown), high index SK prisms, not BaK4, Nitrogen purged
And las but not least: Plasma coating on outer lenses, a hard anti-scratch coating.

The looks and handeling are great to!

The only cons I can think of are:

The weight, they are quite heave, but a good padded neck-strap (included) takes care of this issue.
The clickstop twist out eyecups only have 3 positions. Fully in, fully out and in between. The fully out position is not usable with my facial contours, I use the in-between position.
The color rendition is a little bit on the yelow/green side.
Sharpness is good, but the image color is ''flatter'' than in the Swift Audubon ED porro.
And the depth of field is short (or should I say small) so a lot of refocussing is needen on short distance viewing.

As fas as I can see these are very good optics for a good price!

I hope I (or somebody else) can do a direct comparison with a Zeiss Conquest 8x40. The Albatrosses are designed to compete with these kind sub-top class bins.
And maybe even an comparisson with some top of the line bins in the near future!

I highly recommend these to anyone on a ''tighter'' budget.
Even to people abroad, the service of Bynolyt/Technolyt is very good and fast!

I would give it a 10 for value for money, but rated it 9. the 10's are reserved for top-notch alpha bins!