Brock,
I agree that the Docter 15x60 Nobilem comes pretty close and for this level of quality it is quite reasonably priced. However, as a glasses-wearer I would prefer twist-up (down) eyecups and the 15 mm eye relief is borderline. In addition, I think looksharp65 is on to something with his concept of perceived fov, a characteristic which my 10x42 SV has in abundance; hence the preference for roof prisms.
The weight of the Nobilem would not be a great handicap. With covers and strap my SV weighs 1 kg and in certain situations I'm willing to carry a monopod which, with head and bino adapter, weighs 1,4 kg. With a visus of only 1,0/0,7 I was able to read number plates at about 250 m, which I think would pose a problem for most freehanded....
John
John,
I hear you on the ER issue. The ER isn't long, but neither is the ER on some of the Ultravids, and the 8x32 EL and 8x30 SLCneu only have 15mm ER. So I still don't understand what is "outdated" about them, other than that they are porros.
They would be tough to use freehand for someone who uses glasses since the eyecups help "anchor" your face, then again, may not with the new magnesium body version that Mark has.
Someone told me, in fact, I thought it was Mark, that Docter was supposed to release the magnesium version but then didn't. Apparently, it was just a delay.
Interesting about the increased perceived AFOV of the 10x42 SV. I noticed the same thing with the 10x42 HG/L.
What do these two bins have in common? They have field flatteners and low distortion.
According to Henry, the barrel distortion at the edges should actually make the AFOV look smaller, not larger, because image size decreases at the edges whereas the opposite is true with bins with a lot of pincushion which stretch the image at the edge.
None-the-less, comparing the 10x42 HG side by side with the 10x42 SE, the AFOV looks noticeably larger to me in the HG. Gives a more open feel. I even took the eyecups off the SE to see if this was the issue, but it wasn't. Even with the eyecups off the SE, the AFOV on the HG looked larger.
Brock