Vanguard Venture Plus 8x42 Initial Thoughts (1 Viewer)

Vanguard Venture Plus 8x42mm

I decided to buy a phase coated roof prism binocular for under $100. I also decided to buy one of the brands that are sometimes looked upon as poor & inconsistent quality, just to see how bad the binocular really would be. It sold on the J&R website for $99 with free shipping. Now let me tell you a little about J&R. I consider them to be a marginal seller. I have seen many problems with them over the years. They were advertising this as the “Endeavor”, which is Vanguard’s top of the line roof prism (non-ED) binocular. That is what I was buying and now you may know why I wanted to take a $279 binocular for $99. It would have been one heck of a price!

It arrived via UPS ground in three days time. Immediately upon opening, I found out it was the Venture Plus (in a blister pack), not the Endeavor. After considerable cussing, I called J&R. A representative told me that “there must have been a mistake on the website” (bait & switch meets the internet). They were selling the Venture Plus, not the Endeavor. The representative said “It’s waterproof & it’s still a nice binocular, don’t you want to keep it?” I told him to give me a shipping label, so I could return it. He said he would do that and send it to me via email. I packed it up to ship out. I really wanted to open the package, but I didn’t want to cut open the Blister pack and have J&R accuse me of using the item and try to refuse an RMA. I called them a second time. This rep told me to go ahead and try it out and it would not be a problem and they would still take it back, if I wanted to return it.

So, here’s the story of what I found and my thoughts on the Venture Plus. As I said, it’s in a blister pack containing the binocular, a soft case, a strap, a manual and a cleaning cloth. (See the photos).

Specifications:
Power: 8
Diameter of objectives: 42mm
Prism Type: Bak4 Roof
Waterproof: Y
View Angle: 6.3°
Field of Viewm@1000m: 110m/1000m
Eye Relief: 19mm
Near focus(m): 2.5m;8.2 feet
Focus System: Inter focusing via central focusing knob
Lens coating: Fully multi-coated
Phase coating: Yes
Dimensions(L x W): 129x148
Weight(g): 650

I did find a cut away drawing of one of the Vanguard bins and it showed a Doublet objective with another lens just behind it and the eyepieces were two Doublets with a single lens between them. I can’t swear that this bin is the one I saw on the net.

I cut open the bin side of the pack first.
Visual impression- dust caps are no good for me. They do fit very snug, but the objective caps are a one piece design just like the eyepiece caps. They are of hard plastic with a strap slot in it, so you pull the dust cover off and it would be held by…. the strap?? How’s that going to work out on the objective end? It won’t work for me, so the objective cap is a waste and not useable. The eyepiece cap is one piece and of hard plastic with the same method of attaching to a strap. It will stay on well. I wouldn’t waste the time using it, so I’m not really concerned about it, but it would do the job.

Fit & finish – I’m really impressed in the fit of the rubber armor and overall finish of the bin. It is much better than I expected, for the price. The eyecups are your basic soft rubber cup that covers the twist assembly for eye relief. The twist adjustment for eye relief has no click stops, just one twist up or down. ¼ turn all the way up or down. There is also no lock at the full up position. I don’t like the lack of a positive lock in the up position or the lack of click stops. Once the cups are turned up, I did not find that pressure would push them down though. They do appear to stay in place. They are as solid as I have seen with the lower priced roof prism bins.
Appearance of the coatings on the lenses is good. It seems even and has the same hue on both objectives. The eyepiece lenses are large. I prefer that. The clearance from the eyepiece lens to the rubber cup (when it’s down) is about 3mm. The objective lenses are recessed over 5mm+, so the objectives are well protected. There are no threads for filters on the objective end. I believe the body is metal. It does not appear to be plastic or composite. The binoculars feel small in my hands. I find that I keep butting my thumbs together and they do seem a little too small for me. I don’t have really big hands either. The grip area is designed to have your thumbs facing forward towards the objective end. I don’t hold that way, so it feels awkward to me. It will take some getting used to. The strap is weird, with quick disconnects on it, so it is 3 separate pieces (see photo). One end of one strap is missing the friction clip that holds the doubled over strap from slipping. I will contact Vanguard about that and find out how good their customer service is. The case is just a cheap soft case with no padding in it.

See second Post for More Photos and the rest of the story...........

Part 2

Now for the view (I am an eyeglass wearer and I wear them for everything, even with binoculars)…

First I adjust the focus through the left eye, at an object (a sign) at 100 feet. Then I adjust the diopter of the right eye and find that the best setting is at 0. That’s how it should be with glasses and if my prescription is a corrected 20/20 it should be a 0 diopter setting (I think). The focus wheel has very little resistance. It is smooth and I do not notice and back play at all. The diopter setting does not need much force to turn. I wonder if it will hold position, since it also is so smooth and easy to turn. It is rubber coated, so when you grip it, it is easier to hang on to. I like that feature, but it does not lock in place.
Now let’s see what the range of the focus wheel is. It’s a large wheel and has ribs on it. Near focus is supposed to go to 6‘, but first let’s see from 10’ to infinity. From 10’ to terrestrial (distant clouds) infinity seems to be a little less than 2/3 of a turn. From 10’ to full extent of the focus is just at 2/3 of a turn. It is less than ¾ of a full turn for the full physical range of focus movement, from stop to stop. There seems to be just some sponginess at the infinity stop, but none at the close stop. It just turns so darn smooth and I don’t feel any gritty feeling. I just wasn’t expecting it to be so smooth. I don’t find any hint of over travel even with the small force needed to turn the wheel. I am impressed with that, but time will tell how it holds up. I do notice that there is more resistance from about 20’ focus to close focus and it is noticeably so.

I have to say that my first “ look through” impressions are that I am surprised at just how sharp and clear this bin is! I was not expecting to find a bin for this price, with crisp, clear, sharp and bright optics. I will look at a resolution chart later, but for the moment I have to say it’s just as sharp as the Bushnell Legend roof and sharper than the Vortex Diamondback roof. First impression is that there is a 70% sweet spot and from there it gradually feathers off. The last 15% is just a little fuzzy. There seems to be just a little pincushion near the edge of the field, but very minor. CA, well where is it? I cannot believe that! No purple fringing. I am not joking, I can’t find any! I am really sensitive to it. I did not like it in the Bushnell Legend, where I saw a lot of it. I saw way too much of it in the Pentax XCF, the Nikon Action and the Nikon Monarch. I saw some in the Diamondback and I saw some in my wife’s Leitz. There is no CA that I can find here. It is a very bright image for an 8x42. It is brighter than I expected. The colors seem to be just about dead on. Going from my eyes to the bins and back on many different subjects, I find the tone to be neutral to a tad cold and colors are not washed out at all.

I now have to turn these over to my wife. I need her to look through them before I say anything to her and see what her opinion is. She has used her Leitz for many years and I want to see if she is seeing what I just saw, which was something strange about the DOF. She went through the focusing and diopter for herself. She has found the sign by the pond and then she looks up towards the more distant trees. She stops and looks at me. She goes back to the sign and back to the trees. She says she wants to use these for birding!
I will explain why now. DOF – I have never seen this before. The sign in front of our house is a “fishing for members only” sign at a distance of 100’ from our front door. It sits on the front edge of our pond. The tree line is at the far edge of the pond. It is 100 yards to the tree line. I focus on the sign, so it’s sharp as a tack. I lift up to the tree line and it’s still in focus! Not fuzzy, not smeared, just as sharp as can be! From 100’ to 100 yards, I don’t have to turn the focus wheel at all! I have never encountered anything like that with a binocular. I have used porro and roof prism bins from cheap ones to good ones and I have never seen that. My wife has never seen that either. We both do this several times. We are both sold on this $99 binocular, so far.

So I take it to work with me this afternoon (2nd shift). I’m on top of a hill in the city of Tyler and I can see all around. I still am very satisfied with the sharpness and from all that I have looked at today, the resolution is comparable to the Bushnell Legend and better than the Vortex Diamondback. I have done more analyzing of the DOF. I find that when it’s down to less than 75’ the DOF is shallow, but once I get to past 100’ it’s amazing. From 100’ to as far as 100 yards is clear enough that no focus adjustment is necessary. If I start at 100 yards, it goes out to 200 yards without adjustment. It’s really amazing to me and I’m very happy with it. I am still not finding any CA on any surface edges, even backlit ones.

I finally am seeing something negative. I am noticing some ghosting depending on the angle compared to the sun. It is some whitish ghosting in the edges of the field, worse in the right barrel than the left, but present in both. It almost seems crescent shaped, but sometimes it’s just a small blob. It’s semi-opaque. It’s much less if I am not using glasses, which I suspect is due to all the stray light between the bins and my eyes with glasses. Without glasses and with the cups turned out, I find that when I press the bins to my eyes, where I don’t see stray light, I do see a slight blackout, so the cups might not be tall enough for all non-eyeglass users.

Focus is still smooth and I don’t find any play yet. I find about 6’ is minimum focus, but from about 18’ or less, the view becomes binocular, where the barrels seem to separate and look like two views. So I would not want to use them less than 18-20’ away for long.

So I’m here at work, at night and I can see a few very bright stars. Too many lights around here in Tyler, to see much, but what I am seeing shows that the “sweet spot” seems to be reduced to about 60-65% of the field. I am using a rest, not a tripod, so it’s not accurate, but I can see as I scan that after about 60-65% the stars do seem to turn fuzzy and by 75% they are little blobs. Now I’m not a star gazer, so I don’t necessarily know how they should look and there’s no moon right now, so I can’t use that, but for terrestrial use, these will be great for me.

Overall I have to say that I am totally impressed at how good these bins are, considering they are Vanguard (Chinese Bosma?) made and sold for under $100. I never thought they would be so good for the price they were at. They will work for me in the short run and it will be interesting to see how they do in the long run. I am not an avid birder and I take good care of things, so hopefully, they should last a while. As a final note, I have had problems with bins having over 330’ FOV. I tend to see a semi-opaque ring at the outer edge of the field at all times. I do not see that at all with this bin. What’s the difference? I don’t know.

We will be going for migrating Warblers this Saturday, so the bins will get a better test under birding conditions.

It's a Keeper

Well after a couple of days of birding, I have to say that this bin is definitely worth the money. Good crisp, clear view, neutral color balance, smooth focusing & lightweight enough for one hand use. I'm not used to a quick 1/2 turn focus wheel, but I am learning to like it. I like the one handed ability to view and focus. I can draw it from my hip holster, with my left hand, to look at a bird and bring up my P&S camera with my right hand, to shoot a picture.

Overall I think it's a good deal at $99.00 and that's what I needed.:t: