I guess David (Typo) will publish the Bird Fair report soon.
Your wish is my command.
There was a bit or rearranging going on at the fair this year with Pentax going missing and Kite and Vanguard joining the main cluster of optics companies at the top of the site, which saved on a bit of shoe leather but in practice little in the time to get round them all.
For me,
Kite provided the highlight of the show with their new Bonelli 2.0. It is built on the new Kamakura platform and looks very much like it is related to the Maven B1 that's had a few mentions on the forum, though almost certainly differs in the fine detail. The outgoing Bonelli was technically very good but just didn't particularly suite my tastes. The new one is afairly large binocular and not particularly light, but just didn't feel like either in the hand. Somehow it just felt right. Oh!.... and the view was excellent. It seems it was the 10x42 that really caused a stir in Europe, but I personally found the 8x42 had a more relaxed view, but perhaps that was just with glasses. I hope to be able to say more in the next few weeks. I had an email from Kite a few weeks ago indicating that the price was around €1100 or about £800 which would seem competitively priced to me but the labelled price on the stand was somewhat higher.
http://kiteoptics.com/en/products/type/101/Bonelli-20
Vanguard didn't have anything new on the stand but I did get a glimps of something in the pipeline which sounds interesting. Curiously it was the very cheap Orros 8x25 that caught my eye. Neither pretty or compact perhaps, but maybe just the thing for the kitchen windowsill. Not something of particular interest to me but their new travel tripod VEO 235AP could do some impressive gymnastics which should particularly keep the macro guys happy. Goes for around £150 I'm told.
The tethers on the binoculars on the
Leica stand were particularly annoying and I didn't feel like wrestling with them for long but the HD Plus 8x32 is very nice, but unfortunately the eye relief hasn't improved. The 7x42 would still be my pick.
Bushnell had the new Legend L and M on the stand. The cheaper L in particular looked good for the money, or perhaps I should say likely retail price. I quite liked the old Legend Ultra HD but I like the L rather more. The M was a little better but I'm not sure I'd want to spend the extra. If anyone is visiting the stand check out the show offers.
Viking had their new 10x30 image stabilised monocular on the stand. An ugly little beast but it seemed to work rather well. I wish they'd spent a couple of quid more on the coatings though.
Had a look at the
Zeiss Terra 8x25 and didn't think much of it at all for the money. Paradoxically I thought the £70
Kowa SV would be money well spent as a sightseeing pair. The show price for the Genesis 8x33 was very good if anyone's tempted. No news on the Genesis replacement yet.
I know Pete at
Opticron had hoped to have more to show me but the new pre-production version of the new DBA was rather nice. Very much in the same mould as the outgoing model, but just tweaked all round. Not a lot of concrete info on the other stuff in the pipeline I'm afraid.
Hawke had the new top hinge Frontier ED and Endurance ED x42s on show. It was the latter that seemed to hit the spot on value for me and I'll try to have another look at.
It seems
Meopta don't have a 10x50HD after all, just the 10x42, 12x50 and 8x56 in the HD. First time I'd seen the Meopro 15x56 HD and I found it surprisingly usable in the hand. Very nice. Seem there is new stuff in the pipeline but we will need to be very patient.
Didn't spot anything new from Nikon, Vortex, Swarovski, Minox or Celestron.
David
