Once you are used to sub-zero temperatures it is no big deal. People from states like Minnesota and North Dakota wear t-shirts and shorts when it is 32 degrees Farenheit(O degree C). Seriously.
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Help with Habicht 8x30 (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Arielelf
- Start date
So I spotted a birder about a month ago using a armored 8x30 Habicht and he allowed me to look through them. I asked if I could fold back the eyecups and he agreed but the armor seemed to not like being flexed, so I decided not to fold them back for fear of cracking them.
I tried with my glasses and with the eyecups up and was able to see a reduced circle image, and when compared to my EII's seemed almost identical. I took the chance and ordered a pair from a dealer in Europe. They arrived this week. I tried them out in my house, since I work during all of my daylight hours, and was happily surprised to see that I am viewing what I believe to be the full field of view. I compared the angle of view to my wife's 8x32 Conquest HD's and it is identical, however it seems to me to be less magnified. Everything just seems bigger in the Conquests, and text across the room is easier to read because of the larger magnification. What can cause this? They seem very sharp but I am worried that I will miss out on details due to the smaller magnification.
By the way, my wife is also able to see through them and she has very strong prescription glasses.
I tried with my glasses and with the eyecups up and was able to see a reduced circle image, and when compared to my EII's seemed almost identical. I took the chance and ordered a pair from a dealer in Europe. They arrived this week. I tried them out in my house, since I work during all of my daylight hours, and was happily surprised to see that I am viewing what I believe to be the full field of view. I compared the angle of view to my wife's 8x32 Conquest HD's and it is identical, however it seems to me to be less magnified. Everything just seems bigger in the Conquests, and text across the room is easier to read because of the larger magnification. What can cause this? They seem very sharp but I am worried that I will miss out on details due to the smaller magnification.
By the way, my wife is also able to see through them and she has very strong prescription glasses.
I tried out the new Habicht this weekend outside and discovered that it isnt working as well in bright light as it was in dim light in my house. I am getting a little bit of tunnel vision, but am seeing nearly as much field of view as my wifes conquest hd, which is strange. It is not as easy to the eye as the conquest or the EII, which is kind of a deal breaker for me. Im torn as to what to do. I tried with my glasses off and the view is much easier to the eye and is spectacular!!! I wish that I wore contacts, but I need glasses for eye protection for my job. The 3d effect is amazing and the clarity and colors are very nice indeed!!
The larger image scale is to me a positive characteristic of roofs and a detraction of all porro's.
Habicht's are great optically but overall not user friendly in a lot of ways. ER, tight focus and hard eyecups to name a few.
PeterPS
Well-Known Member
I had a Habicht 8x30 but it wasn't for me: very stiff focuser, lots of glare and shallow eyecups. But if you are bothered only by the eyecups here is a tip: there is a green rubber armored version whose eyecups are deeper and made from a soft rubber, and they are interchangeable with those of the regular Habicht.///Peter.
brocknroller
porromaniac
Ha! It's really not so bad once you get used to it. A few winters ago, I was birding in northern MN with a friend and his friends from out of state. They planned their trip a month or more in advance and weren't staying long, so we had to stick to our original birding schedule despite minus 40 Celsius weather. It wasn't so bad, and we had a _lot_ of fun watching the specialty species that they came to see (e.g. Surnia, Strix nebulosa, Poecile hudsonicus, Coccothraustes vespertinus, Pinicola enucleator, Carduelis hornemanni, Plectrophenax nivalis).
You'd probably be amazed at the number of bicyclists who use their bike year round for commuting or recreation around the twin cities (Minneapolis and St.Paul, MN, USA). On the bike at minus 25 Celsius is when it's nice to have ski goggles to keep the eyes from freezing. Otherwise, a good hat, balaclava, and down parka with a hood will suffice.
--AP
Celsius? Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore.... I think we have an expat here in the Colonies.
The lowest temperature I've been outside in was -8 Fahrenheit during last winter. Not for birding, but to feed the birds, squirrels and a feral cat.
The coldest I've been out with binoculars was 0* F. That was with the Nikon 8x32 LX. I left it down the basement for an hour so it could reach equilibrium (or close to it). When I took the LX outside, the focuser worked fine, but the image was blurry. Could have been the heat from my gloved hands or from my face, or perhaps the unfinished basement was still "warm" compared to the outside temperature.
Since I have all Porros now, 25* F is about the limit. Colder than that and the focusers get too stiff to turn.
No "specialty species" here. If you've seen one Junco, you've seen 'em all.
-- BP
PeterPS
Well-Known Member
Brock:
-40C=-40F! Probably Alexis used C just to confuse you; you know we the expats use C, g, mm and so on only to confuse the locals. Anyway I have to agree with other posters that birding in -40deg F/C is an absolute performance, and it's a miracle that any bins are still usable.
Peter.
-40C=-40F! Probably Alexis used C just to confuse you; you know we the expats use C, g, mm and so on only to confuse the locals. Anyway I have to agree with other posters that birding in -40deg F/C is an absolute performance, and it's a miracle that any bins are still usable.
Peter.
Alexis Powell
Natural history enthusiast
Ha! You'd be wrong about that. Reacting first to your Wizard of Oz reference, although I was born in California (while my Kansan-farm-boy dad was earning his PhD in marine zoology at Berkeley), spent significant portions of my childhood and early adulthood in Mexico and the Middle East (where my Kansas-City-girl mom taught English as a second language at university), and went to college/university in Iowa, Indiana, and Minnesota (in addition to Kansas), I've nevertheless lived most of my life and have resided (on and off) from age 1 to present in Kansas, most of my family lives in KS, KS is where you will find my family land and property, and my parents, all my grandparents, my great grandparents and many of my ancestors going back at least six generations were born in Kansas (or the Kansas Territory), so I consider myself a Kansan despite being born in CA and the fact that I currently live in Minnesota (came here to get my PhD; now still at the UofM as post-doctoral researcher; looking for the right job in KS so I can return). Putting aside Toto and the question of whether I am a true Kansan (the "birthers" would probably deny my claim), I'm certainly not an ex-pat when it comes to citizenship and residency in the USA as a whole.
I used Celsius because it was the scale used in the previous posts in the thread to which I was replying. But you know, there are actually a few Americans, even those who haven't spent a lot of time living and traveling abroad, who are comfortable with metric units. As a scientist (organismal and evolutionary biologist) everything in my professional work and related avocational pursuits is metric.
--AP
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