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Celestron Nature 8x30 Porro Review (1 Viewer)

It truly is a shame that Celestron's QA sucks so bad on these, as it seems like they could have knocked it out of the park at the $55 level with a reasonable level of quality and build consistency. If you can manage to get a good pair, these are truly outstanding - BUT- that "IF" seems to get more in doubt with each pair ordered lately. (7 ordered - 4 good - 3 bad). Obviously, the longer term longevity is a big question mark.
On my 2nd good pair, I have to agree with Howard220 on the eyecups, as mine are rock solid and stay wherever you put them, and do not have that slight play fully extended that the 1st good pair had.

The comments on the 7x magnification don't bother me that much, and actually seems to play into what a lot of BF members have been wishing for a long time - a 7x30 Yosemite!! Seems like they want more magnification than the 6x and wider FOV and more brightness than the 8x.

If you order from Amazon and select Adorama as the fulfiller, you can only return a defective pair for full credit and will have to reorder, if you so choose. I emailed Adorama Sunday to return defective pair - got email with a prepaid UPS return label Monday morn - called UPS to pickup - reorderd from Amazon (Adorama) after lunch - got the replacements Tuesday morn, and by Thursday Amazon had credited the full price of the defective pair back into my account. Rather painless and not much of a hassle at all.
 
Crazy:
You started this one, and now after many have seen how bad these can be, I feel it is time to
move on to some better optics, even Henry took the bait and got snookered.

Jerry
 
Jerry,
I think instead that it is time for you to move on. Your negativity,biases, and predujices come thru only too loud and clear to me, whether it is on this thread, my other thread, the Kikkert thread (where are my nikons?), Nikon SE Opticsplanet, - etc.

Lets suppose that Henry had got a good pair, as others have, and as others have reported. What would you have to say then? Is the glass half full or empty? Has anyone but me reported how good these can be? Or is it only as you say -only how bad!

Yes I guess I started it, as I merely bought a good pair - reported how good I thought they were for the $$. Someone else bought a pair and reported how good they thought they were. Someone else pointed out an earlier thread from May where they got a good review. I got a second bad pair and reported on it, and thats when you jumped into this thread with your Chicken Little attitude.

Let me give you my take on this. I think I said they could be very good -IF- you are able to get a good pair. I don't think I have advocated anyone go out and buy these lately. It certainly wasn't me that advocated Howard220 to try another pair rather than just returning them, or me that convinced Henry to buy a pair. People are free to do whatever they want, and the more info we can give them then the better educated all will be.

So let me give you a piece of advice. To my knowledge this is a public forum, and if this thread and issue is giving you such heartburn - then do yourself a big favor and don't post. I would certainly hope by now that everyone knows how you feel, and now I hope you fully appreciate how I feel.
 
lilcrazy2 said:
It truly is a shame that Celestron's QA sucks so bad on these, as it seems like they could have knocked it out of the park at the $55 level with a reasonable level of quality and build consistency. If you can manage to get a good pair, these are truly outstanding - BUT- that "IF" seems to get more in doubt with each pair ordered lately. (7 ordered - 4 good - 3 bad). Obviously, the longer term longevity is a big question mark.
On my 2nd good pair, I have to agree with Howard220 on the eyecups, as mine are rock solid and stay wherever you put them, and do not have that slight play fully extended that the 1st good pair had.

The comments on the 7x magnification don't bother me that much, and actually seems to play into what a lot of BF members have been wishing for a long time - a 7x30 Yosemite!! Seems like they want more magnification than the 6x and wider FOV and more brightness than the 8x.

If you order from Amazon and select Adorama as the fulfiller, you can only return a defective pair for full credit and will have to reorder, if you so choose. I emailed Adorama Sunday to return defective pair - got email with a prepaid UPS return label Monday morn - called UPS to pickup - reorderd from Amazon (Adorama) after lunch - got the replacements Tuesday morn, and by Thursday Amazon had credited the full price of the defective pair back into my account. Rather painless and not much of a hassle at all.
Click to expand...

Crazy:

It seems you said it all right here. :t:

Jerry
 
Jerry,
Nice to know you can do quotes so well, and let me compliment you on the accuracy of your work. You know I just noticed that there were 1351 views of this thread, and I started wondering. I wondered if all all 1351 of them were thinking about whether to upgrade to the EDG from their SE's or Eii's, but then I thought that maybe, just maybe, one of these people doesn't have 2 nickels to rub together in their pocket, and were wondering how they could possibly scrape together $55 for a pair of these trashy binocs, and were glad they read this thread. I wondered how many people might actually have ordered these but are too afraid to speak up because they may be criticized or appear to be "stupid". Speaking for myself, I know that not everyone who reads or posts on this forum are binophiles.

Then I started thinking again, and I wondered if it wasn't for people reporting on the problems they had with the ZR 7x36 ED, and the diopter problem on the Vortex Fury's, if they would have gotten fixed and become the well reviewed binocs they are today. I wondered if someone had piped up in the beginning and told them to "" move on to some better optics"".

You started your negativity on the very first reported bad pair of these Celestrons (reported by me no less), even though it was preceded by 3 good reviews. I haven't seen you do that with regard to any other binoc - is there a reason? I'm also a little puzzled as to why you feel the need to dictate what can be reviewed, and even go so far as to try to determine when people should move on and the thread should end.

I am not predjudiced for these, nor am I against the Nikons. If you read one of my other threads you will see that I advised anyone who wanted them where there were 7 pairs of Nikon 8x30 & 10x30 EII's for less than $300 in stock. I still believe that IF you get a good pair of the Celestrons, you won't find a better binoc for the $$ - pretty simple.
 
I've identified the biggest problem with my pair. There is excessive lateral play in the right eyepiece which causes the collimation to wander as the focuser is worked. If I put a little up and down pressure on the right eyepiece while looking through the binocular I can watch the right fieldstop move up and down in response. That causes the collimation to seesaw between high on the right to low on the right, so no stable collimation setting is possible. The play also affects the diopter adjustment which is also unstable. This might be a sample defect (Did they forget to install an O-ring on the right side?) or it could be a design flaw connected to the diopter adjustment. The left eyepiece does not have the same slop.

I noticed that the fieldstops are not part of the moving eyepiece. They're fixed in place just behind the prisms, so they are only sharply defined at long distances and gradually soften at close range. Mine are quite different in size (the left larger than the right) and the right moves up and down so that it's seldom lined up horizontally with the left. Usually it's lower, so the merged field circles feel unpleasantly lopsided and tilted.

I star tested and measured the resolution of the two barrels. The right barrel is not too bad. There is some pinching and coma, but the resolution is a respectable 5.2 arc seconds. Not bad for a 27mm objective. I would expect to see all the detail through that side that I could see through any 6.9x27 binocular. The other side is rather worse with more coma, pinching and astigmatism, but still good enough for low magnification. Light transmission and color bias are impressive, probably around 90% with a little red bias. That would be better than the Leica Trinovid, Nikon LX L generation of Schmidt-Pechan roof prism binoculars. The same would be true for almost any simple Porro with full multi-coating.

More later, perhaps. Oh yes, the Celestron logo fell off after about 20 minutes of handling.
 
After reading about the various problems with these, and citing mine in a separate thread, it's sounding more and more that "there must be fifty ways to create defective binoculars".... (with apologies to Paul Simon)
 
Plleatus,

I don't think price is relevant to testing optics. I treat everything the same way.

The Celestron actually compares favorably to the most expensive binoculars in a few areas, like center sharpness, light transmission and color accuracy. That's just what I would expect from a simple multi-coated Porro.

On the other hand, the low price is no excuse for stopped down objectives or a wildly inaccurate magnification spec. And a binocular that can't hold collimation or diopter correction is not useful at any price.

One last comment about distortion. There is hardly any pincushion distortion, so anyone who objects to the "rolling globe" effect in the Swarovski SV should not consider these as a replacement.

Henry
 
Last edited:
henry link said:
One last comment about distortion. There is hardly any pincushion distortion, so anyone who objects to the "rolling globe" effect in the Swarovski SV should not consider these as a replacement.

Henry
Click to expand...

Well that made me chuckle!

Nice to see a sense of humour creeping in to this discussion.
 
Before boxing up the Celestrons I measured a few more things.

Eye Relief: Longer than spec if measured from the glass (21mm), but because of a 7mm recess the effective eye relief is about 14mm measured from the eyecup rim.

Close Focus: 10.5' for my eyes, not 8' as specified.

Magnification: I did this again to be sure. 6.9x at about 30', which means the magnification will be closer to 6.8x at infinity focus.

FOV: Wider than spec in both barrels, about 430' in the right barrel, 440 ft in the left barrel. Of course that's due to the low magnification. Because there is virtually no pincushion distortion the edge of the field shows pronounced angular magnification distortion, causing objects to compress in a radial direction. That increases the true field, but leads to an undersized apparent field of around 55 degrees, so I wouldn't classify these as widefield binoculars.

This is the second inexpensive Celestron binocular I've tested in the last few years. Both were haphazardly made as might be expected for a cheap binocular, but, more oddly in both cases, Synta (the manufacturer and the owner of Celestron) has demonstrated a total disregard for accurate specifications. The last one (Outland Porro) was stopped down from the specified 40mm to 32mm and the prisms were uncoated even though the specification was "fully multi-coated". Almost every spec for the 8x30 Nature is far from conforming to even the most relaxed ISO standards. Why does Synta do this? It's no more expensive to make a true 8x30 than it is to make an "8x30" that's really a 6.8x27, and certainly no more expensive to provide the real specs rather than fictitious ones.
 
Last edited:
henry link said:
Before boxing up the Celestrons I measured a few more things.

Eye Relief: Longer than spec if measured from the glass (21mm), but because of a 7mm recess the effective eye relief is about 14mm measured from the eyecup rim.

Close Focus: 10.5' for my eyes, not 8' as specified.

Magnification: I did this again to be sure. 6.9x at about 30', which means the magnification will be closer to 6.8x at infinity focus.

FOV: Wider than spec in both barrels, about 430' in the right barrel, 440 ft in the left barrel. Of course that's due to the low magnification. Because there is virtually no pincushion distortion the edge of the field shows pronounced angular magnification distortion, causing objects to compress in a radial direction. That increases the true field, but leads to an undersized apparent field of around 55 degrees, so I wouldn't classify these as widefield binoculars.

This is the second inexpensive Celestron binocular I've tested in the last few years. Both were haphazardly made as might be expected for a cheap binocular, but, more oddly in both cases, Synta (the manufacturer and the owner of Celestron) has demonstrated a total disregard for accurate specifications. The last one (Outland Porro) was stopped down from the specified 40mm to 32mm and the prisms were uncoated even though the specification was "fully multi-coated". Almost every spec for the 8x30 Nature is far from conforming to even the most relaxed ISO standards. Why does Synta do this? It's no more expensive to make a true 8x30 than it is to make a fake one that's really a 6.8x27, and certainly no more expensive to print the real specs rather than fake ones.
Click to expand...

Thanks Henry for all your work (as usual)
 
pw53 said:
Amen to that! A little tolerance of one and other's opinions and sense of humor goes a long way. We do not need to take life so seriously....BTW Mine are on their way;)
Click to expand...
My point is and was that this is a cheap binocular with major flaws that deserves very little attention from serious birders.
 
Pileatus said:
My point is and was that this is a cheap binocular with major flaws that deserves very little attention from serious birders.
Click to expand...

It's likely that this binocular will be DOA for many buyers, and Henry's findings reveal some deceptive marketing, but the promise of a few good samples got me and I suspect many other budget-minded buyers interested. That this binocular clearly derives from the Yosemite, but promises slightly improved specs, suggested that economies of scale might have finally broken the $80 barrier for good porro with modern features. Imagine the number of young birders like my 8 year-old who would benefit from a plentiful supply of light, cheap, good porros with good ER and modern eyecups (he's just inherited my beloved Yosemites). Frankly, I don't know a more serious birder than him--he'd prefer to look at every bird with just his eyes, but knows some clear glass and a little power gets him closer to what makes him passionate about nature.

So, pardon our attention to this worthless bauble. Some of us here won't be getting EDGs or FLs anytime soon, if ever. I count myself deeply fortunate to have just landed a pair of EIIs for $270, which are a miracle within my budget. Thanks for the tip, LilCrazy.

We should support Celestron's effort to make a 7x30 Yosemite with some market feedback--perhaps they'll try and get it right.
 
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David,

I'm glad you took advantage of my post on the Nikon EII's and got a great deal that suited you. I wondered how long they would last and if I would ever hear from anyone that bought them. And your comments on the Celestrons supports some of my earlier comments, in which I alluded to a "silent majority".

And to pw53:
It's nice to see a dedicated Nikon SE 8x32 user willing to roll the dice and take a turn.
pw53
Nozempje

Amen to that! A little tolerance of one and other's opinions and sense of humor goes a long way. We do not need to take life so seriously....BTW Mine are on their way;)
Click to expand...


On another thread yesterday, a guy asks for recommendations on new binocs primarily for use in hunting. After getting a lot of great replies suitable to his needs,one of the members responds by pointing out my link to the EII's and states "These will blow anything that has been listed away". Since one of the biggest complaints on the EII's is that they are not waterproof, it makes you wonder what part of "hunting" this person doesn't understand. The last I checked, hunting involves lots of inclement weather. Seems like even the EII owners don't like to take them out in the rain and have backups for inclement weather. Is there some point where well intended advice and fanaticism blur, and become one and the same? Hmmm
 
Martin Fagg said:
Looks like there's another version of this bin now

http://www.binocs.co.uk/catalog/model-zcf-binocular-p-482.html?manufacturers_id=3

This one is 7x If I remember correctly, the Celestron turned out to actually be 7x and not 8x as it is specified.
Click to expand...

Martin
These look more like the Barska Crossover 8x30 sold here in USA, even down to the little sticky and the ridges on the top sides. Wonder if anyone has tried them as they look more like the Leupold Yosemites than the Celestron Natures. They are selling for around $63 on the Barska website here in USA. Makes you wonder when one says 7x and the other says 8x for a seemingly identical item.

http://www.barska.com/Crossover_Binoculars-BARSKA_8x30_WP_CROSSOVER.html

tom
 
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Hi Tom,

yes, I think someone's playing fast and loose with their specs.

Hawke also have a 7x30 porro called Nature Trek that's very similar.

Looks like China is making these for lots of companies.

Best wishes
Martin
 
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