Paul Godolphin
Member
Zeiss Conquest 8x30: A very quick review.
I’m just rushing-off a subjective and non-technical first impression before leaving on a year-long South Pacific trip with my 2 month old 8x30 Conquests as first choice even though I have Swarovski and Leica models costing over £1000 in the cupboard. Perhaps that says something about Zeiss’s quirky, inexpensive little model. They are total FUN! I’m sure there’s better optics around, and they’ll certainly never approach the dazzling image of 8x32 Ultravids, but these little bins just FEEL so great in the hand that I just want to keep fondling them. The rubber armouring and claddings are thick, squidgey and sticky. The body is curved superbly to the natural shape of the hand, even though it looks plain and ugly. In common with Zeiss’s current obsession with whacky lop-sided designs, the ‘zero’ pointer for the focus wheel and the far-end dioptre wheel are not in the centre, but 30 degrees clockwise and unmarked by any white dot or line. The dioptre wheel clicks into a deep ‘zero’ notch that is so heavy it feels like the Grand Canyon. Annoyingly the wheel ‘falls’ back into the notch when set at small distance past the centre for my eyes. The ‘jizz’ of the binoculars is that of a little chunky indestructible sorbo rubber dog toy. Everything is thick black plastic and ‘wine gum’ feeling rubber. When dropped amongst rocks on a beach breakwater the bins bounced, joggled and ricocheted from stone to stone like a power ball, emerging from a saltwater pool covered in sand but undamaged. After a wash in the toilet washbasin with liquid hand soap and a nailbrush they looked new again and a good day’s birding was enjoyed. That sums-up the mechanical characteristics. So good that I’ve accepted the optics, and am prepared to tolerate some shortcomings. Rather like a girl with a fantastic body and a face like a pig’s bum!
Optics? Odd, but not awful. At £300 I must admit that you get much more ‘bang for your buck’ with a £60 pair of Nikon porroprisms. A lot more. Lens flare exists in milky profusion in a circumferential halo all around the circle of view, almost all the time. This appears to be generated by internal reflections of the moving object lenses inside, appearing reflected on the inside surface of the glass at the object end of the bins. I say the inside of the “glass” because on brief examination, the object end appears to be a pair of T* coated plain glass discs, not lenses. Slap me if I’m wrong Mister Zeiss, but these discs appear to be just seals or ‘windows’ at the end of the tubes that protect the lenses moving on the rails inside? Whatever they are, they project internal reflections. Otherwise the field of view is very large, visibly wider than Swarovski EL 8.5x42 which are quoted to be 7.4 degrees. This would make the Conquests approx 8.5 degrees wide! Depth of focus is better than any other binocular that I’ve found. Brill for my stiff old eyes, and meaning that the focus wheel hardly gets used. Brightness is very good, but not as dazzling as the ‘vision of angels’ brilliance of Ultravids. No colour fringing is detectable, colour rendition is neutral to slightly blue. But the image looks SMALL! I just can’t explain that. A distant brick for example, looked the size of a shoebox in my 10x bins. With three other makes of 8x bins the brick appeared the size of a paperback book. But in the 8x Conquests, the brick looks the size of a pack of 20 Benson&Hedges tabs. How come? I just can’t answer that. But if I wasn’t reading the label on the box, I’d have said that these glasses were really 6 or 7x magnification, not 8x. I’m confused by this impression. How can the image look so small, when the magnification is the same? Moving on to the accessories, the case is quality badged black canvas, but with no strap and rather thin padding. Strap is ergonomically curved wide black neoprene, better than the other top makers straight ones, and the rainguard is the best ‘separate cups’ example I’ve used. However, Zeiss can also supply the traditional ‘tin bath’ shaped single cup model for £5.99 if preferred.
Reading my own review I just don’t know why I love these binoculars so much. They’re a slightly ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ instrument. With this many definable imperfections, they don’t sound very good value do they? Maybe not. But you do get three pairs for the price of one Ultravid so I won’t be crying if I lose them. I just can’t put my finger on what constitutes the joy of ownership here. It sure isn’t ‘street cred’ these days when Zeiss have ‘lost the plot’ as a colleague once put it. But just hug a pair for a day and you’ll find yourself having a weekend affair with them while your expensive ones are left at home watching TV. In my case this could be heading for a divorce……….
I’m just rushing-off a subjective and non-technical first impression before leaving on a year-long South Pacific trip with my 2 month old 8x30 Conquests as first choice even though I have Swarovski and Leica models costing over £1000 in the cupboard. Perhaps that says something about Zeiss’s quirky, inexpensive little model. They are total FUN! I’m sure there’s better optics around, and they’ll certainly never approach the dazzling image of 8x32 Ultravids, but these little bins just FEEL so great in the hand that I just want to keep fondling them. The rubber armouring and claddings are thick, squidgey and sticky. The body is curved superbly to the natural shape of the hand, even though it looks plain and ugly. In common with Zeiss’s current obsession with whacky lop-sided designs, the ‘zero’ pointer for the focus wheel and the far-end dioptre wheel are not in the centre, but 30 degrees clockwise and unmarked by any white dot or line. The dioptre wheel clicks into a deep ‘zero’ notch that is so heavy it feels like the Grand Canyon. Annoyingly the wheel ‘falls’ back into the notch when set at small distance past the centre for my eyes. The ‘jizz’ of the binoculars is that of a little chunky indestructible sorbo rubber dog toy. Everything is thick black plastic and ‘wine gum’ feeling rubber. When dropped amongst rocks on a beach breakwater the bins bounced, joggled and ricocheted from stone to stone like a power ball, emerging from a saltwater pool covered in sand but undamaged. After a wash in the toilet washbasin with liquid hand soap and a nailbrush they looked new again and a good day’s birding was enjoyed. That sums-up the mechanical characteristics. So good that I’ve accepted the optics, and am prepared to tolerate some shortcomings. Rather like a girl with a fantastic body and a face like a pig’s bum!
Optics? Odd, but not awful. At £300 I must admit that you get much more ‘bang for your buck’ with a £60 pair of Nikon porroprisms. A lot more. Lens flare exists in milky profusion in a circumferential halo all around the circle of view, almost all the time. This appears to be generated by internal reflections of the moving object lenses inside, appearing reflected on the inside surface of the glass at the object end of the bins. I say the inside of the “glass” because on brief examination, the object end appears to be a pair of T* coated plain glass discs, not lenses. Slap me if I’m wrong Mister Zeiss, but these discs appear to be just seals or ‘windows’ at the end of the tubes that protect the lenses moving on the rails inside? Whatever they are, they project internal reflections. Otherwise the field of view is very large, visibly wider than Swarovski EL 8.5x42 which are quoted to be 7.4 degrees. This would make the Conquests approx 8.5 degrees wide! Depth of focus is better than any other binocular that I’ve found. Brill for my stiff old eyes, and meaning that the focus wheel hardly gets used. Brightness is very good, but not as dazzling as the ‘vision of angels’ brilliance of Ultravids. No colour fringing is detectable, colour rendition is neutral to slightly blue. But the image looks SMALL! I just can’t explain that. A distant brick for example, looked the size of a shoebox in my 10x bins. With three other makes of 8x bins the brick appeared the size of a paperback book. But in the 8x Conquests, the brick looks the size of a pack of 20 Benson&Hedges tabs. How come? I just can’t answer that. But if I wasn’t reading the label on the box, I’d have said that these glasses were really 6 or 7x magnification, not 8x. I’m confused by this impression. How can the image look so small, when the magnification is the same? Moving on to the accessories, the case is quality badged black canvas, but with no strap and rather thin padding. Strap is ergonomically curved wide black neoprene, better than the other top makers straight ones, and the rainguard is the best ‘separate cups’ example I’ve used. However, Zeiss can also supply the traditional ‘tin bath’ shaped single cup model for £5.99 if preferred.
Reading my own review I just don’t know why I love these binoculars so much. They’re a slightly ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ instrument. With this many definable imperfections, they don’t sound very good value do they? Maybe not. But you do get three pairs for the price of one Ultravid so I won’t be crying if I lose them. I just can’t put my finger on what constitutes the joy of ownership here. It sure isn’t ‘street cred’ these days when Zeiss have ‘lost the plot’ as a colleague once put it. But just hug a pair for a day and you’ll find yourself having a weekend affair with them while your expensive ones are left at home watching TV. In my case this could be heading for a divorce……….
