Swift Audubon 8.5x44 ED: flexing bridge (1 Viewer)

I started looking for a good bino to use when taking walks with my wife an my son on the beaches and dune's, forrests and graslands that surround my little city of Hellevoetsluis.
After much reading I decided to go for the Swift Audubon 8.5x44 ED porro as positive reviews kept coming up. I placed an order, and a few days later the Audubon arrived. A grey one.. as I was expecting a black one.
After a visual inspection of the Swift I noticed a few marks on the rubber armouring. These looked like they were used bins! After doing an little optical inspection I found myself quite pleased wit the image. So I send it back for an replacement bin without any usage marks. I got back the black version. And after looking through these I knew the grey one I had was not an ED version.
I thought, okay: all wel, ends well.

Next day after using the bino for a few minutes I noticed that I couldn't get the focus snap-on. Racking in and out, and in... and out... and ..yes! Focus!
And a few seconds later... headache, lost focus.
After a good inspection I could tel it wasn't the collimation of the prisms, it wasn't the diopter adjustment that moved but a terrible flexing and lagging eyepiece bridge. The right side lagged behind when focussing and it kept moving slowly after I stopt turning the focusknob. Bad Bad Bad!!!!!!!
The optics were great, but why? WHY destroy a beatifull crisp, clear and tack-sharp glass with a plastic rubbisch-bridge which couldn't keep focus!!!!
I still do not understand how sombody can approve such an engineering-flaw an bring it into production.
Sure, with 100 dollar bins I can understand, but the flaggship of Swift AND carrying the Audubon name. It's a shame.

So I also returned these and payed 200 euro's extra to purchase an Bynolyt Albatross SHR 8x42 ED roofs. The flaggship of Bynolyt.
These bins are soley sold in The Netherlands as far as I know. And guess what... they out-performed the Audubon's in more ways than one.
The image was not as bright as the Audubon, but focussing was much better and easier, close focus was less than 2 meters, image sharpness was beter, there was no field curvature, only a fair amount pincushioning. But sharp to the edge! The eyerelief was beter to! And offcours no focus wiggles and jiggles but a real snap-in-focus and realy waterproof. No question about is, these ar very good optics. I wonder if these are also sold under another name. I could not find anything.

So no more Audubon for me as long as they don't fix the flexing eyepiece bridge, the twist up-and-down eyepiece cups and the wandering diopter adjustment.

I keep hearing about the focus problems caused by the flexing eye piece bridge. While I agree there is more flex in the eye piece bridge than there should be, the focus problems attributed to it was not among any problems with the Swift 820 I had. Neither was there any problem with the diopter, which was plenty stiff enough in mine, and it gave me no problem.

In my particular case, I returned them for a refund because the diameter of the ocular assembly was simply too large to be comfortable. I am reasonably good sized and I do not have particularly deep set eyes. From my perspective, I would think that this would be more problematic to more people than focus issues.

I agree. I got the grey 820 non-ed model by mistake, and indeed the bridge problem wasn't far as bad as the black ED I got back. but is was still there.

Two problems occur with the flexing bridge.
1) no sharp focus
2) misalignment (collimation)

Maybe there is som spreading in quality. The store I ordered the with offered me to replace them with an other pair of other black audubon ED's but I din't want to take a chance again to get another bad pair. It was order online, so I couldn't go in person and test the new pair.

Dear Patrick,

In another thread you can find info about the interesting case that some ED Audubons were made with grey housing and the weight can tell the truth about the modell version (EDs are with much bigger weight). However, you can received an used, non-ED version.

I am unsatisfied with the ocular mechanism of my Audubon, but I dont think that it causes either miscollimation or bad focus. Miscollimation should be a problem for that modell, but only after years of heavy using and the reparation is easy because of the special mechanism of Audubons. Mine works well and the optical quality is excellent.

I agree with you that probably small but generic construction changes could cause much better Audubons in the future.

Best regards,

Vámi