A few days with the Pentax ZD 8x43 ED (2 Viewers)

[Swedpat]

The differences between the two are so small does it really matter that much ?, especially when considering that the sweet spots that both the earlier version of the DCF ED and the current ZD ED provide. Going from memory from handling these, the eyepiece(lens) design is what contributed in making these a delight to use because of their gorgeous long eye relief for eye glass wearers. For me personally, I would take a more restrictive FOV any day and welcome this type of lens design to have that great eye relief.

I am very pleased to see I am not alone to really appreciate long eye relief!
Because it's obvious that wide FOV by the most people, and by manufacturers is considered as more important than ER.
Especially I wonder about the common difference between 8x25 and 8x30/32.
There are several examples of 8x25 models with long eye relief (Pentax, Minolta, Opticron, Swarovski). 41-44 deg AFOV(Swaro 50deg).
But the 8x30/32 have 60-65deg and shorter ER.
So 8x25 models(not the cheaper ones) often work good with eyeglasses while 8x30 do not.
Why is it that they choose narrow field LER eyepieces for the compacts while WA short ER eyepieces for 8x30s? I think it would be better to have 56deg 20mm instead if 65deg 16mm. Just an example.
Yes, Zeiss and Swarovski have now 8x30/32s with longer ER good for eyeglasses even with wide FOV. But these are the more expensive models.
And there are a lot of examples of bigger aperture models where ER has been sacrificed to get wider FOV. Therefore I appreciate that Pentax still offer the ZD models with very long ER, even if AFOV is not large.