It's such a coincidence this thread woke up a few days ago: A few days ago I two Maven demo units: The B.6 10x50 and the B.2 9x45.
I started off wanting 'good' 10x50s a couple of years ago. Ended up spending my 'good' money on Nikon 8x42 HGs.
But I've still wanted quality very good, perhaps even (go into credit card debt) 'alphas.' I wear glasses so this is a consideration.
I won't drag y'all thru the whole path to Mavens but I've really wanted to try the 9x45 AKs, imagining they'd be awesome, they'd offer a little more mag but not too much since I like to get on Farallon Island boats now and again and 9s might be better than 10s for being on the ocean.
But I still wanted to try 10x50s, too.
* * *
So I received both demo Mavens earlier this week and I went to the Berkeley Marina with more excitement than I can adequately convey here.
I am still weighing my experiences with the two models but in short I find the 9x45s basically unusable. I presumed I had a faulty model and maybe I do. But I wrote to Maven and they said some people react poorly to the AK prisms and their field flatteners. This is my first AK prism/field flattener experience so I have nothing to compare it to. But with the 9x45s I cannot achieve focus resolution with any degree of satisfaction. Sometimes I think it's the diopter adjustment, sometimes I think each barrel isn't quite in focus. Also, even when I have one bird in something akin to focus, everything else is so blurry that the whole experience is unpleasant.
The Maven rep said some people can't deal with field flatteners, it gives a small cross section of users headaches. Maybe I'm in that camp; maybe I got a bad demo model. I'll send them back and find out soon. Very let down.
* * *
Comparatively I've loved the B6 10x50s. At the marina there were W. gulls preening in shallow water and clarity and overall experience was just luscious. Feathers so distinct, water droplets rolling off of feathers, really detailed clarity on eyes and legs and bills and gapes and colors and all. I presume I will order new Maven 10x50 B6s if I hear the 9x45s I had are not defective.
* * *
The ONE positive experience I had with the 9x45s was this past Friday. I went to Lake Chabot with my HGs and both Maven models and had the same experience I'd had a days prior. Except at the end of my lake path birding walk and I was almost done for the day, I saw a great blue heron standing still across a short expanse of water. So I decided to try looking thru the Mavens when they rested on a wooden railing. Doing this, with the binoculars side by side and motionless on the railing, I noticed the 9x45 B2s showed the color of everything - the heron, the surrounding trees - more vividly; everything was a touch less vivid, less contrasty, thru the B610x50s.
Honestly this bummed me out because I want things to simple, y'know? What's good is all good, what's bad is all bad, case closed. Now of course I'm all "aaahhhhh I'm making a bad choice ahhh." Such is life.
TODAY I went back to the Berkeley waterfront with JUST the B2 9x45s. Really put them to the test. Basically wholly unpleasant. Either my eyes or my brain could not focus them to a point of comfort. I tried and tried. Not pleasant.
More later,
Lewis
