Brock, ya missed it.....there a little comments window at the end. But if you had put all those wishes in there, the entire Zeiss staff would be totally bewildered.....completely taken aback. There would be looks of puzzlement, hand wringing, head scratching, mumbling & musing......"....ve haf verked awl zees years to liminate ze dogsleg in ze binoculars, und now zay vant it back? Ach du lieber!!"
I just took the survey again, and still no comments window at the end, perhaps it's my browser (Firefox 5) or perhaps you are fibbing. But I put in another vote for Nikon and increased my price range this time, so hopefully that will make them worried.
Great phonetic accent!
A while back, I speculated (wildly) on why Zeiss turned to roofs and abandoned the "dogsleg" design.
It certainly wasn't because users demanded it, this was before p-coating and when there were only a handful or roofs made and porros ruled the earth.
I suspected that it had to do with Zeiss West wanting to distinguish itself from Zeiss East (Jena), which was making excellent porros based on the original Zeiss design and selling them at a less expensive price.
Why would people pay more $ for mooreorless the same porros? Well, for one, they weren't "commie" bins. You can see that even today there is a "Red backlash" against Chinese bins by some binofans.
None-the-less, Zeiss on both sides of the Berlin Wall were producing very similar products. Advancing the roof model gave Zeiss West something different to offer the public.
And this difference had its appeal, as this review on BVD characterized the pre-p coated Leitz Trinovid:
"Their handling, their durability, their weatherproofness and that certain panache that goes with owning precision European roof prism binoculars convinced many a birder that their view was better than it actually was."
Source:
http://www.betterviewdesired.com/Swift-Eaglet-and-Nikon-Action-Egret-II.php
Brock