New Zeiss binos 8x40 SFL and 10x40 SFL (1 Viewer)

[Brink]

Don't remember ever seeing that grip on this side of the pond.

Lee

Give it a shot. Just modify your grip so you can anchor your thumbs against your cheekbones or nose or temples and you may find your view stabilizes significantly. If you hawkwatch or seawatch a lot it can make a huge difference.

 

[Vespobuteo]

Excellent. The whole idea of the 'open hinge' design is that the bridge/hinge is split to make room for your fingers around the barrels of the binos for a more secure grip. However some designs placed the focus wheel too far away from the barrels so that you had to 'reach' rather awkwardly to place your finger on it. See pic below of Fr Schiestel-Swarovski holding an early EL and having to bend her finger. Of course she could have moved her hand up the bino somewhat to get easier access to the focus, but then there would be little point in the open hinge design.

Later designs with the focus wheel moved from the top of the hinge to the middle, such as the SF, allowed easy access to the focus wheel, so that you don't have to modify your hand position to reach the focus, see second pic, which is of my hand holding an SF32.

Lee

The "open hinge" point may be less obvious with the EL:s, but you can grip around the barrel with one hand (space is limited between the barrels in the EL SV:s anyway), the other hand is moved "one finger width" closer to the focuser to avoid the "unnaturally painful index finger stretch"....

The SFL:s look like they got some ergonomic genes from the HT:s, which is a good thing. Limited space between the barrels might interfere to the "double barrel" grip though.

 

[BryanP]

Nice work, the SFL:s do look tiny. Rubber armor and maybe the housing as well must be thinner than the SF:s.

They do, didn’t think of thinner armour helping keep down bulk but it makes sense. Having these kind of illustrations at hand helps a lot with getting a sense of size of an instrument.

 

[William Lewis]

I think this is good news a long as it means someone sells me a ht 8x42 cheap to help finance them!

 

[[email protected]]

Ok, when I search I see that Conquest HD 8x42 is available for ~£1000 so the difference is a a bit bigger than I thought.
It's still an extra price I would consider to pay if I was considering to get some of these. I already have Conquest HD 8x42. And actually the price of Conquests has raised with ~60% since I bought mine 7-8 years ago.
If SFL had been released at the time I bought NL Pure 8x42 I seriously had considered to get SFL instead.
And given the huge price increase of Conquest since I bought mine, if I sell it I should be able to get at least almost as much as I bought it for.

There are going to be a lot of Conquest's for sale when the SFL is introduced. It could drive the price down with the increased supply on the used market. You might want to dump your Conquest before the SFL is available.

 

[[email protected]]

that’s almost double the price of conquest hd.
I guess the SFL should be better optically and around the quality of Swaro SLC.

Buy them at B&H with the Payboo Card, and they give you the tax back.

 

[[email protected]]

Like ELs and Ultravids, now we’re talking. Although those two examples are far apart in image Philosophy, at least that gives us an indication of the optical quality level of the new Zeiss.

Ill take one of each please 🙃. Or maybe I’ll just take one and wait for Dennis to sell his 😄. Just kidding Dennis.

Thank you.

Paul

I will probably buy a pair of SFL 8x40 and then compare them to my Noctivid 8x42 and then keep one or the other. I don't need two alpha roof 8x42 mm binoculars. The Noctivid is heavy, being over 31 oz. and the 23 oz. SFL would definitely feel better around the neck after birding all day if it can compete on optics.

 

[[email protected]]

I threw together a quick composite illustration of the size differences of the SF 8x32, SF 8x42 and the SFL 8x40. This was done in Procreate on the iPad.
I don’t think this will stand up to rigid scrutiny but it will give a close ballpark of the size differences of the three. Apologies in advance for any glaring inaccuracies.
According to the Zeiss website the height measurements of all three are;
173 mm for the SF 8x42,
144 mm for the SFL 8x40
152 mm for the SF 8x32.
When I got everything lined up I thought I’d messed up somewhere as it seems like the SFL should be bigger. If I did get this right the SFL is very petite. If this really is the case I’m very interested in the SFL.
If something is backwards or I missed something maybe folks can let me know and I’ll give it another go.

Edit, I cleaned up the illustration for better accuracy.

View attachment 1438774

The SFL 8x40's are SMALLER than the SF 8x32's! I really like the single bridge and the location of the focuser. That is it, the Noctivid's are in the classified's.

 

[BryanP]

The SFL 8x40's are SMALLER than the SF 8x32's! I really like the single bridge and the location of the focuser. That is it, the Noctivid's are in the classified's.

Yup they are and only 40 grams more. If the optics are stellar I’ll be looking hard at these.

In order to fine tune my own sense of scale I added the wife’s 8x32 2017 Terra’s to the illustration. They’re more in line with an average 32mm binocular size give or take. In this case they’re an appropriate choice for comparison purposes.
The SFL is of course larger than the Terra’s by some margin but in my books is still in the ballpark.

 

[Maljunulo]

In my inexperienced and and inexpert opinion, it all comes down to “ What are you willing to give up (compromise on) to get what you want?”

 

[[email protected]]

Yup they are and only 40 grams more. If the optics are stellar I’ll be looking hard at these.

In order to fine tune my own sense of scale I added the wife’s 8x32 2017 Terra’s to the illustration. They’re more in line with an average 32mm binocular size give or take. In this case they’re an appropriate choice for comparison purposes.
The SFL is of course larger than the Terra’s by some margin but in my books is still in the ballpark.


View attachment 1438880

You COULD carry the SFL in your coat pocket, I will bet! It isn't much bigger than a Terra 8x32! I WANT one!

 

[eitanaltman]

Give it a shot. Just modify your grip so you can anchor your thumbs against your cheekbones or nose or temples and you may find your view stabilizes significantly. If you hawkwatch or seawatch a lot it can make a huge difference.

I love grip discussions! I’ve learned so much from others posting their methods here and it’s important IMO for everyone to experiment and not just grab it and shove it up to your eye like you’re trying to see if there’s a bug in your beer bottle.

The “thumbs up” grip was a revelation for me, and it also makes it easy to incorporate what you describe, using one or both thumbs to provide extra bracing against the face. I especially like your method for tiny binoculars which suffer from some combo of too-small eyecups and/or too-short eyecups extension; any non-eyeglass wearer will have blackouts if they try to stick the eyecups in the eye socket like you would with a larger binocular. But I’ve experimented (in my case with the Ultravid 8x20) and found that it’s very comfortable to use a thumbs up grip, with the body resting on the pad and “cradling” the little eyecups in the nook of my slightly bent thumb. So the top of my thumb is the contact point with my face, adding extra spacing to avoid blackouts and sort of anchoring the little bin against my face.

For larger binoculars I still prefer holding them farther forward, which makes having a focus knob closer to the eyeballs an ergonomic issue. The open-bridge party of the past decade plus gets the attention, but Leica Ultravids IMO implemented this ergonomic design perfectly in a close bridge design… the big thumb ridges and balance encourage a more forward hold, and the double-length focus knob is recessed deeply into the bridge so it’s right there for your finger without stretching. And it’s very easy to shift from single finger to double finger focus depending on your grip and use case.

The Kowa Genesis 8x33 is another example of a closed bridge design that manages to recess the focus knob closer to the middle of the body so there’s not much stretch regardless of how you grip. I‘ve really grown to dislike the focus knob being too close to the eyeballs, one of the main reasons I couldn’t get along with the Swaro CL 8-30.

 

[NDhunter]

Bryan, I really like your photos, they are a nice thing to view. I am wondering just how the Leica Ultravid would compare
in this size comparison. They are shorter than many other 42's. I suspect they would be close to the SFL.
Jerry

 

[Conndomat]

The Noctivid is heavy, being over 31 oz. and the 23 oz. SFL would definitely feel better around the neck after birding all day if it can compete on optics.

Dennis You will always find a reason to swap one glass for another, it's very arbitrary..,

Andreas

 

[BryanP]

Bryan, I really like your photos, they are a nice thing to view. I am wondering just how the Leica Ultravid would compare
in this size comparison. They are shorter than many other 42's. I suspect they would be close to the SFL.
Jerry

They do help with visualizing things. Now that I have a template and workflow set up adding a new binocular model is fairly straightforward.

I assume you meant the Leica Ultravid HD Plus 8x42
B&H states the length of the Leica at 142mm, 2 mm shy of the SFL so both are very close in size.
Its the weight that shows any real difference as shown in the illustration. 5+oz or 150 grams difference with the heavier being the Leica.

 

[NDhunter]

Bryan: You are very good with your comparisons, and the Leica is very similar in length.
One site I checked shows the weight of the Leica UV 8x42+, at 26.5 oz. Leica has been careful
to keep the length and weight down, but with the Noctovid, those are much heavier than average, at 30.3 oz.
Jerry

 

[BryanP]

One site I checked shows the weight of the Leica UV 8x42+, at 26.5 oz. Leica has been careful
to keep the length and weight down, but with the Noctovid, those are much heavier than average, at 30.3 oz.
Jerry

Hi Jerry,
Here’s a page from Leica’s downloadable tech sheet pdf. It states the weight of the 8x42 at 27.9 oz/790g. The 10x42 matches your number of 26.5 oz/750g. A differences of just over an ounce between the 2 formats and not enough to matter in the real world of course.
Either way the SFL is an intriguing new binocular and I for one am looking forward to Lee’s and others reviews.

 

[DrewskiMT]

These size comparison graphics are really selling the SFL to me! The price, not so much.

 

[dries1]

$1,800 (Optics for Birding), I thought it would be less than that.

 

[BryanP]

1800 US! Yikes!
After taxes that comes to over 2500 Canadian Pesos. I’m running out of organs to sell so will probably have to pass.