Reviews by tonyc4793

After many months of consideration I bought the HD 10x42 binoculars having decided to upgrade my binoculars to the high end and Leica is the brand that I like the most. The other German and Austrian binoculars are excellent and in the end it all came down to personal preference.

They do become better the more you use them and I believe a pair of Leicas will serve you for life and although expensive will last a life time with no need to upgrade.

After many months of consideration I bought the HD 10x42 binoculars having decided to upgrade my binoculars to the high end and Leica is the brand that I like the most. The other German and Austrian binoculars are excellent and in the end it all came down to personal preference.

They do become better the more you use them and like the previous reviewers comments, I believe a pair of Leicas will serve you for life and although expensive will last a life time with no need to upgrade.

Leica had a promotion giving away a pair of these when you purchased their Ultravid HD full sized binoculars so I yielded to temptation.

For nature observation, I prefer 10x magnification but this is a personal choice so I tend to use these mostly for days out to old houses and cathedral's where I can keep these in my pocket and use them to see close up architectural details.

Bought this scope about six months ago as I already have the Nikon ED82 which uses most of the same eye pieces. Now I tend to use it more than the larger scope for magnification up to 27x. The twist up eyepiece zoom does go up th 40x but I prefer the wide eyepieces and also the images become less bright at 40x magnification.

The 20x wide eyepiece gives an excellent wide angle view and good brightness and is may favourite. If I had to choose only one eyepiece it would be the 20x wide. The 13-30 zoom with the rubber eye relief is both comfortable and practical to use and very bright at 13x magnification. It performes well up to it's highest magnification of 30x, which is practically the limit of this 50mm scope. Of the two zoom eyepieces available, I much prefer the 13-30x with rubber eye relief to the 13-40x with twist up relief.

When rating this scope I am comparing it to other 50mm scopes in the same league as no 50mm scope will compete on performance at high magnification with a large scope. For a 50mm light weight travel scope, this is the best I have come across and although it works better at lower magnifications, it cannot compete with an ED82mm scope at higher magnifications. The ED50 is quality in a very light weight and small travel sized scope.

Cley Spy and Infocus both make stay on cases for this scope and although not cheap, the Cley Spy cover is of good quality and fits both straight and angled scopes. I have not seen the Infocus cover close up and I believe it only fits the angled scope.

After months of looking at scopes I bought the ED82mm in March this year and have used it often since. At the time I compared it to scopes of a similar price range and was satisfied that it had brighter clearer more brilliant sharp images. Looked at some more expensive ones as well.

Yesterday I visited the British Birdfair 2009 event and spent time playing with the high price range scopes such as Leica HD, Kowa, Swarovski and Carl Zeiss and was pleasently suprised how well my Nikon stood up to these both in terms of optics and build quality. The only significant difference I noticed was the cost. The new Nikon EDG is very good but is heavy and expensive. The experience was very reassuring and I will be keeping the ED82.

Now I have an ED50 which uses the same eyepieces. Having purchase a couple of wide eyepieces I much prefer these to the zoom. My next experiment will be digiscoping.