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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Big binoulars question (1 Viewer)

O

optics lover

Member
Hello, birders,

I just found you folks today and am delighted. I would like to find out if there is a quality binocular in the 15X60 range that are porro prism.
 
optics lover said:
Hello, birders,

I just found you folks today and am delighted. I would like to find out if there is a quality binocular in the 15X60 range that are porro prism.
Click to expand...

Welcome to the Birdforum, this is one size that is not often used by birders,
more often by the astronomy or hunting crowd.
There are some to pick from, what is your budget, that always helps in
giving advice.

Jerry
 
Hi optics,
There a re a number of big porros available, but hte good ones are pricey.
The Zeiss 15x60 BGA is out of production, afaik, but does appear on Ebay or Astromart from time to time. It solf for around $2500, versus maybe $1500 for the Docter, which is close optically but heavy at 53 oz.
Fujinon sells superb big binocs, but they are IF designs aimed at the astronomy and military market.
Minox offers a couple as well, as does Nikon and Pentax.
Birders generally are less fond of these big optics, they are heavy and hard to hold steady. The main market is hunters out west, who use them from a rest to scan for game on the other side of the valley. The hunter forums will have much more detail on them.
 
Many large binoculars have very short eye-relief. If you wear glasses, you may want to check this specification for any binocular you consider.
 
There is a single Docter 15x60 user over on the Cloudy Nights astronomy bino forum, and he is very much impressed with the precision and basic optical quality ie, pinpoint stars at centerfield, high transmission, and high contrast. Oughta' be, considering that is a thousand buck Porro! He has commented that its only weakness is that stars near the edge of the field are not as sharply focused as in, say, a Fujinon 16x70.

He has not commented on daytime performance, however. In my experience, such high powered binoculars, while excellent for star observing, usually show a noticeable/objectionable tendency towards color fringing on high contrast edges. Just something to watch out for in the birding arena.
Ron
 
Until I know, none has try to made 60mm roof binoculars for using without tripod or similar. There must be a reason. Humans are too weak for that. So ,probably excelent porros 15X60 must be close the limit. I had some experience with the Zeiss and sometimes I'd like to carry them, as when watching warblers, and siblings, in the bushes. I've found scope almost unusable in such circustances.
 
Hi there OL....ya really wanna give the Canon 15x50 a try. That'll give any other 15x a run for the $, plus ya get IS, which can really be a boon if ya don't wanna use some type of support. I've had one for almost 8yrs and haven't yet found anything appreciably better. I've had one look thru a 15x60 Zeiss, and while that was very satisfying, it's a big, heavy, rather clumsy glass, and has IF (which makes it weatherproof, but not very versatile). Also did about a 30 min comparo with a Swaro 15x56 on a birding trip, and found it gives up virtually nothing optically (I never used the IS while A-B-ing, as the big Canon is the easiest hipower bino to hold reasonably still of any I've tried, which is about all of them), plus having the IS. The Swaro is a tad brighter, but for resolution, fov, er, a dead heat....except the Canon costs half what either the Zeiss or Swaro cost.


ve
 
The Zeiss 15x60 is big, admittedly, but it is a CF glass.
The focus wheel is at the far end of the center hinge. where it can be conveniently adjusted with the pinkie.
There may be an IF variant that Spyglass was lucky enough to get hold of, but the bulk of the production was CF.
 
optics lover said:
Hello, birders,

I just found you folks today and am delighted. I would like to find out if there is a quality binocular in the 15X60 range that are porro prism.
Click to expand...


What will you be using them for. Binoculars of that size would be better suited for long range terrestrial scanning and astronomy than chasing birds.
 
Etude, yr absolutely right. I was at Astronomics in '86 looking at binos for Halley's Comet viewing, after I discovered the 10x50 Nova I got there a few months earlier wasn't gonna be enough. So I tried out the big Zeiss, the 16x70 Fujinon, a 15x80 Meade and a 16x70 Celestron Deluxe (which I ended up with). It was the Fuji that was IF, not the Zeiss....all this time, I traveled under the illusion that the Zeiss was.......

So I had to prove it was IF, and dug out an old Astronomics brochure from '98 (almost the last before it went totally online) that had all the binos they sold, with pix, specs and commentary....and sure enuf, the BGA/T had a focus wheel. You are witnessing the onset of old-timers disease......

fu
 
Watching Halley must have been wonderful with those big glasses.
I'm not surprised that it was the Fujinon which stuck in your memory, that is one fine (mighty expensive ) binocular.
 
spyglass said:
I've had one look thru a 15x60 Zeiss, and while that was very satisfying, it's a big, heavy, rather clumsy glass, and has IF (which makes it weatherproof, but not very versatile).
Click to expand...

The Zeiss has centre focussing. There was never a model with IF on the market.

Hermann
 
Well, Halley's in '86 was almost a non-event....all I could see thru the big Celestron was what looked like a slightly elongated star just barely above the southern horizon. Didn't come as close as in 1910....but I did get a decent look at it one night. Went out to a local lake to get a little darker sky and came upon a high school science teacher with 4 of his students in a parking lot. A local benefactor had given the school a Celestron C5 with a clock-drive and 22mm eyepiece (about 57x) and after I set up the big bino, we all traded views (I put the bino on the Pleides & Orion). At least you could tell it was a comet, but about 10yrs later (I think about spring of '97) I got some satisfying views of Hale-Bopp with that ol' 16x.
 
I viewed Comet Halley many times in 1985 & 1986 from San Diego Co., Calif. At its brightest it was a very good comet, one of the half-dozen or so best comets I've seen -- certainly not a "non-event." But I was viewing from about 33 deg north and a bit south of that, and with a superbly dark southern horizon. Family members viewed it from Malawi, about 14 deg south, and my mother said it was "spectacular." I never heard her say that about any other astronomical object, going back to 1954, when I first became interested.
 
Halley was a bust here in the NE. Little Hyakatuke was great though! I got a great timed landscape shot of it with a 24mm lens as it streaked by Polaris.

Bob
 
Last edited:
ceasar said:
Halley was a bust here in the NE. Little Hyakatuke was great though! I got a great timed landscape shot of it with a 24mm lens as it streaked by Polaris.

Bob
Click to expand...

Hyakutake (1996) was the best I've seen. Hale-Bopp (1997) was bright, but the huge tail of Hyakutake, stretching from Ursa Major to Virgo, makes it tops for me. For some reason I missed West (1975) and Ikeya-Seki (1965). I guess I was involved with other things. McNaught four years ago was the only one I've seen in the daytime, although I needed binoculars.
 
Well, don't feel bad, I missed Hyakutake entirely....like you, I think I was involved with other pursuits. Oh well,.....
 
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