9x30 Featherlight from the 1980's (1 Viewer)

9x30 Featherweight from the 1980's

I'm extremely fortunate to have inherited a pair of these 9x30 bins, in their case; to give you an idea of condition they still have the silver oval "102 passed" sticker in great condition on the right ocular. I think my relatives also had Swaros for a long time but broke them.

They appear very good optically though I seemed to notice shake, anyway shall be comparing them to my Steiners early tomorrow.
They are so light and compact!!!

Anyone else have them? Use them still?

30 years ago when I was looking at the Zeiss 10x40 Dialyts in a Leeds store, the dealer also showed me some Nikon 9x30 roof prisms for comparison. I remember him saying that they were of comparable quality to the Zeiss.
They were quite impressive and relatively expensive but I was a little desperate to own some West German Zeiss.
At about that time the 10x40 Habicht "Diana"(Swarovski), was sold by Heron Optical Co for £112. 34 as advertised in the Jan/Feb 1976 edition of Birds (RSPB) magazine.

The Nikon 9x30 DCF shows up as the first Nikon roof prism model they produced, starting
in 1976, and was called the H-line D CF. They started with these in: 7x26, 9x30 and 12x40.
In 1979 they also made the 9x30 DCF along with a 12x36. This is from a Nikon archive
catalog, I use for reference.

I also found a Nikon Birdforum thread from 9-25-2005, which goes into detail about this model.
If you would like to search back, you will find it.

They look like a nice small compact binocular, and would be of interest to any Nikon collector.

Jerry

Thank you...
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=42370

Is there any way of dating them by the serial number 975799? I confess to only guessing they were from the eighties because of the case construction.

Not for sale by the way.

Yes, the line originated in 1976 and includes binoculars with three different specifications. I've owned the 7x26 version for several years and find they deliver very good quality images. They are great for taking to baseball games and casual observing of birds off the deck. However if the images are compared those from modern bins with better ar coatings and phase coatings their age becomes apparent. Colors and images not quite as bright and resolution not quite as fine. Still they can be enjoyed for what they are.

Several points:
----I suspect the 9x30s in the OP are Porros. As such 'phase coating' has no meaning...
it only applies to correcting a problem with roof prisms.

----Older binoculars can easily match and in many cases defeat modern binoculars for resolution
at long range, because they attenuate haze and glare far more. Even at close range,
prime binoculars going back to 1948 have apparent resolution to half the size of human acuity.
For modern binoculars that actually deliver over distance, you need some UV/Violet pre-filtering like
that in Fujinons, some Zeiss, and some Nikons.

---If you actually want to make use of the extra light, you need to pick carefully for contrast.
Otherwise, the detection suffers due to the grey level and they look dim/hazy.