Swifters,
I have been intrigued by the ongoing discussion of ED glass and air-spaced objectives for the Audubon 804c which, unfortunately, are effectively unavailable today - I then recalled that Swift actually offered another ED glass, alongside the 804c - the Ultralite ZCF 8x44 ED (interestingly, also described in the same Steven Ingraham article reviewing the then-new Audubon 820 on BVD).
Does anyone have any experience with this particular Ultralite? I wonder whether it, too, has air-spaced objectives (I presume it would) and what the practical effect of 8x would be (vs. 8.5x in the Audubon) - on paper, it would seem to be a wonderful glass, of similar optical quality to the Audubon, except for a narrower FOV (but substantially longer eye relief); I would be very interested to hear from any owners or reviewers...
I have been intrigued by the ongoing discussion of ED glass and air-spaced objectives for the Audubon 804c which, unfortunately, are effectively unavailable today - I then recalled that Swift actually offered another ED glass, alongside the 804c - the Ultralite ZCF 8x44 ED (interestingly, also described in the same Steven Ingraham article reviewing the then-new Audubon 820 on BVD).
Does anyone have any experience with this particular Ultralite? I wonder whether it, too, has air-spaced objectives (I presume it would) and what the practical effect of 8x would be (vs. 8.5x in the Audubon) - on paper, it would seem to be a wonderful glass, of similar optical quality to the Audubon, except for a narrower FOV (but substantially longer eye relief); I would be very interested to hear from any owners or reviewers...