I do not like the eye cups on my 8.5x44 ED (vintage early 2000's), and much prefer the roof-down ones on my HR/5. The eye placement is much friendlier with the old roll down ones, at least for me. Does anyone know if the following is possible, and who might do it for me?
Remove and replace the eye cups.
Jay,
I looked into this shortly after the 820s first came out. I had a problem with those wide, hard eyecups and also prefer the roll down eyecups on my 804s.
I called Swift Optics (which, at the time, still owned the sports division), talked to a nice young woman there, and after some back and forth between her and the Swift technicians came up with no solution other than yanking off those oversized eye gougers and attaching fold down rubber eyecups to the "stumps" on the EP housing.
The 804 cups won't fit, they're not wide enough. Not sure if even the wide SE/EII eyecups would fit. You'd have to experiment.
When I bought my CZJ 8x50 Octarem, I was concerned about what I would do once the eyecups wore or if they ripped.
I talked to a technician named Vic at Texas Nautical and he told me gets in a lot of old porros porros for repairs and has made custom eyecups for them if he couldn't find replacements.
So if you might want to give Texas Nautical a call.
Have you tried the new 820s? Someone who bought one on BF commented that the eyecups were large. The eyecups and body seemed to be based on the old B&L Discoverer porros.
You might order the new design and see if the eyecups fit you better. The overall ergonomics look better to me (see attached).
Brock
