I now had an opportunity to revisit the 10x42 Noctivid with a bit more time and the Zeiss 3x12 tripler as a booster. Still haven't seen the 8x42, but that opportunity might present itself in a few days. There were two specimen to try, and I checked both on a tripod indoor, looking at both a USAF 1951 glass slide target and glitter points serving as artificial stars.
Both specimen showed a remarkably clean and high-contrast image on the glass slide lines at 30x, more resembling a high-quality scope than a typical alpha class binocular. On glitter points, the first unit had very tight best focus Airy disks with no flare, spiking or coma. A little too much light in the rings vs. the central spot, but that is typical since the glitter points at the shop are too close (about 8 meters) and therefore show more SA than at normal viewing distances. De-focused, a faint prism line started to appear after 8-10 rings, but this did not smear the image in focus at all. The second unit did nearly as well in the right tube, but had a little bit more problems in the left, with a more prominent prism line artifact and a tiny bit of coma and spiking in best focus.
I checked the better unit outdoors also, where we had brilliant winter sun and fresh snow, with frozen water droplets in a tree about 50 meters away providing natural glitter points. At this distance, most of the SA was gone, and there was quite clear ring pattern on both sides of focus, albeit contrast in the rings was markedly better inside focus. Outermost ring shows the typical longitudinal CA color shift depending on the side of focus, but all the inner rings look pretty color free. I won't go much further in trying to compare levels of CA with other binoculars, but feel confident enough in saying that these are better than previous Leicas and at least close to being on par with other top binoculars.
Viewing a nearby forest where the sun was shining through the tops of winter birch trees, I needed to first check which distinguishing marks in the trees would warn me of the sun before viewing in its direction. This was necessary since there was nothing in the view that would warn me that I was just about to destroy my eyes by getting the sun into the field of view. No veiling glare, no crescents, nothing. Viewing the branches and the bark of the Birches and Spruces that were close to the sun and had blue sky visible through the branches, the contrast was superb and detail recognition exceptional. I compared the view to that of my Canon 10x42, which is unusually good in backlight situations, and there was no doubt the tripod-mounted Leica was better.
Kimmo
