Swissboy said:
OK Steve, you sound like an optics rep... In fact, when I put on my 32x wideangle for the first time, I was rather disappointed. Of course, I had forgotten that it was 32x and not 20x, the power I usually start with when the zoom lens is attached.
Once a salesman always a salesman, I suppose, Robert. Before teaching English, I was in sales and marketing for far too long for it to leave my system!
Your experience with the 32x lens differs markedly from my own. When I put on the 30x wide at a dealers in Norfolk I was immediately sold on it - it gave such a wonderfully sharp and wide image.
The Nikon zoom does not produce as wide a field of view as the Swaro or Leica, but what it does give is an exceptionally bright, pin-sharp edge to edge image with no feeling, to me, of a "tunnelling" effect at all. When I use my son's Swaro 65 with its zoom, the visual effect produced is very similar except a touch wider. I certainly don't feel I am missing anything important with the Nikon and the gain in brightness is, to me, far more valuable. Needless to say, the Swaro 65 was near the top of my short list when I changed scopes (it's the same price as the Nikon over here) but I eventually went for the Nikon because it offers similar compactness of length but with far better light gathering ability - and a sometimes very useful top magnification of 75x.
I have been lucky to try several top-make zooms over the past year or two and I feel convinced that none of them is the ideal eyepiece for initial scanning, say at sea, on a shoreline or a lake's edge. For me, the wide angle is best for this assuming the binos are not powerful enough owing to distance. That said, for many years my scope was a Kowa with its wonderful 20xW so it's entirely possible that I have grown so accustomed to such a wide view, my brain will not let me adjust to the narrower field offered by a zoom.
But... when a zoom is needed - such as when I was looking at a pair of distant peregrines a few days ago - it really does come into its own at 75x.