1500.00 budget (1 Viewer)

Hi James,

You must be somewhere around Fayetteville. I'm from Athens, AL.

So if I had a $1500 budget for some binoculars...I'm gonna include some from around $1000 to $2000.

1. Swarovski SLC 8X42. W/O stretching your budget TOO much and probably the best you can do in your price range....maybe any price range. You'll have to look hard to find fault in this choice.

2. Leica Ultravid HD+7X42.... The most expensive binocular I'll mention. It CAN be bought for less than $2000 with careful shopping. Super user-friendly with excellent ergonomics.

3. Nikon Monarch HD 8X42... WAY under your budget. You'll have left over money! The FOV king in this group AND a nice binocular.

4. Zeiss Conquest HD 8X32...again under budget. GREAT optics for the money.

This is the basically a list of the binocular I own AND use the most. You could add a Swarovski EL Swarovision 8X32 to that group but it's over your budget.

Cabela's in Huntsville has a pretty good selection. Send me a PM if you want. You may be close enough for us to meet up and maybe go look at some birds! It will be better than any sporting goods store and probably a better selection of optics!

You can buy the HG right now from LL Bean for $800. They’ll also take them back in any condition for up to a year so you can have an extended trial period. Most optics retailers will give a 30 day return period for binos sent back in new condition so that’s a good option as well. You just need to be more careful with them. LL Bean also sells Swaros although they are not on sale. So you could buy both, test them side by side, and keep the one you like best or return them both. If you do I’m sure a lot of us here would like to here what you thought. I made the same recommendation to another poster who was trying to decide between Vortex and Meopta. He did take the advice and reported that he was glad he did as he definitely liked one better than the other.

Good luck with your search and let us know what you decide on.

I forgot to mention. If you’re leaning towards the Kowas you might want to wait a little while longer. A Kowa rep told me a redesigned Genesis will be coming out by the end of the year. It will be an open bridge design and weigh considerably less than the current 44 mm models. You mentioned weight is not a consideration but the optics are supposed to be better in the new model as well.

One more thing. The reason Kowa scopes are so spectacular is that they use Fluorite in their lens. None of their binos have fluorite in them and the rep told me the new Genesis will Not have fluorite lens. So although you like the Kowa scope better than the Swaro the same might not be true with binos.

I would give Meopta a strong consideration.

Andy W.

Upland said:

I forgot to mention. If you’re leaning towards the Kowas you might want to wait a little while longer. A Kowa rep told me a redesigned Genesis will be coming out by the end of the year. It will be an open bridge design and weigh considerably less than the current 44 mm models. You mentioned weight is not a consideration but the optics are supposed to be better in the new model as well.

Click to expand...

Thanks for that heads up, I’m in no hurry to buy as mentioned I like to make the right choice the first time. I’ll dig more and research more and wait out any new models coming out soon.

I was told years ago by the then head of Kowa NA that fluorite as very hard to work and prone to shattering in the manufacturing process. They were fine once they were complete, but he said that they couldn't be made small enough for bino use. The new 55mm scope gave some hope ut if that's the limit there's not a big market for 55/56mm binos.
Steve

Yes I was given to understand that this is the case by Kowa Europe last year, despite the new travel scope.

Lee

I don't think a 55mm CaF2 lens is breaking any new ground. I have a 50mm Takahashi Fluorite refractor I bought 30 years ago. More likely Fluorite is not used in telescopes of less than 50mm because there isn't much of a market for ultra high quality telescopes with such small apertures, given the luminosity and resolution limits imposed by the aperture itself. At 55mm the Kowa already looks absurdly expensive, easily optically outclassed by high quality comparably priced 65mm ED scopes

Right now I'm looking at an Edmund Optics catalogue. It lists 50mm, 25mm and 12.5mm plano-convex CaF2 raw lenses for sale, and remember Zeiss first used Fluorite lenses in microscope objectives in the late 19th century. Those would have been very small, 5-10mm.

I imagine binocular designers don't choose Fluorite or one of the few glass types with essentially the same Abbe number as Fluorite because of cost combined with the expectation that, at such small apertures and low magnifications, no visible benefit would be realized over ED glasses with lower Abbe numbers.

It would be interesting to see if there is any benefit. In my experience binocular designers tend to underestimate the visibility of aberrations.