My wife and I have just started birding, so we decided this month to buy one pair of binoculars and next month the other.
Like many of us I spent a week or so reading reviews on the web. I came to the conclusion I wanted a pair of Hawke Frontier ED 8x43 at £269. I had never looked through them, but based on what others said, I wanted them! I ordered a pair for next day delivery to the store, which I would visit to pick up and pay. Unfortunately, they were not delivered to the store as promised.
Next day I went to a different store to actually look through some binoculars. The salesman suggested I forgot about price and based my decision to purchase based on how the binoculars felt, and how I liked the image I saw. So, he lined up 15 pairs on the counter, ranging from £100 to £700 and told me to use them at my leisure! Luckily, the store looks over countryside and has some feeders on nearby trees, so I could check out the close and far performance.
I spent an hour testing the binoculars for resolution, contrast, brightness, quality of controls, how they felt in the hand and their look. Some had flat images, stiff controls, lots of chromatic aberation and others had flat colours. I ended up with my favorite three out of the fifteen. I spent another hour testing those three until I had two pairs left.
1. Opticron Explorer 8.43
2. Zeis Conquest 8x40
Before finding out the price, I noted the Nikons had a tad more resolution, contrast and colour. The salesman then told me the Opticron were £169 and the Nikons £569! When I found out the price, I said no way did the Nikons have £400 more of these qualities!!
I ended up buying two pairs Of the Opticron Explorer for £338. They felt good in the hand, had a lovely smooth focus knob. Focusing from far to near was quick. Finding the right focus was also easy, where some of the other models needed a lot of twiddling to get focus. The image had a lot less Chromatic Aberation than many of the others. Colours were bright and the image contrasty. Of all the models tested (apart from the Zeiss), the Opticrons showed me more detail of a group of Radio controlled aircraft enthusiasts about two miles away.
The other models I tested were
Pentax DCF ED
Minox HG
Delta SL
Various other Opticron, Pentax, Delta, Nikon
I was actually amazed with the binoculars I ended up with - I had convinced myself I needed to spend at least £300 to get decent pair! So if you are about to buy binoculars, don't just rely on what others say - spend some time testing them for yourself to get binoculars that suit you!
The Explorers have Fully multi-coated lenses, phase corrected prisms, nitrogen filled and waterproof.
Ray.
Like many of us I spent a week or so reading reviews on the web. I came to the conclusion I wanted a pair of Hawke Frontier ED 8x43 at £269. I had never looked through them, but based on what others said, I wanted them! I ordered a pair for next day delivery to the store, which I would visit to pick up and pay. Unfortunately, they were not delivered to the store as promised.
Next day I went to a different store to actually look through some binoculars. The salesman suggested I forgot about price and based my decision to purchase based on how the binoculars felt, and how I liked the image I saw. So, he lined up 15 pairs on the counter, ranging from £100 to £700 and told me to use them at my leisure! Luckily, the store looks over countryside and has some feeders on nearby trees, so I could check out the close and far performance.
I spent an hour testing the binoculars for resolution, contrast, brightness, quality of controls, how they felt in the hand and their look. Some had flat images, stiff controls, lots of chromatic aberation and others had flat colours. I ended up with my favorite three out of the fifteen. I spent another hour testing those three until I had two pairs left.
1. Opticron Explorer 8.43
2. Zeis Conquest 8x40
Before finding out the price, I noted the Nikons had a tad more resolution, contrast and colour. The salesman then told me the Opticron were £169 and the Nikons £569! When I found out the price, I said no way did the Nikons have £400 more of these qualities!!
I ended up buying two pairs Of the Opticron Explorer for £338. They felt good in the hand, had a lovely smooth focus knob. Focusing from far to near was quick. Finding the right focus was also easy, where some of the other models needed a lot of twiddling to get focus. The image had a lot less Chromatic Aberation than many of the others. Colours were bright and the image contrasty. Of all the models tested (apart from the Zeiss), the Opticrons showed me more detail of a group of Radio controlled aircraft enthusiasts about two miles away.
The other models I tested were
Pentax DCF ED
Minox HG
Delta SL
Various other Opticron, Pentax, Delta, Nikon
I was actually amazed with the binoculars I ended up with - I had convinced myself I needed to spend at least £300 to get decent pair! So if you are about to buy binoculars, don't just rely on what others say - spend some time testing them for yourself to get binoculars that suit you!
The Explorers have Fully multi-coated lenses, phase corrected prisms, nitrogen filled and waterproof.
Ray.