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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chickadee Whisperer" data-source="post: 3261650" data-attributes="member: 66757">A wide FOV has always been a valuable quality for me, but up until I was in my 50s, I still preferred 10x to 8 or 8.5x. As I've grown older, a brighter view, light weight, and my ability to hold binoculars steady have become more important--the light weight is also important because I carry a digital camera with 400-m lens now.  My current binoculars are Zeiss FL 8x32. But my week of using the Zeiss SF 10x42 last year made it pretty clear that even people who enjoy many things about 8x might want to go up to 10x with this model. They're slightly lighter in weight than the Swarovski EL 8.5, their close focus is exactly the same, and their FOV, although narrower, isn't THAT much narrower considering the higher power (360 feet vs. 399 feet) Even while lugging my camera with my shoulder strap, I had an easy time dealing with the weight of the SFs, and they were as easy to hold steady as 7x binoculars were in my 20s, thanks to the way they seemed to lean on my eyeglasses so steadily. I think of them as "rejuvenators," because they made my 62-year-old eyes feel much, much younger. So I can easily understand why the 10x42s have been selling so unexpectedly well.</blockquote>