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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Troubador" data-source="post: 3662488" data-attributes="member: 109211">It depends what you mean by 'rarely' James and what experience you have to back that up.I only have personal experience of two of these brands and one has binos made and upgraded according to their own specification requirements and the other goes as far as specifying materials, surface finishes and manufacturing methods  of the mechanical parts of their binos.From industry sources I am informed that it is very normal for a brand to define a full specification and ask a manufacturer to quote to produce it and then after a time when they need to refresh their product range they might upgrade aspects of the spec such as better ED glass.And as I pointed out this is not so different from what Leica has done in recent years or what Zeiss did from FL to HT.And yes I guess some brands just pay for new armour and logos and have them stuck on existing models. I say I 'guess' this because I have no idea what proportion of models begin life like this, and I 'guess' nobody knows the answer to this.Have any of these brands come up with anything new? Well, Opticron was the first to launch a travelscope ie a scope with a bino-sized objective, and that has grown to be a permanent feature of the market now. Kowa has even made one with their famous fluorite crystal lenses. And its a long time since the alphas actually launched something breaking new ground. Leica's Perger porro is the latest I can think of but that seems to be confined to its rangefinder niche. Prior to that would be water repellent coatings but that was launched by Zeiss Vision for spectacles and I believe Bushnell was actually the first bino business to apply it to binoculars.Lee</blockquote>

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