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Message: <blockquote data-quote="OPTIC_NUT" data-source="post: 3294573" data-attributes="member: 121951">Nothing beats a long, ribbed front baffle, nice flat black,and a decent step from front to objective.Recent multicoatings have powerful secondary reflections from wider off-angles.It's easy to see: tilting the binoculars a lot in the light generates strong reflectionyou can see, and the color varies well off axis. The lore that multicoatings eliminateglare caused neglect for a while. Some binoculars had hardly any baffling. The real world lighting, shiny off-axis response, and whiffs of dust or film, ravaged that.Open chambers, exposed parts, shiny grey linings, shot-peening insteadof matte coating.  Reliance on magic.Then the old baffling came back with a vengeance.  The improvement in contrastfrom 2012 to 2014 8x32 Diamondbacks is stunning.  I don't know what's the best now, but the Vortex line was swept in the new stylea few years ago, Meopta seems to have never abandonded vigilence, Fujinonnever wavered, and Nikon recovered from just a few mistakes...though the 90's was scary in many places.A lot depends on the year, much better now, but this is one area where lookingthe horse in the mouth in a showroom is important.  Looking at something with a strong light about 1/2 fov outside the field can reveal things. Some say a wider exit pupil cuts 'veiling glare', but the light does not haveto hit the EP stops like that if the baffling is good and the fov is not excessive,across a few dozen  models I checked.  Big exit pupils do correlate...it's true that almost any 7x50 made is immune to flaring, but the job of baffling is much easier.  You can design well for smaller exit pupilsbut you need space and can't go too wide on the view.I have seen the long tunnel AND an old trick, the prism hat, in a few models recently.It was worth a chuckle about 'back to the future', but it's scattered enough thatyou would need to look in the showroom.  That is awesome, in terms of performing across the years.</blockquote>

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