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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Troubador" data-source="post: 3415765" data-attributes="member: 109211">KevinYour assertion that BAs were the first modern high-end binocular is not without merit and for years these, and then the BNs, were what you saw around many birders' neck in those times in the UK. Certainly Zeiss's Dialyt 7x42 was from an earlier era although the 10x40 was more modern. The BA was definitely the first aspirational bins, I mean the first one that a large part of the market wanted. I could use the word 'fashionable' with some justification but that would hint at something ephemeral, even trivial, which would not do the BA justice as it was an absolutely solid performer, in more ways than one.However I think of both the BA and Dialyt 10x40 as being more transitional than ephochal. The BA because of it's weight and the Dialyt 10x40 as it was not really internal-focusing (and it ate eyecups like the 7x42). Both had optical performances that promised of things to come but I think the first truly modern high-end binocular was the original Swaro EL.This really had everything going for it with competitive weight, excellent optics and handling all packaged in an external design as arresting as an Audi TT or Fender Stratocaster.Lee</blockquote>