Zedster
Well-known member
My mileage is around 120mpg. But it's a Prius Prime so I'm kinda cheating. Mostly electric in town.Zedster,
My mileage is 50 mpg city/49 mpg highway (Kia Niro).
For me, it's the opposite. To use Lee's terms, roofs feel like "shaking hands with an alien." That was the case with the 8x42 EDG II, which I could not hold steady no matter what grip I tried. I would have to mount it on a tripod, which takes away the freedom of movement I expect with an 8x bin. It's smaller brother, the 8x32 EDG, while still somewhat "alien," has at least enough fingers to shake hands with. The 8x42 EDG had a great image but was a poor fit for my hands/fingers. I preferred the EDG I with the open bridge design, which were on the market for 60 seconds before Nikon replaced them with the EDG II.
I can hold steady two roof designs: open bridge (double bridge) such as the EDG I and Swaro EL and "open hinge" designs such as the Swaro CL and Cabela Guide, which have small bridges that are set back toward the EPs, which allows enough room for my fingers to wrap around the barrels. Same with the SLC HD, which also has deep thumb indents.
Porros offer more "real estate" for my large hands, and better thumb support, even the dimunitive E2. I don't wear glasses, but that would be a factor with the E2s with thier 13.3mm ER.
I agree about twist-up cups being better than the rubber fold-down kind since you can adjust them to the height that works best for you, whether you wear glasses or not. However, in general, porro prism eyecups tend to be wide, so large that sometimes I can't fit them the into my eye sockets including the Swift 8.5x44 820 Audubon, Nikon 7x35 Aculon, and Vixen 7x50 Foresta. Even the 8x32 SE's eyecups barely fit. I had to replace the SE's wide and deep eyecups with the shorter but same diameter E2's.
The new Oberwerk SEs are supposed to give a great "bang for the buck," another benefit of porros, because the design is simple. Porro prisms don't need phase coatings or dielectric coatings, and they don't need a dozen lens elements on each side to give a sharp image. And the collimation doesn't have to be as precise as roofs. The Obies have twist-up eyecups, but maybe not enough useable ER for eyeglasses wearers (15mm useable). They are also a bit heavy for their size but they are waterproof/fogproof.
What wasn't mentioned is porros superior 3-D image, which I think you once wrote doesn't matter to you. I find porros helps bring out the birds from the background better than roofs. But I also find the 3-D view more natural and aesthetically pleasing.
It's a good thing you live in a time when roofs rule the world. When I was growing up, there were few roof prism binoculars, and those that existed were not as bright and not as sharp as porros, because they didn't have phase or dielectric coatings on their prisms. Porros dominated the market, and they all had fold-down rubber eyecups. Now with a plethora of roofs to chose from, the only factor you have to consider is if they have enough ER for your glasses. In terms of sports optics, we are living in the Golden Age.
Brock
My experience is that collimation is more problematic in Porro's but maybe that's due to the lower end ones I had that went out of alignment. But I've had a pair of Nikons and Pentax porros go out of alignment and never had a pair of roofs do this.
Although the porro design has more area I find the grip awkward. And too short.
I hear you about the 3D image but as someone who doesn't have depth perception it is an issue that isn't on my radar at all. I have zero 3D vision with anything.
Interestingly, I recently inherited a pair of original Leica Trinovid 7x35B without all the new coatings or anything and they are surprisingly nice binoculars. They have far more CA and less accurate colors than my SFs but man, they are still nice. They are surprisingly NOT terrible.
