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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cbushme" data-source="post: 386913" data-attributes="member: 23475"><p>Got some new Nikon 10x35 EII's the other day.  News that they were being dicontinued and glowing reports made me pull the trigger.  Unfortunately there is not a dealer that carries the higher end Nikons within 500 miles of me so I bought them via mail sight unseen.  The first day I spent looking through them congratulating myself on what a fine buy I had made.  Then I had to go and compare them to my SE's.  I went with the 10x35's, since my SE's were the 8x32's, thinking they would be nice for getting a tad more detail.  I spent several hours yesterday from dusk till dark looking through them both.  Most of that time was spent observing a mule deer doe and her two young, spotted fawns.  Everytime I went from the EII's to the SE's I was struck by the rather dramatic increase in the contrast and brightness of the SE's.  I had thought under these conditions the 10x would shine.  Depth of field certainly came into play here as the deer through the SE seemed to literally "jump" out at you.  A very 3 dimensional image.  By contrast through the EII the deer seemed to muddle into the background and the image was much more 2 dimensional.  I was consistently able to discern more detail through the SE's, due I believe to the increased brightness and contrast.  That I guess is where my disappointment comes through, since I bought the 10x primarily as a glass to see more detail.  Oddly enough the most commonly mentioned difference I've heard when comparing EII's to SE's, sharper edge to edge on the SE's, did not come into play for me.  In this area I did not really notice any significant difference between the two.  In the EII's defense it is quite a bit of glass for the money and it does appear to be much less finicky in regards to eye placement than the SE.  However, the more I use my SE's the less finicky they seem to be.  Bottom line....I'm not sure, unless its I should have saved up some more pennies and bought the 10x42 SE.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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