brocknroller
porromaniac
Hi Brock
May be this is too simple reasoning, but: if you go to www.nikon.com (more specific: http://www.nikon.com/products/sportoptics/lineup/binoculars/nature/index.htm), they still have the EII's and the SE's in their current product series. Isn't it more logical to remove them there, if they would not produce them any longer?
Ciao!
Buongiorno Pepino,
I am a big Nikon fan as I'm sure everyone knows who has read my posts, however, Nikon is not the best when it comes to updating or maintaining their Website.
For example, at one point, the 12x50 SE disappeared from their Website. I wrote Nikon to ask if they had dropped the 12x model, and I received the response that it was an oversight, the webmaster just forgot to add the information about the 12x SE model!
There was another case where a new model, perhaps it was the Monarch X, or what they are unimaginatively calling the 42mm ATB (regular Monarch with dielectric coatings), was already out in the stores, but it wasn't listed on the Website.
In fact, the old Nikon Website was poorly designed. It's much better now, but I noticed that the SE is neither included under birding binoculars (where they have listed the EDG, Premier, Monarch X, 42mm ATB, and Monarch ATB) nor hunting binoculars (which lists the same models). It's sort of the odd man out. It's only listed in the general binoculars section.
http://www.nikonbirding.com/binoculars.html
http://www.nikonhunting.com/page/catalog/1
What I gather from the SEs still being on Nikon's Website is that they have not sold all of their old stock rather than an indication that production is ongoing and that we will be seeing an 8x32 SE 551, 552, 553, etc. in coming years.
Nikon stopped making the SE for five years, but except for the 12x SE glitch, the SEs have always been listed on Nikon USA Website even when they were no longer being produced from 2003 to 2008.
A better indicator of ongoing production would be someone posting that they bought a 551xxx 8x32 SE. Or perhaps in 2012, we'll see a 560xxx on the 5th anniversary of the re-release of the SE?
I'm just happy that they brought it back for the 550 run, and I would love to get my hands on one to compare with my 505 model to see if anything changed in the five years intervening btwn production runs as it did in the intervening years between the 501 and 505 models (coatings upgrade).
Despite wishful thinking on my part and others, I do not see the SE being significantly changed even if they do another run.
Just as Swaro stuck with the same Habicht porro design for years, I think Nikon will keep the SE as it is, perhaps upgrading the coatings now and then as Swaro has, but still the same basic binoculars.
Perhaps that's why Nikon has kept the SE "alive". It gives Nikon products to compete with Swarovski in the high quality porro market.
I still hope against hope for a porro revival, but I think the roof market now is so strong and diversified that scenario is unfortunately unlikely.
When this generation has passed (the Boomers), high quality porros will likely go the way of the dinosaur. Porros are already in the death throws of the K-T Boundary Event.
Someday your great grandchildren will go to technology museum and see these funny looking dog legged bi-optics and ask what that are.
Clark: "Those, Lois, were what binoculars looked like in the 20th century before the invention of roof prism p-coatings."
Lois: "Oh, I guess back when humans had five fingers instead of four they could grip those big things."
Clark: "Yes, Lois, and the porros only cost hundreds of universal digi-credits (UDC) back then, not like today's 9,000 UDC Übervids used by ornithologists, eco-evologists, and Canadian border police."
Lois: "I guess those were the golden years of optics."
Clark: "They certainly were Lois, they certainly were."
Ciao!