Nikon Venturer 8 x 23 binos (1 Viewer)

[Piaget]

Hi Friends , I picked up a pair Nikon Venturer 8x 23 binos on ebay for $20. I did a little research before purchasing & found some reviews that said they were good. I was not expecting much cause of the small size & cheap price. My go to binos are all Nikons but larger , 8x50 & 10x50. Boy was I ever wrong , Fantastic little pair. Crisp views , great colors. They stay focused & focus fast. They are solid unlike most of my small binos & the hinge holds its place well without being hard to move. All in all a great acquisition & a fine pair better than a lot of 10x50s I have used. Does anybody know more about the quality & history of the optics of this pair ? Thanks Piaget

 

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Hi Friends , I picked up a pair Nikon Venturer 8x 23 binos on eBay for $20. I did a little research before purchasing & found some reviews that said they were good. I was not expecting much cause of the small size & cheap price. My go to binos are all Nikon's but larger, 8x50 & 10x50. Boy was I ever wrong, Fantastic little pair. Crisp views , great colors. They stay focused & focus fast. They are solid unlike most of my small binos & the hinge holds its place well without being hard to move. All in all a great acquisition & a fine pair better than a lot of 10x50s I have used. Does anybody know more about the quality & history of the optics of this pair ? Thanks Piaget

Years ago the Nikon Venturer 8x23 was tested in a Consumer Report buying guide for binoculars which they don't seem to do anymore and came out first place over a $1000.00 Leitz and twenty-five other binoculars including 10x50's!. I remember because I bought one because of the good review, and they are an excellent little reverse porro binocular. Here is a little story I found about the Nikon Venturer by Stephen Ingraham and below is a link to a review of the Nikon Venturer 8x23 where it is compared to other compacts and it even beats the Pentax Papilio 6.5 x21 overall!

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums.../96879-binoculars-compact-quality-budget.html

"Confession time: my first high quality, bird-worthy, binoculars were compacts. Yes, it is true - this prime promoter of big aperture did most of his early birding with the original 8x23 Nikon Venturers. When I began to notice the limitations of the inexpensive 10x50's I started my birding career with (I already owned them for astronomy; now I wouldn't use them for that either), I went to the local Walmart to see if I could afford to upgrade to something sharper, lighter, and, well, more satisfying all around. There I sampled the standard chain store offerings - the $35 7x35s and 10x50s in bubble packs; the slightly more expensive (but not noticeably better) boxed binoculars with names at least vaguely associated with quality; and the little roof-prism folding binoculars in green camo that appeal so much to those who don't really want binoculars in the first place, and don't know what they would want if they did. Nestled among them was a single Nikon 8x23 Venturer. I don't know how it got there. I really was not looking for compacts, and honest, I hadn't read Consumer Reports, I'd never heard of the things, but I picked them up and glanced through them. Whoo . . . what gives? Those little mites blew away the 7x35s and 10x50s on display, and showed the camo roof prism pockets up for what they were (two tubes of eye fuzz on a floppy hinge). Plus, they were the first binoculars I had looked through that had anything like enough eye relief to be comfortable with my glasses. They wanted $79.95 for them! After only a brief struggle with my conscience and my budget, I headed for the checkout.( A side note for those who don't recall the Nikon Venturer story: Back in the late 1980s, Nikon was coming to the end of their planned life cycle for their Venturer II compact binoculars. They were going to replace them with the first of the Travelite compacts and had announced the end of the Venturers to their dealers. Then, Consumer Reports came out with a compact binocular test report that rated the 8 x 23 Venturer II as the "Best Buy." It was rated as good as, or better than, even some expensive high-end compact roof prisms like Zeiss, with the highest total score of all 25 binoculars tested. Naturally, everybody and their cousin suddenly had to have a Venturer II. The result of the demand was that Nikon went back in production on the discontinued Venturer II and kept making them unchanged for more than four years, until the end of 1993, when the were finally discontinued for the last time. Such is the power of Consumer Reports. )For the better part of two years I wore those compacts like jewelry. They were around my neck almost all the time. They accompanied me on my first real organized bird walk. I birded Zion and Bryce for first time with them, did my first Christmas Bird Count, made my first pilgrimage to Cave Creek and Ramsey Canyon. I can honestly say I added more birds to my life list with those compacts than I have with any other binoculars I have owned. And, what is more, I attribute a large part of my growth as a birder to owning compacts at the beginning. They were easy to carry and relatively satisfying to use in the field, so they made it possible for me to get in a lot of birding in those first crucial years.Oh, sure, if I had owned a pair of high quality full-sized binoculars, if I could have convinced myself, at that point, to spend the kind of money I would have had to get them, I might have carried them just as much - and then again, I might not have. Carrying high quality compacts gave me the time I needed to fall in love with a clear, crisp, detailed view of the bird - and quite possibly time to fall thoroughly and irrevocably in love with birding itself. Of course, the time came when I began to notice the limitations of the compacts, and to wonder if investing in full sized binoculars would give me a better view. By that time, though, I was spoiled. If I was going for full sized binos, they had to be better than the Nikons 8x23s! Thus began my ongoing search for the better view, a search that led directly to the essay you are reading.A final confession: I still dream that one day, against all odds, I will find a pair of compacts, or mid-sizes at the least, that match (or come reasonably close to) the performance that I am now used to in my full sized glasses. I remember all too well the advantages, and the joys, of being able to wear your binoculars like jewelry!"

 

[Piaget]

Denco , Thanks for the info. That answered my questions. Piaget

 

[Alexis Powell]

See past discussion on BirdForum, I can remember a few threads, such as
https://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=69148. There's another that I couldn't find in a quick search with photos of the Venturer versus the Venturer II.

--AP