I respect his experience but that is not the point. The condensation could be because the eye cups of the NL fit tighter in his eye sockets than other users because of the shape of his eye sockets. If he is not getting much light entering around the edges it could be the cause. it depends on what click stop you use the eye cups also. The closer the more condensation.Owamboland has stated he has 40 years experience with binoculars, I think we should respect his and his wife`s experience.
I have my NL set on the 5th click stop and it is perfect with no blackouts, no fogging, very little glare and a huge FOV. I recently tried an EL 8.5x42 and it was like looking down a tunnel in comparison to the NL. There is just NO comparison between a 400 foot FOV and a 477 foot FOV. It is like the difference between night and day! I would never, never, ever go back to the EL. I have been spoiled!i find that I have to hold the eye cups firmly around my eye socket to avoid the peripheral reflections and this could certainly promote trapping of humid air especially in an already humid climate. Eye placement with the NL is finicky. I cannot ease off on the eye sockets as someone suggested. This leads to a very bothersome peripheral glare toward the bottom. Everyone has stated that the glare is at the bottom, and this is probably a result of design. no doubt the optical engineers know this and accepted the compromise. No fogging for me though. But I live in dry California.
Two big improvements versus the EL - FOV and ergonomics. One step back - less forgiveness with eye placement. this is probably the compromise that needs to be made for such an expansive FOV. The view is so good that I would accept slightly less FOV for more forgiveness in eye placement. Now that I know where to place the binos I get a perfect view each time. After experiencing such an amazing apparent FOV, it’s hard to go back to older design binos that offer 20 to 30 percent reduced diameter without noticing the tunnel vision. Same for the Zeiss SF 8x32.
Now I appreciate even more the amazing forgiveness and ease of eye placement on the EL SV. Not enough to give up this NL Pure.
There are some very interesting thoughts and suggestions being shared, not sure if I will get my drill out just yet though, and I would need to commit to another NL to try it out. An interesting thought though for the future, if anyone has reason to try it out please do share if it makes a difference. I am thinking that a different eye placement technique is required for the NL (maybe more different from my normal in my case), but I did try a range of combinations at the time (although now beginning to doubt myself!) I think my decision to not stick with the NL was that for that money there were trade offs in my case and I was unwilling for too much compromise at that price bracket. I agree that once that FOV is seen its very difficult to rest easy with anything less in a 10x at least.
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No binocular is perfect for everybody no matter how much you pay for it. You have to accept some compromises even on the NL or any other alpha.