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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ksbird/foxranch" data-source="post: 1302173" data-attributes="member: 37413">RonH, I agree that the Fujinon 7x50 (and worse yet the 10x70) are extremely heavy and so astronomical retailers sell binocular holders with large counterweights balancing them for reasonable astronomical use in a chaise lounge. But the 6x30 Fujinon FMTRs and the 8x30s are also razor sharp and their weight is manageable, If lower weight is needed for the absolute finest daytime views possible, then I guess the Nikon SEs are the only way to go. At half the price of the Zeiss FLs or Swaro SLC roofers, the Nikon SEs give obviously better images.A couple of years ago a salesperson working for the nearby Cabelas took his Swaro 10x50 SLC porros to a demo of the new (then) Swaro SLC 10x50 roofer. The porro Swaro was so obviously optically superior that a little bit of heated discussion took place between the Cabela's staff and the Swaro rep team. Comments includedCabStaff "How can we be expected to sell a roof prim Swaro for the same money as the porro if the view through the binocular isn't as good?"Reply - "Tell the customer it's lighter in weight"CabStaff "Then why not make the 10x50 porro lighter?"Reply - "That's a marketing department decision?"CabStaff "Why is a poorer image more important than lighter weight, when both of these binoculars are pretty heavy anyway, and Zeiss makes a lightweight fiber porro body binocular?" (not sure what model he referred to)Eventually the CabStaff supervisor ended the "discussion" and told the staff later that Cabelas was working with Leupold to eventually have waterproof porros with center focus and lighter weight, some possibly with ED objectives for half the price of the Swaro roofers, and so no one would need the Swaro 10x50 SLC porro any more.For some reason the US market has been conditioned (conned) to believe that just because a product is more expensive it HAS to be better (even if it isn't). That is probably why people hang onto their Swift 8.5x ED lens porros. At a recent Japanese star party there were many questions from visitors to Nikon reps asking why the Nikon SEs weren't made in waterproof versions the way the Action Extremes are made. The Pentax reps got similar questions about why their CF waterproof porros didn't utilize the Pentax ED objective lenses to go with their aspherical eyepieces and the answers came back that this would make the roofers by both Nikon and Pentax look so obviously bad that there would be lots of "market confusion". Japanese companies try to avoid market confusion as much as possible because then they can't sell as many super-expensive roof prism binoculars with slightly more convenient formats against their own brand of high end porro prism binoculars with much better optical images, and at half the price. That's probably why Swaro discontinued the porro 10x50 SLC.</blockquote>

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