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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alexis Powell" data-source="post: 1305229" data-attributes="member: 5327">Nice review!  Some quick, perhaps niggling, reactions...Actually, in comparison to most top birding binos, that seems like molasses slow focus to me.  I'm an avid butterflier, and in my opinion a key spec for a good glass is a rapid focus ratio at short range.  The Pentax Papilio accomplishes this without sacrificing precision in focusing on more distant objects using a dual-ratio mechanism (The Brunton Epoch uses a similar variable ratio mechanism). From your description, the Promaster ELX ED has a close but conventionally slow-ratio focus.  Actually it was Zeiss in 1988. I've been amazed at how long it has taken to get this ball rolling and have often wondered why the manufacture of binoculars w/respect to quality vs price has been so different from the situation with camera lenses.  Leica (for example) makes astoundingly good lenses that are arguably/demonstrably better on average than those from Nikon, Tokina, Tamron, Sigma. etc, but the Leica lenses are also astoundingly expensive, and their margin of superiority is vanishingly small, even in comparison to many of the cheapest offerings from competitors.  The cheap brands do a great job, even with complex zooms, and their low prices are to me amazing when compared to what the same money buys in the bino world.--AP</blockquote>