Steve C
Well-known member
The second Opticron review is the Traveller ED 8x32. This is a pretty similar in appearance to most of the 30-32 mm mid price offerings out today. Like its contemporaries, it uses Schmidt-Pecan prisms. Details and specifications can be found here at the Opticron USA site. http://www.opticronusa.com/Pages/traveller_bga_ed.html Opticron lists msrp of $499 US for the 8x subject of this review. Also offered is a 10x 32 version for $509 US. However street price is likely lower as Optics Planet as one example offers the 8x for $429 and the 10x for $439. This falls within the general price range of such binoculars as the Zeiss Terra, Nikon Monarch 7, Leupold Mojave, and the Maven B3.
They come in a box with a soft pouch, strap, lens covers, and cleaning cloth. They come with the rather stiff, somewhat slick rain guard. This style of rain guard can grip the eye cups with extreme tension if not sized properly. In this instance, they are properly sized and fit quite well. The objective covers are the rather typical, tethered, slip over the objective tube style. The cover portion is sized about right, while the tether could be a little tighter. Overall there is no pick with the accessories offered, aside from the fact that the rain guard may be pretty stiff to easily place over an IPD of less than about 60 mm.
They are the typical, solid black Opticron binocular. The covering has a nice tactile feel. The one thing that may prompt some complaint is the presence of mold marks on either side of the binocular tubes. This has prompted one complaint here on BF. It also is evident from the short videos in the Opticron link posted above, so that may be a typical occurrence. The binocular is 4.25 inches long with eye cups down and 5 inches up. This one weighs the advertised 15.9 oz sans lens covers.
The specifications on this specimen match those on the site closely. I do not think the eye relief is 19 mm however. The longest I would place it is 17, and that may be a bit of a stretch. The eye cup extends upward from the ocular surface about 12 mm. When retracted, the eye cup sits about 4 mm over the lens. It does not seem to be quite the long eye relief instrument specified. Having said that, it works for me just fine with either reading or sun glasses. There are three clicks on the detentes and the eye cup assembly is apparently quite solid. I had no issues with them collapsing.
I am not an eye glass wearer. However I do use reading glasses for that purpose. I had no issues using these with either the reading glasses or with the sunglasses I use. SO your use in this regard may be different from my experience.
The eye cups are screw on style. If additional extension is needed it is pretty easy to add up to 5 mm extra extension with some O-rings. 3-4 mm rings will fit between the eye cup and the threads, and the eye cups can be removed and replaced with a proper sized O-ring under the upper edge of the cup. The eye cup will need to be re glued and it will be obvious they have been lifted.
The fov measures 430’ matching the specification sheet. Angular field is 8.2*, afov (SLOW) is 65.5*. ISO afov is 59.9. Both ways classify this as wide angle. The view is wide and bright.
They are pretty similar to many of the current mid price 30-32 mm binoculars. They have one advantage in that they have a quite narrow IPD adjustment, going down to 51 mm. This leaves just 13 mm between the eye cups. Upper end is 73 mm. The focus travel is clockwise to infinity and there is 1 1/8 turn of wheel travel. Focus is relatively quick in close. Two long pulls will go from the close focus of 6 feet to 75 feet (2-25 meters). Another short focus pull will take you to infinity from there, with about a quarter turn of travel past infinity. The diopter is a right eye adjustment. The adjust is a hard, solid ring with a protrusion easily placed for adjustment movement. It works pretty well and is solid enough that drift was not an issue. There is no side play at all in the focus of this unit. It is tensioned well enough to be easy to move and stiff enough to need user interaction to move the focus.
The image has a slight reddish bias. The image appears color neutral with very good color rendition. Contrast is also very good, edge and finer interior textures distinguished quite well. Brightness is also very good, but like any 30-32 mm it suffers a little in lower light. The image is certainly sharp enough to satisfy me. That will not be an issue unless a lot of low light viewing is on your agenda, in which case you will likely be after a bigger objective anyway.
I would call CA control very good, as I never did see it in a well focused view, and very small amounts in non focused looks. The eye cups fit me pretty well and I did not ever encounter any glare issues. There are no obvious issues with non satisfactorily blackened inner surfaces.
A note in comparison to other similar size binoculars bases solely on my personal preference goes something like this. Top preference is the Maven B3, next by a hair is the original Swarovski CL, then comes the Opticron Traveller, followed by the Leupold Mojave, the Nikon Monarch M7, then the Zeiss Terra. I have not seen the new Swarovski CL, nor do I have any experience with the Zeiss Conquest 8x32. While I will rank them as stated for myself, the truth of the matter is that if you have one of these, there is not likely any reason to switch to another one of the group. What can be satisfactorily viewed wit one can be done bay all. People will settle in on the list where their varied preferences will take them. The ergonomics of the bunch are pretty indistinguishable one from the other.
Another Opticron binocular I should add a bit of a note about here is the Opticron Discovery WP 8x32. I managed to snag one of these here in a contest several years ago. Oddly enough I do not see where I ever did a review. That puzzles me as to why, but there it is. The Discovery is an extremely compact 32 mm binocular. It is a tad bit behind the Traveller and may well bring up the tali end of my list. However it has proven to be one exceedingly useful binocular and tough as nails. I have used it as my ATV binocular for all around farm use for five years. It stayed in a fabric saddle bag style case 24/7 every year from about the first of April to the first of October. In this case it has been vibrated through about 5,000 miles. It always was put back in the saddle bag with lens covers attached, it faced wet as well as dusty and dirty times and quite a bit of temperature variation. It is in need of collimation now, but it is still tight and each telescope is still bright and sharp. I see nothing that indicated the Traveller is not a better built binocular.
These are a quite decent, very field worthy binocular. You won’t find an alpha killer style binocular, but you will find a quite well made binocular with a very good optical performance.
So yes, I would recommend this binocular, and it is certainly good enough for me to be satisfied with in my personal use scenarios. A particularly good candidate if you are looking for a binocular of this configuration for small size hands and where a narrower IPD is needed.
They come in a box with a soft pouch, strap, lens covers, and cleaning cloth. They come with the rather stiff, somewhat slick rain guard. This style of rain guard can grip the eye cups with extreme tension if not sized properly. In this instance, they are properly sized and fit quite well. The objective covers are the rather typical, tethered, slip over the objective tube style. The cover portion is sized about right, while the tether could be a little tighter. Overall there is no pick with the accessories offered, aside from the fact that the rain guard may be pretty stiff to easily place over an IPD of less than about 60 mm.
They are the typical, solid black Opticron binocular. The covering has a nice tactile feel. The one thing that may prompt some complaint is the presence of mold marks on either side of the binocular tubes. This has prompted one complaint here on BF. It also is evident from the short videos in the Opticron link posted above, so that may be a typical occurrence. The binocular is 4.25 inches long with eye cups down and 5 inches up. This one weighs the advertised 15.9 oz sans lens covers.
The specifications on this specimen match those on the site closely. I do not think the eye relief is 19 mm however. The longest I would place it is 17, and that may be a bit of a stretch. The eye cup extends upward from the ocular surface about 12 mm. When retracted, the eye cup sits about 4 mm over the lens. It does not seem to be quite the long eye relief instrument specified. Having said that, it works for me just fine with either reading or sun glasses. There are three clicks on the detentes and the eye cup assembly is apparently quite solid. I had no issues with them collapsing.
I am not an eye glass wearer. However I do use reading glasses for that purpose. I had no issues using these with either the reading glasses or with the sunglasses I use. SO your use in this regard may be different from my experience.
The eye cups are screw on style. If additional extension is needed it is pretty easy to add up to 5 mm extra extension with some O-rings. 3-4 mm rings will fit between the eye cup and the threads, and the eye cups can be removed and replaced with a proper sized O-ring under the upper edge of the cup. The eye cup will need to be re glued and it will be obvious they have been lifted.
The fov measures 430’ matching the specification sheet. Angular field is 8.2*, afov (SLOW) is 65.5*. ISO afov is 59.9. Both ways classify this as wide angle. The view is wide and bright.
They are pretty similar to many of the current mid price 30-32 mm binoculars. They have one advantage in that they have a quite narrow IPD adjustment, going down to 51 mm. This leaves just 13 mm between the eye cups. Upper end is 73 mm. The focus travel is clockwise to infinity and there is 1 1/8 turn of wheel travel. Focus is relatively quick in close. Two long pulls will go from the close focus of 6 feet to 75 feet (2-25 meters). Another short focus pull will take you to infinity from there, with about a quarter turn of travel past infinity. The diopter is a right eye adjustment. The adjust is a hard, solid ring with a protrusion easily placed for adjustment movement. It works pretty well and is solid enough that drift was not an issue. There is no side play at all in the focus of this unit. It is tensioned well enough to be easy to move and stiff enough to need user interaction to move the focus.
The image has a slight reddish bias. The image appears color neutral with very good color rendition. Contrast is also very good, edge and finer interior textures distinguished quite well. Brightness is also very good, but like any 30-32 mm it suffers a little in lower light. The image is certainly sharp enough to satisfy me. That will not be an issue unless a lot of low light viewing is on your agenda, in which case you will likely be after a bigger objective anyway.
I would call CA control very good, as I never did see it in a well focused view, and very small amounts in non focused looks. The eye cups fit me pretty well and I did not ever encounter any glare issues. There are no obvious issues with non satisfactorily blackened inner surfaces.
A note in comparison to other similar size binoculars bases solely on my personal preference goes something like this. Top preference is the Maven B3, next by a hair is the original Swarovski CL, then comes the Opticron Traveller, followed by the Leupold Mojave, the Nikon Monarch M7, then the Zeiss Terra. I have not seen the new Swarovski CL, nor do I have any experience with the Zeiss Conquest 8x32. While I will rank them as stated for myself, the truth of the matter is that if you have one of these, there is not likely any reason to switch to another one of the group. What can be satisfactorily viewed wit one can be done bay all. People will settle in on the list where their varied preferences will take them. The ergonomics of the bunch are pretty indistinguishable one from the other.
Another Opticron binocular I should add a bit of a note about here is the Opticron Discovery WP 8x32. I managed to snag one of these here in a contest several years ago. Oddly enough I do not see where I ever did a review. That puzzles me as to why, but there it is. The Discovery is an extremely compact 32 mm binocular. It is a tad bit behind the Traveller and may well bring up the tali end of my list. However it has proven to be one exceedingly useful binocular and tough as nails. I have used it as my ATV binocular for all around farm use for five years. It stayed in a fabric saddle bag style case 24/7 every year from about the first of April to the first of October. In this case it has been vibrated through about 5,000 miles. It always was put back in the saddle bag with lens covers attached, it faced wet as well as dusty and dirty times and quite a bit of temperature variation. It is in need of collimation now, but it is still tight and each telescope is still bright and sharp. I see nothing that indicated the Traveller is not a better built binocular.
These are a quite decent, very field worthy binocular. You won’t find an alpha killer style binocular, but you will find a quite well made binocular with a very good optical performance.
So yes, I would recommend this binocular, and it is certainly good enough for me to be satisfied with in my personal use scenarios. A particularly good candidate if you are looking for a binocular of this configuration for small size hands and where a narrower IPD is needed.