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Message: <blockquote data-quote="dalat" data-source="post: 3282950" data-attributes="member: 65207">What Swaro said at the time is that they took out some pieces in focus mechansim and increased the close focus distance to reduce price. But that's certainly not the full story.That they downgraded the optics is of course pure speculation from my side. But I recall a lot of raving reviews of the SLC HD, while in recent reviews of the SLC, more critical remarks about the optics seem to come up. I've no database and statistical analysis of birdforum posts to prove this (but sure someone has <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> ) so that's just my impression.My interpretation is that initially, Swaro introduced the new EL and SLC alongside as top bins with different design philosophies for different tastes, just as Zeiss has recently done with HT and SF. But then Zeiss introduced the very good and much cheaper Conquest HD, Leica the Trinovid. Swaro suddenly hat nothing to confront these competitors in the second tier, while the excellent SLC was eating from the same market segment as the EL SV. So they simply downgraded the SLC to a second tier, as it was before.All my own pure speculation of course... :king:</blockquote>