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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kevin Purcell" data-source="post: 1277344" data-attributes="member: 68323">But those comments are about the ProMaster products for 3 or 4 years ago. As ProMaster are a brand and sell OEMed products it might even be that the current range of ProMaster Elite bins are designed and made by a different OEM from the previous ones.Plus Chinese optical manufacture has moved on in the past few years. The technical product quality is significantly better than just a few years ago.For example, in 2006 Tero was actually impressed by ProMaster (which is saying something for his "almost a Sporter" Finnish outlook <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /> )<a href="http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=508213&postcount=8" target="_blank">http://www.birdforum.net/showpost.php?p=508213&postcount=8</a>And it's quite clear, as you say, several others are impressed by the ELX, both here and on the 24campfire.com threads. So it seems reasonable to check out the other bins which seem to be coming from the same design house and the same OEM with the same coatings minus the ED objectives (and in different sizes for those that like 32mm objectives).Perhaps all these are sharing some of the same design. They are all 8 elements in 6 groups for the top end and bottom end Elites: 2 in the objective, 1 or two in the focuser (probably 1 though 2 would control CA a bit better) and 4 or 5 in th eye piece (again 5 elements would control stray color better especially with a wide FOV and long ER). Of course that's just a crude measure (it depends how they optimized the whole system). But I suspect they share some parts.A week ago I would have written off Promaster as another OEM rebadging shop. Perhaps they are but if they're rebadging good stuff then I'd like to know.And that takes us full circle to Steve's comments about blind tests. So as usual looking through the bins and performing some empirical tests is the best way to find out the answer. And there are enough binocuholics around here who would rise to this sort of a challenge <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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