BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="justabirdwatcher" data-source="post: 3270185" data-attributes="member: 128908">Someone asked me why I left my 9x33 Celestron Granites off my "buy again" list, and I honestly hadn't thought about it until they did.  Make no mistake about it, the Granites offer one of the best bangs for the buck I've ever seen, esp. if you get them on sale as I did.  They offer near-alpha views, are light, easy to carry and have a great focus wheel.  I've even come to really appreciate the flip down objective covers.  The one thing I struggle with though, is the eyecup design.  They are metal rather than plastic, which sounds great, but they don't have enough friction to keep them fully extended all the time.  I often find myself twisting them back out.  And already they don't extend "quite" far enough to cover the long eye relief of the binoculars - a problem I had with my Bruntons that caused me to eventually sell them.  It's not as bad as the Bruntons (just tiny blackouts from eye position, not full blackouts) but it's still an issue.If I could replace the eyecups on the Granites with some more like my Blue Sky's, they would easily become my daily binoculars.  The view is very, very good.  Sometimes when I use them, I don't know that I'm not looking through my Swaros.</blockquote>