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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Julian61" data-source="post: 3374526" data-attributes="member: 116235">Having spent a few months the agonising over my 'bins for the rest of my life' choice, 8x42 with minimal shake and comfortable feel were crucial factors for me.  I checked UV+, SV 8.5, SV 8x32 and both SFs.  Optically they were all superb as I knew they would be.  Two things made me go for the SF 8x.  FOV was so impressive and was  factor,but it was as much the smooth 'buttery' (as some describe it) focus I addition to the really comfortable handling that persuaded me.  I initially thought the size would turn me off, but the way the barrels fall back into your eyes with the  back-weighting made them so easy to hold.  I need that ease as I'm not getting any younger.  It's been the posts on this forum that have given me a sense of what's out there; having had a pair of Trinovids for the last ten years I was really out of date.  I needed to hold all of them myself to properly  compare.  Even then, the adrenaline rush of the 'kid in the candystore' situation does weird things to your perceptions so I really couldn't tell much in the way of different colourations, 3D-ness etc between them all.  I did go through three different u it's of zf before I choose the one I liked and that was down to smoothness of focus.  I loved them in the shop but they're even better when the pressure's off.  I have held and looked through HT s on a very cold day out on the moors in a gale.  Optically superb but handling just not in the same league - they did look great though.  So, this is the experience of someone who just wanted a great pair of bins but didn't know much about the technicalities.  Whatever the arguments in favour of this or that binocular, the feel has got to be right for the individual.  Is there actually such a thing as a best binocular at this high level.  I don' t know.  But I do know that I've got some fine optics and that I'm a very happy birder right now!</blockquote>

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