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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kevin Purcell" data-source="post: 1403789" data-attributes="member: 68323">I took the ZRS out birding this morning to the local park. Bright day in Seattle: some blue sky, the sun is in and out of the clouds and it ssnowed last night so there is still snow on the ground (it's bright out!).The ergonomics are the ZRS are good.The armor is attractive and has an interesting resiliency: the bars on the tops of the barrels have a nice "give" to them. It has the same bump pattern as the EDs (brand consistency!) though I'm more a fan of flat surfaces I find this better than the "sharp" diamond patterns some provide. The bin is compact for a full-size bin especially after handling the rather longer ZR ED (and other Chinese EDs) recently. The armor covers the strap lugs with a pair of largish bumps that work well to keep the hands in the right place for a "Leica grip" with the thumbs in the indents and the fingers folded across the bridge. The thumb indents are not as pronounced as the ZR ED. With my (largish) hands in the "right places" they fit just right along the length of the bin.The focus knob has an attractive badge (rather simpler and nicer than on the ZR ED) and the tripod adaptor has a simple matte white ZR (not glossy and silvery like the ZR ED).The focus knob itself has an easy action rather lighter force required to move it than pretty much all the other bins I have (perhaps the same as the Zeiss). It takes about 0.8 turn to focus from 10feet/3m to infinity: a bit quicker than the ZR ED. The combination of the two give a nice rapid (but not too fast) focus action. Nice for birding. I'd like that in the ZR ED!The rainguard is similar to the ZD ER rainguard. A little lighter in construction than a lot of similar rainguards. It fits securely in place when covering the oculars (it won't fall off) but isn't difficult to remove when you need to get it off quickly.The objective covers remind me of Pentax SP bins. Push on covers that are securely tethered to the bins tripod adaptor. The seem to stay on the objectives too and dangle out of the way on longer tethers than the SP.The locking diopter setting is on the right barrel with pull-up to unlock. The action is just stiff enough to make setting precise but not so much as to be difficult. The diopter doesn't slip when locked in place (even if I put force on the ring). The setting is close to zero for my corrected vision so there is no offset.The eyecups are quite flat. I'm an eyeglass wearer so I can't say much more but the four steps each lock quite firmly in position.Out birding with these (nothing to exotic but the usual test subjects crows, mallards, bushtits and kinglets) I find them bright enough and sharp enough for birding. The color bias I think shows up in the greens of vegetation (that seems to pop quite well) and the view is pleasant (rather warmer than say the Diamondbacks rather colder bluer view). Just picking on trees show the image to be plenty sharp enough.Stray color or CA is well controlled for an non-ED bin. Just hints of "something" around the edge of a crow against the snow or on a close up crow against a blue sky. No strong fringing and no strong sense of CA for "flickering" targets like flying crow against the sky. This is very good for a bin in this price class (and a few years ago better than models in a rather higher price class e.g. Vortex Stokes DLS). Transverse CA seems very well controlled. I think all of this is down to using LaK (lanthanum crown) glass in the EP design to minimize CA added there. So I think the (hints of) CA that does pop up is from the objectives. You can see strong transverse CA in the EP only if you "force it" by moving the quite far off axis to view the opposite side of the FOV. Not something you do in real life. Compared to some other similar priced bins (e.g. Bushnell Excursion 8x36 has significant CA for me in "normal" use) this is significantly better. I'd need to AB it with some other bins to see how different it is from the Diamondback or the Legend.I asked Charles at Zen Ray about the measured or speced resolution of the ZRS HD. He said the measured resolution is 3.7 arcsec. The measurement was done by using luminated reticle in the lab in both white and monochromatic light. So that puts the resolution at my eye at (3.8 * 8 =) 29.6 arc seconds which should be better than my eyesight by perhaps 2 to 4 times. I shouldn't be able to see a difference.For sharpness I still feel it lacks that same crispness of focus that the EDs do. There is that feel that at best focus that one can rock the focus back and forth an expect to get just that little bit better. And I do get that with the ZR ED. And I can get that with the Zeiss Victory 8x40 too so its not just the ED glass. But they are both more expensive bins. So I think there is another component here: perhaps CA just mudding things up a bit? or brightness making it easier to see? or some other aberration in the bin or just the way the image changes around the focus? That said I think this initial look shows it's a decent bin. For the price I think it's a good bin. I think I'll have to bird with it a bit more to get a feel for it (my other problem is I've been using the ED bins exclusively for most of this year so I'm trying to remove that bias).I think my next steps are to AB the ZRS with a couple of other bins I have: the Diamondback is the obvious choice. And I think the Pentax SP and the Bushnell Legend are two others. Weather in Seattle won't be so good over the next couple of days so this may take some time!</blockquote>

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