Trevor's Spotting Scope and Optics Review

 I bought these for my wife but she cannot get on with them. She found the focussing difficult and the dioptre adjustment stiff. She did not like the eye relief. I did not have these problems but I find the focussing a bit to sharp too and I often use one finger to set the coarse focus whilst holding another finger against the wheel to slow things down for fine focus. Otherwise the binoculars are great, they resolve well have few optical aberrations and the colours are very bright and natural. They are very strong, rugged and waterproof. They have been on a trip to France with us and we used them for bird watching and observing the stars from dark skies. I quite often use them instead of 10 x 52 binoculars if I am carrying a spotting scope as well: they perform almost as well as my main birding binoculars. They transmit light very well and they are brighter than my Minox 8x24 reverse-porro-prism but they do not resolve as well. If you want some good quality light binoculars which a...

 I have had these binoculars since the mid 1990s. They are made of solid aluminium but they are light. They have a life time guarantee.  The optics are superb but modern binoculars have  marginally better light transmission but that is just about all that is better. The resolution,  natural colour and contrast and control of aberrations are brilliant. They compare most favourable to my Minox 8x25 BV roof-prism binoculars as they are easier to focus and have marginally better resolution. These binoculars have been everywhere with me and they are my favourites.  In Canada's Gatineau park I was able to observe a Golden Eagle from a long way off as it was being attacked by a Raven. The ranger, that I reported the observation to, insisted that the bird was a Bald Eagle and that Golden Eagles were not present in the park. He was wrong and an article in a magazine later confirmed that a Golden Eagle had been seen by birders in Gatineau park, and it was the first for ma...

 These binoculars are almost legendary and they were made in East Germany for decades up to the early 1990s. After the second world war it was possible to sell these binoculars for peppercorn prices because of the favourable exchange rate for hard currency buyers. I bought mine in the late 80s for about £35. Equivalent binoculars made in West Germany would have cost you an awful lot more. There were fakes on the market, made in the far east, and Zeiss even licensed producers in Japan to market the binoculars under the Zeiss brand name. Mine are not fakes and are genuinely from the East German factory. All the component parts including the lens were East German made. The lenses are superb. I still use these binoculars for local bird watching as they are strong and fit in the hand nicely, and I particularly like the fast and accurate focusing. They are not so good in low light because of the 30 mm objective lenses. You need 40 mm lenses, at least, for observing at dusk. The lenses ar...