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Be careful what you wish for. Much of Birdforum is about members exchanging their views on binoculars and sharing their experiences of them. And long may this continue.
Be careful what you wish for. Much of Birdforum is about members exchanging their views on binoculars and sharing their experiences of them. And long may this continue.
Denying members the opportunity of sharing their strongly felt enthusiasms would diminish Birdforum's role as a place where opinions are exchanged IMHO.
If you are young, the SLC probably will be brighter because of the bigger exit pupil in low light. If you are older and your pupils are not reaching their maximum dilation of 7 mm, the HT and SLC would probably appear the same.
From my research Fujinon’s lower priced binoculars are sourced out of China. Their premium line say made in Japan. This brings me to their latest binoculars, the HC Hyper 8x42 and 10 power. If I am correct these are described as being made in house, made in Japan. What does this actually mean...
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Anyway, transmission is much less important for me than seemingly for you. While visible CA's, blackouts and fuzzy edges are my pet peeves. And the SLC 10x56 specimen that I tested was much better for me in that regard than the 10x54 HT copy that I tested against it. Moreover, the SLC seemed slightly brighter to me and much more pleasant to use, to touch, to look at.
Arm chair engineers can argue any topic to death and often totally miss the mark of the original topic.
Vision combined with environmental and bilogical differences makes it easy to shop on technical specifications only to get a pair of bins that simply don't work for the user. Add to that, the subjectivity of a lot of the impressions each user has to further muddy the waters!
With the Zeiss HT bins specifically, I really think people are comparing bins they were never designed to compete against.
The 8x54 HT was certainly designed to compete against its predecessor, the 8x56 FL. I expected to replace my FL with it and was sorely disappointed.
Oh, the 54mm HTs image will look dandy to all of us in the gloom of twilight, but that's because we are all legally blind under those conditions. We can't see details or color. A high transmission binocular with high aberrations will look exactly like a high transmission binocular with low aberrations. But, there's an easy solution. Just call your high aberration binocular a "low light binocular" that can only be judged fairly under conditions that prevent human beings from seeing well. Problem solved.
All of this might be all well and dandy, but, it does not change the fact that the Zeiss Victory 10x42 fl is the finest birding binocular ever made.
Pete.
The HT 54 have one indisputable advantage over the SLC 56mm - size and weight. It's a big one. I imagine someone hunting, carrying the binos in a pack all day, the lighter 37 ounces would be nice. The smaller size would be easier to take out and get on an animal quickly.
I was looking for a 56mm Dialyt replacement, mostly for astronomy, the HT weren't what I had in mind. It seems like compromises were made to get the length of the barrels down, hence my desire to see the SF scaled up. A 56mm SF would probably be much longer and bulkier than the 54mm HT design.
All of this might be all well and dandy, but, it does not change the fact that the Zeiss Victory 10x42 fl is the finest birding binocular ever made.
Pete.
Eurooptic has reduced their prices on the 54mm HT demo's down to $1600, wow, even with my comments above I'm finding it hard to resist ordering them. Good deal if anyone in the US is looking for a pair.
Even I'm somewhat tempted by that price. After all, current 8x54s might be better than the early one I tried. I doubt the aberrations I objected to have changed at all, but you might not have the same reaction to them. When the 8x54 first came out plenty of people didn't noticed any problem with the image, on or off axis, even though the aberrations were certainly there to see. The sad truth is that almost all binoculars are pretty bad by normal telescope standards at full aperture. They're usually designed to be just barely good enough when hand held at low magnification, especially when the aperture is stopped down in daylight. For some observers the 8x54 HT will be just barely good enough.