Cabelas carries Steiner
If you want to see Steiner, Zeiss, Swarovski, Kahles and Nikon binoculars along with the better Bushnell models go to Cabelas. Cabelas has their own brand as well.
My experience with Steiner has been much more positive than some others here.
I've owned a Steiner 8x25 Champ for 10 years. It is a non-waterproof reverse porro binocular that is very sharp and easily rivals the Nikon Prostaff for image quality, but it isn't waterproof (In spite of a "cover-all housing and internal focusing that looks like it would be so easy to waterproof). Someday the lenses will fog or need cleaning and I have no idea how easy it will be to open this small binocular up.
I also have the 10x26 Safaris which are incredibly inexpensive, waterproof and have a very solid design although they are rather heavy for a smallish roof prism model. They come blister-packed in packaging that hangs on a rack, and maybe this is why they can be sold for less than $100 most of the time. These roofers are not phase coated but even so, the image is very good. The Steiner philosophy of many models of the same basic design, all with different coatings to assist veiwing in different circumstances is obvious with the Safaris. This same 10x26 comes in about 4 versions of coatings.
The color of the coatings you see when you look at a lens reflection, is a color the lens is Rejecting. The bandpass of light the coating is rejecting is usually narrow but it can affect the view. I know that the individual lenses inside a Contax camera lens have different color coatings, so that there is a relatively equal amount of rejection of various color wavelengths. This produces a nice even color balance for a camera lens. According to Steiner binoculars are often used in very limited environments, so a binocular that makes a good image over water might need one kind of coatings and a binocular used in shady forests might need another and very different set of coatings. This is all to keep the eye relaxed so that it can better focus on the light that does pass through the binocular.
Back to the Safaris. In an environment with incandescent light, or sunlight at noon on sand, or any bright yellow intensity light situation, these binoculars make the image look more natural. In cold situations viewing over snow, people's face skin can look downright blue with their red arteries standing out. For a binocular that has an exit pupil of 2.6 and no phase coatings, this bin is most useful during the middle of the day, especially in winter when we run out to check on horses having trouble and all the weeds and grass are brown or yellow. It also has a heavy UV rejecting coating so it works great at the beach watching shorebirds in the middle of the day. It is a low priced item, but it compares favorably with anything at $100 from Nikon, Bushnell or Cabelas. It does not feel cheaply made at all. I think the design format of the Safari is similar to the Steiner binocular inquiry that started this thread.
I also have a pair of Steiner 7x50 Marine binoculars. This bin has the kind of various color coatings that I mentioned Contax uses in their camera lenses. It's big, heavy, super-sharp and super-waterproof (with special salt water protective coatings and sealents) and has lots of eye relief and rubber armoring. It is an expensive binocular and compares well with other $400-$700 binoculars because porro prism binoculars have huge advantages optically in this price range.
I also have the Steiner 10x50 police model. It is ridiculous how good this binocular is, but it is a copy of the 7x50 Marine with a shorter focal length eye lens. The eye relief is still excellent and the field of view is almost as wide as the 7x50 which makes the 10x50 a true widefield binocular. These are being closed out at about $300 (Cabelas doesn't have any more) and for this price (if you can handle the large size and heavy weight) they are superb, and ultrasharp, with coatings that are very easy on the eyes.
I tried a pair of the 8x and 10x Merlins and hated both. They were sharp and the coatings made the views natural looking, but the field of view wasn't wide enough (the long tunnel effect). so I gave them back. Cabelas was okay with that. I bought nice camp chairs etc. on sale, with my credit, although they would have simply put the refund back on my credit card if I wanted.
I have 3 different pairs of Steiner 8x30 porros and I love them all. The Steiner 8x30 began life as a military binocular made with a poly housing for the German army forces in NATO. It was lightweight with excellent optics and coatings that were far ahead of its day. It replaced the Hendsoldt 8x30 bins made by Zeiss/Hendsoldt and these were great too, but visually the Steiners were better than the Zeiss bins in the competition and much less expensive. While the Steiner 8x30 porro design is super-waterproof and easy to carry, they got broken allot when tanks and jeeps and artillery wagons ran over them, or even when soldiers dropped them and then jumped on them or hit them with rifle butts. So the German army binocular contract went to someone else in the late 70s.
But Steiner still had the tooling for their military 8x30 and they began making this bin with a variety of coatingsfor different purposes. The 8x30 Marine is primarily for boating and has special sealing against salt water in addition to strong IR and UV Block coatings. The Predator line is for people prowling forests for whatever reason like animal watching, tree identification or possibly even hunting. There is still an 8x30 Military/police version that is popular with police and military in smaller countries. There are at least 4 other versions of this same basic 8x30 design including Hunting, Arctic, Firebird etc. They all have the basic lens set and inner housing and are all waterproof. They may have radically different coatings and sealents. All are individual eyepiece focus. Steiner does almost no advertising for this model.
At Cabelas they always have at least 1 and maybe 2 versions of the Steiner 8x30 porro. The salesmen give numerous demonstrations of this binocular BECAUSE it always sells for less than $200 (although now with the reduced value of the US$ that may change). The Steiner 8x30s I have, have been dropped onto icy rivers from hills 40 feet high, dropped into heavy clay mud and had rowdy horses step on them, been lost in tall grass through an entire winter with 30+ inches of snowfall, immersed in water 3-4 feet deep often and one of them is my favorite winter binocular. The coatings make the brightness vary considerably so I have to match the model to the application. But every single one of those 8x30s is as clear and sharp as the day I bought them.
I've bought some of them used from friends who didn't use them any more because they bought expensive Leicas, Swaros or Zeiss bins. But after all the use and abuse they still work great and are very sharp. I loan out Zeiss 8x30 Diafuns to children who visit our ranch because the Diafun is ultra-lightweight, and easy to hold, so youngsters have an easy time learning to use a quality binocular. The Steiner 8x30 porros are much sharper. The Steiner 8x30 porro is much brighter than any Nikon 8x32 Monarch I've seen although the sharpness is good on the Monarch. I'm trying to find an even brighter, super-sharp, super waterproof, ultra rugged bin that costs less than $180 to replace the Steiner 8x30s I carry in an outer coat pocket during the winter because sometimes I am seeing something really great at dusk in winter and I don't want the binocular to limit me due to brightness. The Minox BD aspherical 6.5x32 may be what I want. But I have never had a comp;aint about a Steiner binocular. I own 6 pairs now and I am not inclined to get rid of any of them. I collect binoculars and usually have dozens of visitors to our ranch for bird viewing, fruit tree maintenance or picking, and horse-trekking related visitors. Everyone likes the Steiner 8x30 when they use them here.
The Nikon 10x42 SE or Fujinon FMTR 8x30 may be sharper, and there may be others that are brighter, but every Steiner bin I have (or have had), has been reasonably priced for excellent quality (although there are Steiner models like the Merlins I just didn't like for their narrow views). The salespeople at Cabelas say they carry the Steiner 8x30 and sell lots of them because it is rugged so they never get them back broken, they give sharp views and best of all they are the best $200 binocular the store sells, except possibly for their own store brand. Cabelas will discount a binocular to sell a slow moving item. No store people can remember a sale on the Steiner 8x30. The Steiner 8x30 isn't very big or heavy either. So the advantages that roofers have with size and weight aren't there compared to the Steiner 8x30. Perhaps the design of the Steiner 8x30 is from the 60s, but maybe if it was really ahead of its time, that's okay.
