William Lewis
Wishing birdwatching paid the bills.
Hello. I currently use a pair of leica trinovid HD 10x42's that I bought as I hoped to be able to go birding without a scope. I kept finding I couldn't be bothered with the additional faff of having a tripod strapped to my back so it stayed at home more often than not so was looking for a bin with a bit of range, decent optics and durability.
I've since gone back to using a scope (swaro ctc 75 with a monopod, review to come) so am looking to change the leicas for something to compliment it, I only tend to have one set of bins at a time so am looking for an all rounder and don't need magnification as much any more as I always have the scope due to its portability.
I've previously used some old opticron 8x40 porros for about 15 years followed by some opticron srga 8x32's. The srga's I found to be an almost perfect set of bins if it weren't for the slightly less than great low light performance and lack of waterproofing.
I'm looking at selling the leicas and replacing them with some swarovski 7x42 habichts but have a couple of questions that I haven't seen answered elsewhere, I've had a good browse through reviews and posts as you'd expect! I have good vision and don't wear glasses.
Firstly, focusing, (I know the focus wheel is stiff to begin with). When using the leicas one of my biggest frustrations that sometimes makes me miss birds is the ammount of turning required to go from close focus to a usable distance, basically more then half of the focus wheels travel is taken up going from closest to about 7 meters out. How do the habicht do in this regard? I liked the very short ammount of focus wheel travel of the srga's, im not expecting anything quite like that and am aware the close focus if nowhere near as good as the leicas but would like to know if it takes a lot of turning to go from close focus to a usable range, say 15 meters?
Secondly field of view. I've not had too many issues with the leicas field of view of 113m, the swaros are 114m at admitadly 3x lower magnification but can't see that in itself being a problem. I'm assuming this is also mitigated by the larger exit pupil of the swarovski, the 3d view of porros helping find my way through a tree to a bird and the lower magnification aiding stability. The thing
I don't like is the tunnel vision effect you can get with some bins with a small field of view, cheap zoom binoculars are particularly terrible for this. Is this something that any 7x42 owners have experience or does the view fill the whole of the eye as such as the exit pupil dimensions would suggest?
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Will
I've since gone back to using a scope (swaro ctc 75 with a monopod, review to come) so am looking to change the leicas for something to compliment it, I only tend to have one set of bins at a time so am looking for an all rounder and don't need magnification as much any more as I always have the scope due to its portability.
I've previously used some old opticron 8x40 porros for about 15 years followed by some opticron srga 8x32's. The srga's I found to be an almost perfect set of bins if it weren't for the slightly less than great low light performance and lack of waterproofing.
I'm looking at selling the leicas and replacing them with some swarovski 7x42 habichts but have a couple of questions that I haven't seen answered elsewhere, I've had a good browse through reviews and posts as you'd expect! I have good vision and don't wear glasses.
Firstly, focusing, (I know the focus wheel is stiff to begin with). When using the leicas one of my biggest frustrations that sometimes makes me miss birds is the ammount of turning required to go from close focus to a usable distance, basically more then half of the focus wheels travel is taken up going from closest to about 7 meters out. How do the habicht do in this regard? I liked the very short ammount of focus wheel travel of the srga's, im not expecting anything quite like that and am aware the close focus if nowhere near as good as the leicas but would like to know if it takes a lot of turning to go from close focus to a usable range, say 15 meters?
Secondly field of view. I've not had too many issues with the leicas field of view of 113m, the swaros are 114m at admitadly 3x lower magnification but can't see that in itself being a problem. I'm assuming this is also mitigated by the larger exit pupil of the swarovski, the 3d view of porros helping find my way through a tree to a bird and the lower magnification aiding stability. The thing
I don't like is the tunnel vision effect you can get with some bins with a small field of view, cheap zoom binoculars are particularly terrible for this. Is this something that any 7x42 owners have experience or does the view fill the whole of the eye as such as the exit pupil dimensions would suggest?
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thank you
Will