Has anyone ever looked through a Kern Aarau 8x30? Are they any good? No, i will not buy one, i'm just curious.
A couple of reviews on the usual suspects' pages :
http://binofan.home.att.net/kern8x30.htm
http://www.holgermerlitz.de/kern8x30.html
I've got an Kern military 8x30 from 1980. It's very well made, but optically mediocre. The eyepiece has short eye relief, about a 68 degree AFOV with goobs of off axis astigmatism. Deutsche Optics still sells the later Leica branded version of this binocular, which has a very cool mechanical design, but is optically unchanged except for being ruined by a non-removable laser filter. They also sell the Kern military 6x24, a lovely baby 6x30 made of solid brass. I like that one better and it's cheap, but they might have run out of coated specimens by now.