I am new to this forum and the whole birder thing. My past experience with optics has primarily been as a hunter. I have read all of the previous post and a couple of things stand out to me. When it comes to top of the line optics, hunters and birders seem to be on the same page for the most part; Swarovski, Leica and Zeiss, (Nikons are usually too heavy for most hunters). Where I see a pretty radical change is in the mid-range binos ($500-$800). Hunters are well served by brands such as Kahles, Docter, and Minox. I personally use the 10X42 Kahles. These three brands give you 90+% of what the big three Euros for about 60% the cost. All three brands are roof prism, water proof, phase corrected,fully-multi-coated, and extremely rugged. Is there any particular reason that these brands don't appear to have much of a following in the birding market? I think that these are truly the "best buys" in the bino world. Not to mention that my own direct comparison research, has shown me that these brands far exceed many of the brands that I see being touted in the birding world. I look forward to your responses.
ranburr
[QUOTE=ranburr]I am new to this forum and the whole birder thing. My past experience with optics has primarily been as a hunter. I have read all of the previous post and a couple of things stand out to me. When it comes to top of the line optics, hunters and birders seem to be on the same page for the most part; Swarovski, Leica and Zeiss, (Nikons are usually too heavy for most hunters). Where I see a pretty radical change is in the mid-range binos ($500-$800). Hunters are well served by brands such as Kahles, Docter, and Minox. I personally use the 10X42 Kahles. These three brands give you 90+% of what the big three Euros for about 60% the cost. All three brands are roof prism, water proof, phase corrected,fully-multi-coated, and extremely rugged. Is there any particular reason that these brands don't appear to have much of a following in the birding market? I think that these are truly the "best buys" in the bino world. Not to mention that my own direct comparison research, has shown me that these brands far exceed many of the brands that I see being touted in the birding world. I look forward to your responses.ranburr[/QUOTE]
My guess is your post will be deleted or edited before getting too many responses simply because you mentioned the word "hunting".
Not much tolerance around here if you're not like minded of the mods. I've appreciated the opinions of several members and have found some good information here, but things are a bit stuffy for my tastes, so in the unlikely event that I'm not banned from the board because I like to hunt, and I use top quality optics to do so, I doubt I'll be back.
Happy huntin'