At any rate, the little unmarked 8x32 was in fact a very decent, ergonomic glass with an overall very nice view. So my ultimate response was on the order of "these look fine to me". It turned out the prototype glass was a basic aluminum mirrored prism binocular.
Theron has evidently decided to phase out the Wapiti HQ with the Wapiti LT. The LT is for Lightweight. It has somewhat different and better multicoatings and dielectric prism coating (at least as specified by Theron). Otherwise, except for being all black, it is the same body style. They were supposed to be green like the prototype, but they came in black. There still is practically nothing on the binocular. There is waterproof, 8x32,and Field 8*/140 m/1000 m lettered on the focus wheel. There is a small, silver Theron badge between two parallel silver lines on the left objective barrel of the binocular, that’s it. It has a very basic nylon case, without strap, but with a belt loop on the back. It comes with a cleaning cloth and an unmarked, stretchy foam type neck strap that is just the right length. It has objective covers and a standard rain guard. The objectives are tethered. However they are a little different than typical in that the caps have an inner ring that presses into the objective housing. The exposed ends of the barrels past the bottom hinge are very short, and I doubt a standard style tethered rain guard would work. That was what came with the prototype and there simply was not enough room there for that to work. These covers work just fine. The tether rings are snug enough they will stay put. It is a bit of a pain to pop the covers into place on the end of the objective, but once done they stay put too.
This seems fairly typical in size and dimension to many other open bridge 8x32 class binoculars. In particular, I note the nearly identical physical appearance of binoculars from Kenco and Vixen. There is a striking resemblance to the Minox 8x33 Comfort Bridge as well. The Theron is 5x5.4 inches in dimension (5.25 in with the eye cups fully collapsed). They have the same 58-82 mm IPD adjustments listed in the AllBinos reviews of the Kenco and Vixen. The diopter is right eye and is adjusted by pulling the focus knob forward to engage the diopter. The Theron weighs 20.0 oz with covers and strap.
The large focus knob is both comfortable, and easy to manipulate. The focus operates through somewhat over one full turn, but less than one and one quarter. Viewed as a clock face, there are about 14 hours of rotation. The rotation is on the firm side, but smooth and has very little slack (play, slop, whatever adjective you wish). The binocular focuses counterclockwise to infinity and has a close focus of about 6.5 feet. One half turn of the wheel takes the binocular from close focus to 100’. The other one half turn goes from there to infinity, with the rest, about ¼ turn, going past infinity. The depth of focus seems to me typical of other 8x glasses I have.
After reading the recent threads, mostly thanks to FrankD regarding the Kenco and Vixen relatives and the at least superficially similar Sightron Blue Sky 8x32, I was looking forward to seeing these. After using these for a few days, I reread the AllBinos reviews of the Kenco and the Vixen 8x32’s, and reread Frank’s thread on the Sightron. These look better to me than the others came across in the AllBinos reviews. They seem to me to more exemplify the comments of the Sightron. For one thing, the 8* fov specification on these is a narrower than those I have. These measure for me to be just about 8.3*, or 436 ‘ @ 1,000 yds or 145 m @ 1,000 m. making it at least 0.7* wider than the Kenco and Vixen. These were found to be about 7.5*. My measurements were done by mounting the binocular on a Slik Pro 700 tripod. I used a Stanley measuring tape, bright chartreuse in color with black 1/16” increment markings. I laid the tape out horizontally on the top of a large, pull behind the pickup, industrial air compressor we have. I used this because it was parked in just the right place and was the right height above the ground to match my height with the tripod. I placed the front of the objective as close to exactly 30’, or ten yards, as I could measure from the measuring tape on the trailer. Carefully adjusting the tape edge at the very left edge of the fov, I measured to the last marking that I could see in the right edge. In this case at the 30’ distance, there was a span of 52.25 inches. Extrapolated to 1,000 yards from ten yards, that is just shy of 436’. I did this multiple times, same result. Maybe not quite lab quality, but this should be close enough to indicate that the Theron seems to be slightly over spec on fov. Another thing I found was by using the distortion in the clarity of the numbers and how distinctly the black increment markings could be read provided some interesting observations on the various edge effects.
The AllBinos reviews found the fall off in edge sharpness to be greater than what I saw here. With the Theron, there is just about one inch at the outer edge out of 52.25 inches that showed a distinct darkening and the effects of pincushion. There is about three inches inside of that that appears to be field curvature, as it can just about all be focused out. When viewing the tape from the center of the field, I think I could perceive a little more curvature than what I could measure. The problem was, when I looked toward the edge of the field, my eyes can evidently can focus all but that last 4” inches of the outer edge of the field to the point I couldn’t see it well enough to try and quantify it. So for me anyway, this yields a very usable, comfortable center field of about 400’ (more or less) or some 7.6* (more or less). That measurement was kind of hard to pin down further than that. However, that gives me the distinct impression that the fov is both wider and more distortion free than AllBinos found either the Kenco or the Vixen. The edge is sharper than the ZEN 7x36 ED 2.
Stars and Jupiter can be focused to nearly precise pinpoints with very minimal spiking effects. The moons of Jupiter resolve satisfactorily. The distortion showed by moving the star slowly away from the center field more or less mirrors the distortion pattern I saw from reading the measuring tape. However, I “think” there is slightly more image blurring that “seems” to start about a half a degree or so sooner looking at a star than looking at a measuring tape.
The image has a very slight reddish bias. The contrast is very good and all colors appear natural. The little binocular has a very easy to look at image and a nice wide picture window sort of view. You can count feathers on House Sparrows at bird watching distances easily enough. While the glass does not have any ED or HD elements, it controls CA and fringing pretty well. I am not typically bothered by this and I have to purposely go looking for it. With effort, I can find some in the Theron, very little, a sort of slight purplish effect on the ridgeline of a mountain in the blue sky background in bright sunlight. So unless you are particularly sensitive to CA, I would not worry much about no ED glass in this binocular. Theron specified dielectric prism coatings here, as well as an upgrade to the multi coatings of the prototype. There is s definite green reflection on both the ocular and objectives. There is a pink reflection off the prism.
This image reminds me a lot of the one from the Swift Eaglet, albeit noticeably wider. It is not a lot different from the Vortex Fury 6.5x32 either. Considering these are going to be in the $200 US price bracket, there is not a lot to find fault with, and they are in some good company.
But since they are in the $200 price bracket, there are some faults. First the eyecups will place the surface of the eye glass, for those of you interested in such, about 4.0 mm above the lens surface when fully collapsed. When fully extended, the lens is about 14.0 mm below the surface of the eye cup. I don’t wear glasses with binoculars, but using these with my reading glasses, I was quite easily able to see the whole fov. When trying them with various sunglasses, some of the wider winged style sunglasses did prevent me from seeing the entire fov. But those who are more critical of eye relief may find these a little short.
I have no particular idea why a center diopter adjustment tied to the focus wheel is necessary on a less expensive glass. Frankly, I think the binocular would be better served with a conventional, if old fashioned, right eye diopter. I have seen lots of problems with less expensive glass with center diopter. Even the center diopter of my $1,200 Razor HD came apart and needed to be fixed. I do not understand why some reviewers count a right eye diopter, particularly a non locking one as a disadvantage. Having said that, these seem fine and I have not had to fiddle with the diopter. There seemed a little bit of a settling in period while everything smoothed out and loosened up and I have not needed to touch the diopter for several days. It also seems to be only a minor thing to get the IPD adjustments down into say the 54 mm range, which would certainly increase their broader appeal for smaller faces.
These control stray light reasonably well, but panning underneath bright sun, there is stray light issues for about 4-5* each side of the sun. But outside of some rather extreme conditions they do a pretty good job.
While the image brightness, contrast, color rendition, and apparent resolution ability seem fine, they are not quite as good as either my ZEN 7x36 ED 2, the Kruger Caldera 8x42, or for that matter the Theron Wapiti APO-ED. What you get is a very nice, very useable binocular for not a lot of money. You will likely feel yourself at no particular disadvantage if one of these was your sole instrument of use. I have the thought I will keep these
.Now, my camera battery is dead, so I’ll post this and put up pictures as sonn as I can. Meanwhile, here is a link
http://theronoptics.com/WAPITI_LT_BINOCULARS.html
And another link.
http://www.predatoroptics.info/cata...759&pid=1031227
A message from another forum says the cupon code "adtheron" will reduce the 8x32 to $179 and the 8x42 to $189.