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Best buy in birding binoculars



With interests in birding, wildlife and am. astronomy, I've had an
embarrassing number of binoculars come through my hands in the past 5-6
years. While at the Mid-Atlantic Star Party a few weeks ago, an aquaintance
asked my opinion of a table full of low cost Chinese import binoculars.
Normally, I shun most of these kind of optics. I picked up a set of low
cost roof prisms to show him why he should not buy inferior binoculars and
was simply blown away by what I saw. I liked them so much that I
immediately bought them, and was again shocked, this time by a jaw-dropping
low price. 

The company is BurgessOptical.com  They're known in astronomy circles for
producing high quality focusers, and are getting a name for themselves
importing giant astronomical binoculars. But their little 7.5x32 waterproof
roof prism binos have to be seen to be believed. Normally, they're a very
reasonable $99, but Bill Burgess said he'd honor the star party price of
$69 through the rest of the year for any interested birders. These are very
under-reported on the sparse Burgess Optical website. They close focus to
about 12', feature screw up eyecups and enough eyerelief so that most
glasses users are finding that they have to srew the eyecups partially out
for best view. Burgess claims that these feature triplet objectives and
ultra high transmission multicoatings (ie. broadband). All I can say is
that they have very true color rendition and good light through-put for
their size. 

Granted, nobody is likely going to want to put down their Leicas or
Swarovskis (or even Minox or Kahles) for these, but at $70 they make a heck
of a good second or car bino. I've been comparing them side by side to the
popular Pentax DCF WP 8x42's and note that there's less spherical
distortion in the Burgess than in the Pentax. Also, the Burgess units have
captive objective covers and a better rainguard and screwup eyecups, (as
opposed to the pull up/fall down ones on the Pentax.) There is also a
Burgess 8x42 similarly configured bino, but I was a little less impressed
with it, though I admit that I really didn't spend any time looking through
it. The sale price on that one is $99. 

I thought I'd mention these to this list just because I've shown these
around to about a dozen of you already, and have gotten such positive
feedback that it's clear there might be several C'birders who would be
interested in these. So far the only negative comments I've heard about
these so far has been that one woman couldn't get the images to merge
properly and there was one complaint that the focuser wasn't as smooth as
on a binocular costing many hundreds more. I like mine so much, I've been
tempted to sell the Pentax ones. Optically, these are far sharper than any
roof prism bino I've seen costing less than $400-500. They are an
incredible buy at this or their normal price. 

I've got no interest in these other than as a very satisfied customer. I
hope somebody finds this post a worthwhile use of bandwidth on this list.
I'll answer any questions I can off list.

miaim@mebtel.net
Mike Swaim
Western Orange Co., NC