Burgess Question

I am looking for an inexpensive but descent quality pair of 10x50's. I want to use them for scanning the sky to help me proximally locate deep sky objects for my 9.25 Celestron scope. I have read about the 15x70 and 20x80 Burgess binoculars on Astromart forums in terms of getting decent quality for your money. My question--- what about the Burgess 10x50's. Has anybody used these? For $49 it seems a descent buy--- If anybody has an idea of how they perform let me know.

Lynn

Lynn,

I do not have direct experience with the Burgess 10X50 but I purchased a pair of 20X80 LWs about six month ago. My take on these low cost Chinese binos is they offer excellent value and very good optics for the price. However, their mechanical construction and quality control is not up to the standard higher cost models.

My 20X80 LW arrived in perfect collimation and had very impressive optics for the money. They were my most used astro binos fore several month. I also took them on a trip to VA in the spring for watching shore birds and astronomy. They have been treated with tender care and have not been subjected to temperature extremes. Nevertheless, I discovered they have lost collimation. The out of collimation conditon is slight and is difficult to detect in day time use but noticeable for astronomy beasue star image does not merge to a single point. A second pair of 20X80 LWs I ordered for a friend overseas did not have sufficient right diopter adjustment for my eyes.

I would consider something more rugged if you want a a pair of 10X50s for the long run. The Pentax PCF series have received very good reviews. I have seen the Pentax 10X50 PCF WP model for as low as $130 with a $30 rebate till Jan 2004. They will make great all around binoculars as well.

Erik D