Interesting new binoculars

Started by light trap, 04/22/2002 04:20PM
Posted 04/22/2002 04:20PM Opening Post
Pentax has announced waterproof versions of their popular PCF series of porro prism binoculars. The new PCF WPs come in all the standard PCF configurations, 8x40, 7x50, 10x50, 12x50, 16x60 & 20x60. The MSRPs are low enough that the street prices will likely be in the $150-$200 range. This puts high quality, long eye relief waterproof porro prisms within just about everybody's budget. I've owned both the non-waterproof versions of the 12x50 and 16x60. The image quality is very high but the FOV is quite small. Still, I'd think that the new waterproof Pentax porros may well be one of the better bargains on the market if their image quality is as good as previous PCFs. I'd imagine that the 8x40's and 10x50's will give Swift some real competition in the birding/sport market.

Also Konus has come up with a cheap 8x22 roof binocular mated to an inexpensive digital camera, so that you can take digital images of what you see in the binoculars. I wouldn't expect the images through this to be great, but it's an interesting idea and it looks like it'll be priced practically in the disposable range. Perhaps one of the other mfrs. will pick up on this idea and we'll get to see a really high quality merger between digi-cam and binos. Who knows?

I didn't see these products on the Anacortes site yet, but I'm sure that will change.
Regards,
Mike Swaim