Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 18:07:00 EST Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Marshall Iliff Subject: RFI: need info on economical binoculars MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Hi everyone, I find myself in a small dilemma and am hoping some MDOspreyers out there can help me. I have a friend who is a budding birder and is looking to buy his first binoculars and is hoping for something in the $200 range. I'm not much of a "gear" person and usually gloss over the product reviews in Birding and other magazines. Unfortunately, while I can give a long and tiring sermon on the comparative merits of Zeiss vs. Bausch & Lomb vs. Swarovski, these are all well out of his price range. Does anyone out there have any advice on binoculars in the $200 price range? A quick look at the ABA Sales Catalogue revealed the Pentax PCF binoculars were in that range, as were Bushnell' "Birder" and "Natureview" binoculars. I used Bushnells back in my early days of birding and would hope that there is something better out there. Anyone using these binoculars? Any other advice? I'd also be interested in any opinions on spotting scopes in the $400 or less range. Please reply to me offline and thanks in advance for any responses. Best, Marshall Iliff Ocean City, MD miliff@aol.com ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================