Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 14:13:32 -0400 Reply-To: Maryland Birds & Birding Sender: Maryland Birds & Birding From: Steve Huy Subject: Re: Testing Binoculars Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Testing an individual pair is good. I'm sensitive to slight diffrences in each eye. I bought some Swarovski (Zeiss never worked well for me & Leica were too expensive) several years ago and the shop gave me a better than mail-order price (sorry, its now closed). I tried every pair in the shop and locally until I found one that seemed "perfect" to my eyes. But definitely ask to try other birders' bins in different situations and get their pros and cons. While those 8x56 might seem nice on a summer evening, they might be heavy and shake too much on a windy and frigid hawkwatch. Be sure to try bins on the shops feeders. Some shops also have black & white graphics to test for focus, distortion and color distortion on edges that can be helpful as well. Steve ======================================================================= To leave the MDOsprey list, send e-mail to listserv@home.ease.lsoft.com with the following message in line 1: signoff mdosprey ======================================================================= =========================================================================