Quick review of 10x50 Celestron Upclose G2 binoculars [£30 approx]:

[Naaaysmith]

Quick review of 10x50 Celestron Upclose G2 binoculars [£30 approx]:

• The 12mm eye relief is insufficient for spectacle wearers, even with the eye cups forced back. The eye cups are short and stiff and not intended for folding.
• I have an astigmatism in my left eye, but with my right eye I was able to achieve some focus on stars. I wasn't able to achieve pin point focus on brighter stars as they tended to ray. Even though they are budget binoculars, I felt the focusing could be better.
• With the focus set to infinity, I roughly measured the exit pupil at 5mm using graph paper.
• They fog up when you go indoors from the cold outside.
• When tested with the monopod to eliminate shaking, I found the view didn't improve much. That was when I decided to buy better binoculars, so I've ordered a pair of 10x50 Pentax PCF WP II binoculars.

I reckon there are better budget 10x50 bins than the 10x50 Celestron Upclose G2. The Strathspey 10x50 budget bins [£42] with long-eye relief and better prisms would have been a better purchase. The Celestrons however were far better than my dad's old zoom binoculars [now in the skip]. The Celestrons did also help me decide what my next pair of binoculars would be.

When my Pentax bins arrives, I'll add a follow up post to this thread.

[Craig_]

Looking forward to the pentax review.

[Damo636]

Sorry to hear the Celestron didn't work out for you but I suspect you will see a significant improvement with the Pentax PCF.

[Naaaysmith]

After some time trying out the Pentax PCF WPII Binoculars, I now have a review prepared:

• Bought the Pentax PCF WPII binoculars following the advice from Steve Tonkin's web page.

• Impressed with the build quality. Nice and robust. Lock focus and incremental right eye diopter adjustment.

• Long eye relief. The eye cups can be set firmly at three positions. Required for spectacle wearers.

• Superior baffling to the Celestron upclose, important when observing stars near a bright moon.

• Fainter stars are more visible.

I still observed raying of the stars, similar to the Celestrons. However, I now have a better understanding of the limitations of my vision quality, in that the problem is to do with my own eyes. I actually have astigmatism in both eyes. I am right eye dominant and my latest eye prescription is as follows:

      Sph.   Cyl.  Axis

R  +0.75 -1.25  87

L  +1.50  -0.25 34

I had informed the optician that I wanted glasses for astronomy and requested to remedy the effects of astigmatism as best as possible. The subsequent glasses are an improvement when observing stars by themselves, but disappointingly, do not eliminate the effects of astigmatism when viewed through binoculars. I now believe that astigmatism cannot be completely corrected by glasses.

Furthermore, I think I may have misjudged the Celestrons with respect to the 'raying' of the stars as stated in the previous post. I can also confirm that there is no flaw with my Pentax binoculars as other stargazers with better eyes were able to achieve apparent pinpoint focus.

In conclusion, the Pentax PCF WPII binoculars are excellent, and I also got good responses from the other stargazers at the Heaton Park Astronomy group who tried them out. Consequently, I will not be purchasing more expensive binoculars as the effects astigmatism will occur on any binocular.

I have found the following post on the web, which recommends a reduction in binocular exit eye pupil to reduce the effects of astigmatism:

http://www.astronomyforum.net/binoculars-forum/142216-astigmatism-eyeglasses-exit-pupil.html

I would now like to try 16x50 binoculars to test if a 3.125mm exit pupil makes a significant difference over a 5mm exit pupil.

[BinocularSky]

My astigmatism is very slightly worse than yours:

      Sph.   Cyl.

R  +1.50 -1.50

L  +1.00  -0.75

...and I do indeed find that a smaller exit pupil helps. With my big binos, I have the option of 5mm and 2.7mm, and I haven't used the x20 eyepieces (5mm) for several years as things are so much more pleasing with the x37 (2.7mm)

PS: Glad you like the PCF-WPII ! (phew! )

[JG777]

Agree with you on the Pentax PCF WPII, I have a set of them and found them to be really rather nice.