Strathspey 15X70

[lensman57]

Hi,

The Bino arrived yesterday and so far I have not had a chance to give it a good testing but these are the initial impressions.

The box has no markings or motifs whatsoever, rather generic. The Binos themselves are rather lighter than I expected for a 15X70. They are rubber coated and the rubber is anti slip and feels good in hand. Focusing is stiff so is the right eye diopter control and the bridge movement. The last one is a good thing, the diopter control does not matter as once set it should stay there and the focus is OK for looking at the deep sky as it should be left at infinity all the time anyway, how these things change with time will have to be seen. The printing at the eyepiece end states that the optics are broadband multi coated and looking at the objective supports this as there are purple and green reflections of the sky and clouds. The construction seems adequate but nothing to write home about, the innards appear to be clean and the collimation, well is not off but could be better. My most concern is about the very strong purple fringing while looking at some radio antenna about 1/2 mile away against what could photographically be called a neutral gray sky ( typical Manchester fair ).

I need to remind myself that these are in the end very cheap ( not as cheap as Celestron15X70 though ) Binos for casual stargazing but having owned some of the best lenses that were available to photographers in the last 30 years my eyes are still very sensitive to CA and colour fringing.

If the lousy weather permits tonight I shall try and give it a go and will report in due course, and one last thing as far as I am concerned these Binos need to be tripod mounted even for casual observing.

Regards,

A.G

[Space Dragon]

I think you'll find that colour fringing on all but the most expensive Bins, at least the ones that I've looked thru but it will really only be apparent on the limb of the moon, venus and jupiter and for all else in the night sky, it shouldn't interfere with proceedings.

15x70 really hits a sweet spot for scanning, consider a monopod and if you were to buy a better pair at some point, a parallelogram mount is great.

[SteveNickolls]

Thanks for this report lensman57. Once having used the best...

I do hope however that you find these useable-maybe tomorrow night with asteroid 2012 DA14?

Cheers,

Steve