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11. No-name (well, would you admit to it?) 12-60x70 (actually ?-??x49) zoom - with "the latest ruby coatings" possibly the worst binocular I've ever had the misfortune to look through. Kept for when I give talks, as an example of everything to avoid. No, I didn't buy it; it was donated.

They are exactly what I've got!!! They aren't ideal but looking on the bright side they were a present, they've got me into astronomy, and the only way from here is up!

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Hi Steve,

Love your set-up! I haven't thought of using an LED finder with my bins - yours sounds great! Which make/model is it?

Cheers,

Wayne.

Hi Wayne, Thanks for your message. The red led finder I'm using on the Apollo's is a 'Sky Surfer III LED-Fiber Pointer' from Baader Planetarium. It has a variable intensity red dot control as I have found some others are just 'on' or 'off' and can be too bright. I originally bought mine years ago together with a purpose made L bracket from 'Scopesnskies. Depending on how you Internet search you either come up with  http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/binocular/red-dot/tripod-bracket2.html (currently out of stock) or http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/binocular/red-dot/tripod-bracket.html and in stock :-) Best to ring and check!

Cheers,

Steve

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Hi Wayne, Thanks for your message. The red led finder I'm using on the Apollo's is a 'Sky Surfer III LED-Fiber Pointer' from Baader Planetarium. It has a variable intensity red dot control as I have found some others are just 'on' or 'off' and can be too bright. I originally bought mine years ago together with a purpose made L bracket from 'Scopesnskies. Depending on how you Internet search you either come up with  http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/binocular/red-dot/tripod-bracket2.html (currently out of stock) or http://www.scopesnskies.com/prod/binocular/red-dot/tripod-bracket.html and in stock :-) Best to ring and check!

Cheers,

Steve

Cheers Steve, I'll have a wee look!

Wayne.

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I haven't thought of using an LED finder with my bins - yours sounds great! Which make/model is it?

I know you didn't ask me :grin: , but I use a Rigel Quikfinder on mine. It helps enormously that the outer circle is as near as dammit the same size of the FoV of my x37 eyepieces.

T-zenith.jpg

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I know you didn't ask me :grin: , but I use a Rigel Quikfinder on mine. It helps enormously that the outer circle is as near as dammit the same size of the FoV of my x37 eyepieces.

T-zenith.jpg

Cheers Steve, I'll have a look at that too :-) 

I actually emailed you a couple of months ago about spending approx £275  and you recommended the Helios Apollo  15x70, well I managed to wangle another £100 out of the relatives (it was for a birthday present), so I went with the Helios Apollo 22x85 instead. They look and feel like great bins, but not had a proper chance to use them as yet.

Many thanks for your help and advice - it was much appreciated!

Wayne.

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Here are my 100mm APM binos on a homemade parallelogram atop a second hand Meade field tripod under our dark skies on Salisbury Plain - Cassiopeia and Perseus are visible above the tree line. 

I use them with 19mm panoptics to give a fantastic field of view, dew heaters are fitted and I use the 12V 9Ah battery as part of the counterweights.  It is a real pleasure to scan back and forth across the night sky.  In fact, I can get lost in the milky way very quickly!

The only downside is the customer service. I had to fight APM tooth and nail to get them repaired after the bolt on the side fell inside the body, damaging the prism and lens.  To be fair, they were (reluctantly) repaired and have performed flawlessly since. 

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Great topic and some seriously lovely looking bins on this forum!

Here are my incredibly-good-value Revelation 20x80s, set up half an hour ago for a quiet gaze at the moon while my wife was out. These bins were all I had for 4 or 5 months after I sold my old 8" newt, and it was a really special time of observing and getting to know the night sky in a different way.

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These are my bins, I am new to this but not really sure if I am using them correctly (if there is such a thing?!!!) but I do enjoy them & there are some beautiful ones on here that others have & also have the right environment to use them. I, unfortunately, live in a built-up area. What do people think of these & should Iooking at investing in some others with different range?

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Hi  Appleblossom, in terms of using correctly you will get better views if mounted on a camera tripod when operating at higher magnifications. Folks will more often go for fixed magnification bino's as they tend to perform better, £ for £, as there are less moving parts to keep collimated accurately. I have a pair of 8x40's for general observation and am very happy with them. :smiley:       

Edited by Laurie61
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  • 3 months later...

My current collection, with the older bins my sons may use to the right.

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On the left we have the Helios Apollo 15x70 HD, the Vixen New Foresta 10x56WP, and the little Lunt 8x32 SUNoculars. On the left the TS 15x70 (BA-1), Yashica-built Combi-foto 7x50 and my old Bresser 10x50.

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How do those venerable Carl Zeiss perform, Mak?

 Have they had any servicing/re-collimation?

They were my father's, he bought them secondhand before I was born. He was a trained engineer and stripped them down many years ago to clean and service them. I'm pretty sure the 'x' scratched into the left monocular front plate (which can be seen here) was made by him when he took them to pieces to facilitate cleaning them. As far as I can tell the optics are not coated. I use the binoculars regularly and they are as good to use today as I remember from using them when I was a child (when my dad let me lol). 

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I've used a fair few pairs of binoculars, yet I've never found any to rival these. The wide angle view is quite spectacular. I don't know much about the history of them but my dad always maintained that they only ever had one previous owner who purchased them new in the early 1930's and possessed them through WWII until the 1960's when he sold them to my father.

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I gather coating was invented by Zeiss around 1935. As it was considered a military secret, binoculars for sale in the 1930s will not have sported these coatings

That's interesting. From what I can gather Nagler eyepieces inter alia were influenced by 100° FOV (or more) optics originally developed for German U-Boat periscopes.

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