Worst bins you've ever looked through?

[pipnina]

Thought we could have a thread for the worst bins you've ever had the misfortune of using, I'll start:

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I had known about the 20x50s sitting on the shelf for a long time, but never used them as my great grandad's 10x50s were pretty good. But I was curious yesterday and took them out to have a look. THE HORROR.

First off... It's light... Waay too light to be using actual glass lenses. Sure enough tapping the objective revealed a very plasticy sound. Not a good sign.

When I looked through them, I realised the manufacturers had heads the size of montains as the smallest inter-pupilary distance was 60 and the max 70. I couldn't get it small enough for me to be able to look through both oculars at once. For another thing, it appears the manufacturers intended this pair of bins to be used by people who want their eyeballs surgically attached to the EP... No eye relief at all, none. It already had a fairly low 3 degrees FOV but that became somewhere around 1 degree or less even with my eyes practically pressed against the glass.

Don't know who made them, but I pity the person who bought them.

What's the worst pair you've ever looked through?

    ~pip

[Stu]

Probably a pair of 100mm zoom binoculars I bought from Argos on a whim quite a few years ago. Hopeless and out of collimation so they went straight back!

[Astroscot2]

A pair of zoom 30x60 from Lidl, I expected them to be poor but this was beyond a joke, was like looking through 2 straws

[BinocularSky]

I own a no-name 12-60x70 "High-Powered Mega-Zoom" BSO [*]. I find it absolutely superb (**).

The ruby coatings impart a delicate blue (***) hue to the image. The field of view is not so wide that you can get lost in it, and you also get two images for the price of one, even at the low-end of the zoom. Also, as well as using ruby coating to exclude the CA-inducing red end of the spectrum from the eyepieces, the manufacturer has also thoughtfully stopped it down at the entrance to the prism-housing to an effective aperture of only 50mm, so that the image-damaging peripheral rays are also excluded. This combines, with the sort of soft-focus (****) one associates with a dodgy sort of movie, to ensure that even the brightest of Moons cannot dazzle you or cause you the embarrassment of uttering the undignified exclamation of delight that may occur if a large crater was sharply resolved.

The epitome of affordable modern engineering!

*  Binocular Shaped Object

**  As an example of everything a binocular should not be (see approx 5:35 on the video at http://binocularsky.com)

***  i.e. corpse-like

****  Or so I am told

[Ruud]

I've seen some junk binoculars, but I don't think they can be anywhere near as bad as the Steel ladle 50x50, reviewed on allbinos.com.

[Dave In Vermont]

I've seen some junk binoculars, but I don't think they can be anywhere near as bad as the Steel ladle 50x50, reviewed on allbinos.com.

Wow! I don't know where to begin! Those are fantastic! I think the blob of glue on the lens was the cherry-on-the-cake! I'm copying that article into Word and giving it an honored spot in my binoculars-file.

I want a pair!

Dave

[Peter Drew]

Theme developing here, anything zoom or over magnification qualifies. 

[Dave In Vermont]

My 20+ year old Vivitar 50's are very nice. 8X - 20X. No collimation problems. No ruby-colored lenses. Smooth action including diopter.

Guess I got lucky.

Dave

[Charic]

I don't think I've even considered any binoculars I have owned as being really bad, as this should be  pretty obvious when you first pick them up, although I could consider them bad if they did not do what I expected from them, but that is purely down to the user and their expectations, rather than a bad binocular ( in some cases?)

I recently bought  some Nikon Extreme 10x50s, rated highly by some folk, but the pair I received, were not of Nikon's venerable quality that I'm used too, and  with a couple of other issues, I sold them on (  to a satisfied customer! )  yet the  latest pair of Nikon Extremes I saw seemed very nice, in particular,  the finished quality, but still not comfortable to use!

On that note, I would say my  worst bins are my  Revelation Astro 15x70's?  not so much about  their image quality, or their price, which was good at the time, but for night time use their  too heavy, too powerful to be hand held for to long, amplifying any shaking, but more to the point they don't work for me on detail,  except the Moon. I'd like a pair of binoculars that can show  me the details on Jupiter?

Maybe too much to ask, but that's just my own requirement, but  because I don't see any  Planetary detail with the  higher powered binoculars I own right now, I much prefer wider angle, lower powered binoculars to see more of the sky to compliment the telescope.