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Decent binos


Ken82

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Sounds like a question for Steve @BinocularSky   

I'm not big into binos myself, but I have looked through a fair few over the years. I use my Celestron 15 X 70's for comet spotting at home mostly, and for bright galaxies when at dark sites. They are OK for the money, although I got them on offer at the time. A bit heavy, I tend to use them lying on my back to take away the arm strain.

There may be some divergence between the £100 budget and the desire for "decent" I fear. As with all optics, you get what you pay for Ken. Perhaps there is something reasonable available for around that figure?

I once had the opportunity at a dark site to use someones Swarovski flat field binoculars. They were awesome. Since then, my cheap ones have held little appeal :p

 

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1 hour ago, Chris Lock said:

For your budget I can personally vouch for these:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/opticron-binoculars/opticron-oregon-observation-70mm-binoculars.html

I stupidly sold mine to a fellow SGL member who is delighted with them with good cause :) 

Can't think of any better large bins for 100 or less.

I have the now out of production Japanese version of the Opticron Oregon 11x70's and they certainly are very good binoculars. For astronomy purposes they can be hand held for short periods but a nice tall tripod does wonders for what you can see though them :smiley:

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I notice these are in the big Celestron sale at the moment for just £79 down from £109:

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/celestron-binoculars/celestron-skymaster-20x80-binoculars.html

They won't be quite as good in the QC department as the Opticron's, and I think I may have heard that Skymaster's show a bit of yellow colour cast, but it's still a lot of bino for 79 quid :) 

Also both the Skymasters and and the Opticron Oregons will have slightly undersize prisms, so they are more like 20x72mm and 15x63mm respectively.

I'm very tempted to pick up a pair of the 20x80(72) Skymaster's for out reach at my club, I'll worry about mounting them later because they will definitely need mounting!

EDIT: notice you mention wanting a brighter image, this is set by exit pupil so your 10x50's will be slightly brighter but obviously lower mag. The two mentioned will deliver larger image scale.

Any ideas on how you want to mount a larger bino?

 

 

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Bought a pair of Celestron 15*70 skymasters about three weeks ago from Amazon for £62. Spent one Sunday afternoon cutting a couple of Bahtinov masks to collimate them as i was told the QC at Celestron had been outsourced to the customer. Guess what, spot on no adjustment needed. Used them several times far better than my Opticron 10*50. Picked out M36, M37, M38, M41, the ET Cluster and many more from an urban location with average light pollution and a limiting magnitude of 5 (6 stars of Ursa Minor seen by naked eye).

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I've caved and bought the Skymaster 20x80 in the sale, we'll see if they can hold up to the excellent Opticron's 15x70's I had before. I'll let you know some pros and cons after I've used them :) 

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Decided to up the budget to £300 after reading some amazing things about the Helios appolos ! Best choice for the money ?? I was also reading people having to wait quite some time for delivery but FLO has these as 3-5day delivery, anyone know what's realistic ? Maybe Steve can answer ?? 

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It is a steal, but I suspect I can pack my bags at the same time.

For the TS. The celestron 15x70 provides enough fun. As long as you grab a copy of binosky's book and postings.

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