Re: Binocular Recommendation?

["John S. Denker" <jsd@MONMOUTH.COM>]

Shapiro, Mark wrote:

> I'm in the market for good, moderately priced, general purpose
> binoculars.

Me too!

> I would prefer models with individual eyepiece adjustments to
> accommodate my old eyes.

That's the easy part.  I spent an hour in the Boat-US
store yesterday trying out binos.  Every thing I
saw had individual eyepiece adjustments.  The only
question was whether they _also_ had a common-mode
adjustment (as opposed to just fiddling both oculars
separately).  For astronomical use, no common-mode
adjustment feature is needed, since everything is
pretty much as the "same" distance.  But for birdwatching,
sometimes you want to refocus on something reasonably
near, right now, and then refocus on something else.

I wanted to get some 7x50 wide-angle binos.  That's
what I find best for stargazing, and good enough for
other purposes.  Alas, I couldn't find any that met
the spec.  Some of them, including some rather pricey
ones, were just plain lying about their wide-field
performance.  The rest had problems with _eye relief_.
That is:  suppose you clamp the binos to a tripod,
and measure width-of-field according to the absolute
max amount of stuff you could see by moving your
head and peering around the corners of the oculars.
Then yes, there was a big wide field.  But there was
no _single_ place you could put your eye and see
the whole field.  You would have to crawl inside
the ocular to see the whole field.  Harummmph.

Models tried included Nikon, Tasco (OS21/36/54),
Bushnell, NavyOne, and some other piece of
expensive junk I don't remember.

Maybe I'm spoiled.  I've got some TeleVue oculars
for my telescope -- wide field and excellent eye
relief.  But then one of 'em is the size of a
small cantaloupe, and they're not cheap......

>  Does anyone have any recommendations?

Let me know!  There's got to be something nice
out there.  Not too long ago I owned a really
nice pair......