With 1800 employees, Leica has an annual turnover of the order of 400 million Euro, and continues to produce state-of-the art optical equipment for private and public institutions(mostly universities and hospitals) the world over. In 1973, Leitz set up another large factory in Portugal, where it has remained to this day. Founded in 1869 by Ernst Leitz, at Wetzlar, Germany, where the original factory remained until 1986, after which time production was moved to the town of Solms to the west of Wetzlar. Leica is a German optical firm that has established itself as a world-leading manufacturer of high-end cameras, microscopes, camera lenses, binoculars and spotting ‘scopes for the burgeoning sports optics market. He agreed, but did say that he found the Terra to be very comfortable to use and was even considering acquiring one in the future! Fast forward a couple of weeks and Ian dropped by the Leica binocular at my home so that I could begin some tests, the results of which, I will divulge in this blog. Keen to expand my portfoIio of tested instruments, I asked him if he would be kind enough to let me borrow it for a wee while to evaluate its optical and mechanical performance.
It was then that I discovered that Ian was also the proud owner of a little Leica Trinovid BCA 8 x 20, which he purchased about two years back for casual sightseeing during his summer vacations in the Scottish northwest. He was fascinated with this new instrument, being duly impressed with its razor sharp optics, generous wide field, light-weight ergonomics and decent market value. I was returning from one of my walks, carrying along my little Zeiss Terra 8 x 25 pocket. A few weeks ago, I bumped into Ian in the swing park near my home, where he was looking after his young grandaughter, and we struck up another conversation about binoculars. A keen hunter, he uses this binocular to seek out red deer and estimate their distance using the built-in laser telemetry in the instrument. Focusing on infinity is perfectly sharp when I'm wearing glasses-this is just a matter of design provision for people with terrible eyesight, and it's a provision that some other manufacturers make.Back in the summer of 2019, I got the opportunity to test out a very high quality Swarovski EL Range 10 x 42 owned by a fellow villager named Ian. Without my glasses, I can't get a clear image out of the Duovids when I look at something a couple of miles or more away, at least at 8x magnification (at 12x, the problem resolves, but just barely). And here the Duovids don't provide quite enough. The only place a problem might arise is when I'm focusing on something that's close to the binoculars' infinity setting, where the manufacturer has to provide room in the focusing mechanism to focus beyond infinity. That's not usually a problem: I can generally adjust the focus this way. Using binoculars without glasses, I have to focus the binoculars beyond where they'd be focused for someone with good eyesight-that is, to focus on an object 30 feet away, I might have to set the binoculars as though the object is 40 feet away in order for it to appear sharp. I'm very nearsighted, and use an eyeglasses correction of about 6 diopters (that probably puts me well below the fifth percentile for eyesight in Americans). The ability to switch magnifications is very useful-on a trip to Riverside Park to pick out a group of fledgling falcons that have nested there, I began with 8x magnification to scan through a tree, then switched to 12x to take a closer look at the falcons' nest when I located it.īut I found one flaw in the Duovids. Images are sharp and colorful, even in low light. These are the heaviest binoculars I've tried, at two pounds and five ounces, but the weight seems justified by their tank-like die-cast aluminum construction. I tried out the 8 + 12 x 42 Duovid model-those numbers mean they magnify at either eight or twelve times the naked eye, and the objective lenses are 42 millimeters in diameter-and am impressed. The closest we can get is Leica's Duovid line, binoculars that offer two different magnifications (and nothing, nominally, in between, though it's possible with some careful adjustment to go somewhere in the middle). It seems they involve too many optical compromises to justify the prices that Leica and its competitors, Zeiss and Swarovski, charge for them and to satisfy the standards to which they hold them. However obvious the idea seems, zoom binoculars are rare in the stratosphere of sport optics.