Telescope Reviews: First light with the Eagle Optics Ranger SRT 12x50

So it turns out that I won the October review contest for Eagle Optics, and they told me I could choose one of their Ranger SRT binoculars. Gotta love Eagle Optics. I chose the 12x50s, not because they were the largest and most expensive (although they were) but because they made sense for astronomy and seemed to fit between my Canon 10x30 IS and Canon 15x50 IS binoculars. I received them last night, but it was cloudy by the time I had time to try them. So I played with them indoors a bit last night.

I was impressed with how light they were, just a few ounces heavier than my Canon 10x30s and Pentax 8x36 DCF HS binoculars. Furthermore, they're quite compact for 50mm binoculars. From perusing photos of other 12x50 binoculars online and comparing specs, I figure these are the same as the Leupold 12x50 Olympics. They threw up images that were sharp and noticeably brighter than my 10x30s. One of the things I do for a test is try to read, from across the room, the numbers underneath the barcodes of some stuff in the kitchen in relatively dim lighting. This was impossible with the Pentax 8x36s, extremely difficult with the Canon 10x30 IS, even using the IS feature, because dim lighting, and easy with the Canon 15x50 IS (you could read a novel from across the room with the Canon 15x50 IS if only you could get somebody to turn the pages for you). The only thing that made it difficult with the 12x50s was the need for steadiness. The sharpness and the brightness were obviously there.

Well, tonight I got a chance to try them under the stars, and I still quite like them. Axially they did not disappoint me. Star images where tight, and contrast was good. There is slight purple color fringing on the lunar limb, but it was less than I expected, really quite good. There was, however, some degradation in sharpness near the edge of field. This appeared to be a mixture of astigmatism and field curvature. However, I find it odious to look very far off-axis in binoculars, with direct vision, and I was only able to collect this information for you by forcing myself to do it, anyway. It seems more or less following or within the drop-off in acuity of peripheral vision, so I simply did not see it in normal use.

If I'd had these last February, I would have taken them on the cruise with me, and I would have been happy with them. Similarly, if I were to take some binoculars on a long hike, these would be the ones. Although they don't come close to the performance of my Canon 15x50s, and weight of the binoculars hardly matters to me while observing, the weight and size does matter when they're hanging around my neck, and these would clearly be a lot more comfortable there than the Canon 15x50 IS binoculars.

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Mike

Stuff that I use:

7" f/6.7 home-built Newt, eq platform, Pentax 40XW and 5XO, Tele Vue 13E and 2x Barlow, ZAO-II 6mm
120mm f/8.3 home-built grab-n-go Newt with 7-21mm Nikon Zoom
Canon 15x50 IS and Eagle Optics 12x50 Ranger binoculars