Years ago I bought a pair of these after a rave review in a UK birding magazine. I wanted a pair of bins with a close focus and at that time few quality binoculars focussed closer than 4m. I used them for a few months but found I preferred my cheap Nikon Egret 8x40 bins. Then one day I decided to to a side by side comparison of the two and the results astonished me. The Steiners showed *no more detail* than the Nikon's. Yup, that's right. An expensive 10x bin were no sharper than a budget 8x bin. What's more, the Nikon's have a field of view of about 440 feet at 1000 yards, whilst the Steiner's show less then 300 feet at 1000 yards. So locating a bird is harder with the Steiner's and yet you see no more detail. What's more the Steiners, by virtue of being 10x, have much less depth of field than the Nikon Egrets, which means that I got a headache from eye strain when using them. Finally, another serious problem with the Steiner's is significant false colour. One day while watching duck on a lake, I was astonished to see Shelduck with three heads, each of equal brightness. Later when I turned the bins on a lake I saw the surface had turned bright purple. I have never seen such an incredible amount of false colour. The cheap Nikon's show a little when viewing back lit objects, but that's all. In short the budget bins knocked the Steiner's for six except for not focussing close, and not being waterproof. Still I wasn't prepared to tolerate such poor optics as the Steiners just to get a close focus.

Incidentally I have used extensively Leica and Nikon LX binoculars. At the time of purchase the Steiners cost almost as much, but deliver a fraction of the performance. The Nikon 8x42 LX are significantly sharper than the Nikon Egret and the Steiner. In other words, the Nikon 8x42 LX show significantly *more* detail than the Steiner 10x42. The Nikon 8x32 are as sharp as the Steiner 10x42.