Are Leica binoculars the best available?

Checkwith doug at cameraland. he sponsors this site. gr8fuldug is his handle. He's excellent to deal with and buys all the nig name demos he can get.
 
Check out Kahles binoculars. They are owned by Swarovski and make very high quality optics at more reasonable prices. I've got a pair of their 8x42 binocs and after looking through them I tossed my Nikons for good.
 
I don't have binocular experience.

I do have experience with microscopes - zeiss, leitz... olimpus. Leica is the best IMO.

I have experience with a bunch of photography lenses. In photography you get an image and can compare it side by side. This elliminates some of the brain's compensatory mechanisms. Leica is the best again IMO.

I wouldn't be surprised if my experience carried over to the binocular world.
 
steiner

I have had a pair of steiner miltary-marine 10x50s for the past 10 years and other than being a bit heavy they are excellent and compare well with any of the other mid priced German/Austrian optics. However Leica has always been rated in the top 2 or 3 with Zeiss and Swarovski for glass from europe. I am not to sure who actually makes the Steiner lenses. I know that most of the best Japanese glass is either made by Olympus or Nikon and the rest buy from them with the coatings they want. Another German brand not found here in norht America is actually a subsiduary of Zeiss called Dr optic i believe they are actually the old Zeiss Jena plant in the former east Germany and are fairly good too.
 
propfwd said:
I have had a pair of steiner miltary-marine 10x50s for the past 10 years and other than being a bit heavy they are excellent and compare well with any of the other mid priced German/Austrian optics. However Leica has always been rated in the top 2 or 3 with Zeiss and Swarovski for glass from europe. I am not to sure who actually makes the Steiner lenses. I know that most of the best Japanese glass is either made by Olympus or Nikon and the rest buy from them with the coatings they want. Another German brand not found here in norht America is actually a subsiduary of Zeiss called Dr optic i believe they are actually the old Zeiss Jena plant in the former east Germany and are fairly good too.
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Zeiss went down in quality quite a bit since the japanese bought it out. It became much more consumer oriented and has dropped from being a "hair behind leica" to comewhere much closer to nikon.
 
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