Why Are Swarovski Binos So Good And What To Do If You Cant Afford Them

hey guys welcome to traditional bowling wilderness podcast this adjacent Tim Kovac we're gonna do a video today where to talk a little bit about binoculars basically my thoughts on them and what you should strive for what you may or may not need both of these binoculars you're seeing right here these are 16 years old they've had them for a very long time got a set of Swarovski 7 by 30s Paris Rockies 10 by 40 twos I also had a set of Swarovski 8 by 40 s or I'm sorry 8 by 40 twos I've had settled like an 8 by 40 twos I've had a lot of really good binoculars and a ton of garbage binoculars or I should just say Laura and binoculars not quite as good and there's nothing wrong with some of those either well we'll get into that but we need to talk a little bit about specifically these as far as high ended what makes them worthwhile no Swarovski these slc lining which you're seeing right here this is the SLC binoculars they've been around for a very long time they quit making them for a few years thinking everybody would then jump up to their al series no offense to their e l series but I'm not really I don't I can't justify the double X you know it's basically a double cost it's just 2 times as much as these are and I don't see the advantage for that you have to remember that I'm an optics person I I my life lives to the lens of the camera high-end stuff this camera that I'm actually recording this on with the camera lens combos over six thousand dollars this is lenses and vision through a lens and understanding things like chromatic distortion and edge distortion and/or chromatic abrasion edge distortion vignette and faith correcting and understanding all these these different things are part of what makes my job what I do so they're important to me they're important that I understand them an important in a way that I can use them the same things apply to optics in here as well to there's a reason that I think that the SLC line from Swarovski is the best version that we pretty much ever need its high-end high quality which will explain why the benefits of that are what makes them that way but we'll also like I said I'm going to come to the ELC Ruiz I'm not knocking it but I don't think you get your dollar your benefit for a dollar out of those your smile per mile for the amount of money you're gonna spend I don't think the benefits of the l-series are really all that they're for you and they are better per se a little bit but again I don't think they're double the price and better but the SLC line now that it is back it's been back for a couple of years it is way more improved than what these are what better coatings better got a little better grip design to it it's better again these are old binoculars well I upgrade to the new ones no not anytime soon these I expect to last me the rest of my life that's one of the beauties of buying high-end binoculars of that caliber as they will so think of that I mean if you think of the fact of how many binoculars before I bought these that I would go through over a five-year period they would almost pay for a pair of these anyways so it needs I expect the last rest of my life like I said you're talking 16 years old for these binoculars they've been there done that seen it and they've been a lot of places and like I said of view all the other ones I've tried these are the ones that stand a test of time and have been used or used every single year and they're they're incredible I cannot say enough good things about them the new ones though much better so there's a lot of advantages there but when you start talking about binoculars of this caliber and you start talking about the prices that they end up being I know it gets hard to justify and swallow it but there are benefits to it that make it worthwhile like I said number one is the fact that you're gonna buy these one time and they're gonna last you the rest of your life you're done you don't need anymore they're guaranteed for life so all that stuff is taken care of and covered on any kind of level which is nice in its own right so that's an advantage there's also a lot of their binoculars off for the same kind of warranty and stuff like that too that are good so I get it so what makes these so much better and so much worthwhile I will get into all the nitty-gritty stuff for you but in a nutshell you're gonna see better you're gonna be able to pick out things better you're gonna have sharper edge detail better definition better color rendition they're gonna be brighter you're gonna have a wider field of view you're going to be able to count antlers more precisely more quickly that focus rings are super fast they come into focus very fast they're very high quality built durable they're gonna last a lifetime they're gonna be stayin waterproof and their needle nitrogen-filled so they're gonna maintain that to automatically seal her hair her metrically sealed or whatever you call it that technical word is but they are top shelf top-of-the-line their magnesium bodies rubber coating they are incredible so yes you're gonna pay a little bit more but it's gonna be worth it is there other ones that are close to it that are just as good nope are there other ones that are close to it in price or maybe that are a few hundred bucks less that are good enough maybe but I'm gonna give you a thought on that too my opinion is that this would be should be what you're gonna strive for if optics are important to you now if you're just an Eastern whitetail hunter that's gonna go out you're gonna go off sit on your back forty and you're gonna do that ten times a year this may not be what you want but if you're going to go on a hunt where you have to specifically size animals up or understand or be able to judge them or count points before you can actually harvest them this stuff is gonna make a difference if you're going on a Western hunt something like that where you need to be able to pick animals out you need to be able to score sheep on the other side of the hills things of this nature or you're gonna be glassing for a long time these will prevent the headaches these will keep you in the game these will make the difference they are worth wild investment for that aspect these I use these ones these are 7 by 30s they're not even made anymore they're my absolute favorite once as a whitetail hunter these are with me all the time I swear by them I love them they're incredible they have other models out there now they got two eight by thirty twos or they got some other ones that aren't bad but just seven by thirty my absolute favorite I wish they would bring them back but there's I guess not enough people out there that you don't know enough about binoculars to understand the value of what that is but you it's near impossible to find it seven by today I think minoxidil makes one and then you have the 8 by 32 or 8 by 40 twos or 10 by 42 these are 10 by 40 twos these are the ones that I would bring with me when I go on my javelina on Sur when I go into Western hunts out there but the javelina especially because I can actually pick them out of the brush with these it is amazing how many animals out there that I will see with these before the guide with his binoculars will see or my hunting buddies that are out there with their binoculars that they'll see this makes a tremendous difference I will always get I will see the game before they even have a chance to and then I point them out and it takes them you know five minutes to understand what I'm trying to show them to their binoculars but I'm seeing him perfectly through these another advantage to them is when I when I used to hunt Missouri in a specific area they had a eight-point or bigger rule basically for their deer it was nice with these because I could actually score that animal and count the points from a distance and know if it was a shooter or not a shooter before they got too close these make a big difference for that so they are incredible on every level and well worth the investment for the SLC one because the SLC's are not that expensive you might look at them and think they're they're pretty expensive but they're not that expensive I'll have links down below you can check all the specs on them and you can see what the prices aren't you can purchase them right through there if you want to and I also go in some links for some other variables because my my suggestion is that you skip the middle-of-the-road stuff the low-end stuff has got very high quality today which I'll also put a couple links to those in there for you but the low-end stuff has got very has become very good to the point where the middle road the you know the 500 $800,000 binoculars they're not in my opinion worth it you don't gain enough from the 2 3 $400 but not because you don't gain enough with the middle of the road over those to make it worthwhile but these take everything to a whole new level so again these are worth it these are what you should strive for eventually if that's the kind of stuff you're doing but till you get there I will put some recommendations down below here for you from narcos I think are phenomenal now when we start talking about some of these specific things I mean what makes them so much better what makes them so good again somebody who lives my life through a camera lens understands all these things I'll kind of break it down for you into some simple simple version of terms but these have field flattening lenses in them that's incredible the way these lenses are caught what they do they avoid pincushion which means that it's our globe effect so when you look through them you don't have that almost fisheye or that little bit of globe of fact as you're scanning this tree is perfectly vertical this one is vertical you're seeing everything exactly as you see it rather than a fish bowling as you look and go across there those lines flattening our field flattening lenses in there are incredible they make a tremendous difference especially one year glassing and so or when you're trying to find an animal out there the wide field of view is absolutely incredible you have long eye relief with these as well too which is nice so you you don't have to fight to have that specific spot it doesn't matter if you're up here if you're up high like this you're down low you're in your I mean you're finding your field of view and them very quickly they're your eye relief and they're very quickly and it makes it nice and in it these are HD now mine are not HD these again being a little bit older they're still low dispersion lens clutter glass but they're not quite the level of the HD models that are out there now and the SLC series again 16 years old technology has improved but what you'll get with yours the high the HD the high density fluoride low dispersion glass in there is absolutely incredible the color rendition that you're gonna get from these is going to be off the charts I don't know of anything out there that will compare to these as far as actual reality and the colors in the rendition of what you're seeing out there and at HD quality it is the best at your eye is that our technology out there today can provide for your eye so it's incredible stuff the reduced chromatic abrasion chromatic abrasion basically in a nutshell is when you have each color has to go through that prism as the colors go through that prism they're trying to line up what they didn't get each color and focus but trying to get the focus point of this color and a focus point in this color the focus point is color and the focus born on all these colors to converge so that they all come into focus at the same time is what you're basically that's chromatic abrasion what happens is if to it to an untrained eye you may not see it but when you really start focused and that's what causes a lot of headaches is that these colors are out of focus your eye sees them but it automatically tries to fix it for you it's like when you when somebody tries to fool you and they write a letter and they go the the mailman came and you say oh you didn't see the extra though your mind fixes things and puts it into perspective it will do that but in order for your mind to do that in your eyes to do that it's gonna come at a cost chromatic abrasion your mind will try to fix for you and it's okay another pretty decent job but not as good as it can be if I was a lot of different binoculars out there with these the amount of reduced chromatic abrasion really converges all those focus points in there thus face corrected prisms really align that so that you get very little chromatic abrasion means less headaches better color rendition better everything sharper images sharper what you're seeing through there's going to be much crisper and clearer because all these colors are converging on the same point so chromatic aberration is a big one and these are top and when it comes to being able to rectify that that's huge the field of view on these things is incredible to feel the view is how much of a distance you see when you look through these binoculars so you put those binoculars up and you look through them the distance that you can see out there is your field of view the bigger the field of view is the quicker you can find where that animal is because you you build those reference points of where you're looking at then you can see it the wider field of view though the more some of these other issues that we've been talking about come into play with the distortion and edge distortion and chromatic abrasion pincushion or barrel rolling those things come into play they have got it down to a science where you get with these benign you get the maximum field of view without any sacrifice of anything else in there so that you get the quality too so it is a win-win on every level there the bodies are built out of magnesium on here magnesium is lighter weight and it is really strong the durability factor they're not super lightweight binoculars these are these are great but I mean even in their size they're not ultra lightweight binoculars they're built to last a lifetime and hold up to everything so the magnesium housing give you the durability the rubber skin on here this thick rubber skin priceless it's a reason I got rid of the like us the thing I hated about the like of binoculars is my hands froze all the time every time you had your hands on them you were freezing cold in the cold weather that we hunted these never an issue with these as thick rubber coating which you can see on there how thick that rubber out is it's over that magnesium it just makes these binoculars absolutely comfortable to use in all weather conditions and it's just flawless so that's a huge one there the twist up eye cups incredible pop-up eye cups why I don't understand why those are loose floppy they don't work good to just I get it like some of the companies use it but on a high-end binocular twist up eye cups with stops along there is priceless but you can set these anywhere you want to up and down you can see that goes up and down but if you wear glasses or you have different I really for your eyes you can control anywhere along there that you want them to be and it stays so in there just rock solid and durable so the best twist up eye cups best eye cups period in a binocular market ever in history is always hands-down gone to Swarovski they do it better than anybody else does and they are removable so you can unscrew this and take it right out for cleaning purposes to get any dust or anything in there but you can see that awesome where is for a twist up feature of that I come in here but absolutely incredible to twist up by cups like said skins phenomenal they are her metrically sealed I think is the word they used for but what it means is not only are they over in sealed as many of them are they are nitrogen purged as well - but the quality in the time spent to make sure they're perfect in 16 years I've never had a problem with these binoculars ever and I hunt as you guys know they listen to my podcast and you know the stuff I hunt in the rain I hunt in all kind of conditions these things have been dropped off a boat they've been dropped four feet down into the water and it took me a half hour to find them they have been through everything wet water wise you could imagine Swarovski even recommend it to clean them just run them under running water to clean them out you know I mean it's they are a hundred percent waterproof fog proof and done the right way so there will be no issues there whatsoever and then the coatings on these things the coatings on the ones you'll get if you were to buy these today are way better than the coatings that I have on mine again 16 years difference and a lot of Technology changes but the advantages to the coatings on the prisms is tremendous and then you have the coating on the lenses though the ones on the coatings on the prisms offer these enhancements all right they're gonna give you a better better color better brightness they're gonna give you a better rendition they're gonna give you a better sharpness there's a lot of great coatings that go on to these prisms that are inside of here and that's phenomenal then you have the coatings that are on the actual lenses as well too that not only help gather light they help prevent water spots they make them more scratch resistant there they're just there their mineral type coatings and they're built very well and they're done right so that having those coatings on it makes a tremendous difference and again the new ones are loaded up the right way and the in the color or the phase corrected prisms on there like I said they that phase correction kind rather than just buying a generic back for which you know for many years used to be the best prisms if it's got back for prisms it's got good ones in your lower end binoculars not that they're bad but as a standard prism gets put in they're not sitting done these are a hundred percent built for them phase correct and designed for what they're doing optimized for this coating to be corrected and it makes a difference the quality level is there because of that again reducing the I just I just your ads distortion in there so it's distortion is where the may be bright and crisp and clear in the center but as he fainted the edges those that just get blurry a lot of people think what doesn't matter as long as a senator well it doesn't matter if you pull them up and you're trying to find something if you can't see edge to edge in there clearly you're gonna start getting the headaches and what's gonna happen is you're gonna as you go to pan that distortion in there is going to start screwing with your eyes and it makes it very tricky and you're basically losing almost half of your field of view due to the distortion and only have a clear center these severely reduce the edge to soar edge distortion in there so you don't have that issue tremendous quality in these when you're looking through them and I promise you they're incredible and then vignette II is darkening around the edges another one that you get a D you have to deal with a lot and lower end binoculars very little vignette in these none that I can even I can't even identify it so yeah crystal clear and it's bright and sharp from edge to edge all the way through they are absolutely phenomenal so that's some of the things to make the difference is like I said the focus rings are really really fast the subtle you know everything about them it's just top-notch top quality high-end these are binoculars you will buy and you will have them the rest of your life again the new ones out there are phenomenal they're they're better than what these ones are they do come with the you get the rain covers on there you get two covers on the bottom you get the whole deal they come with all that I I don't I don't use them I don't use anything if it's rain and I tuck these inside tuck them right inside my shirt or inside my rain gear I don't use the covers that are on them but they do come with incredible caps and that kind of stuff which you can see in the link below so you can see all that sort of stuff but if you're looking for high-end binoculars or you're gonna be doing hunts of a lifetime or hunts that require glassing it's gonna be really hard to beat this Ross the SLC series it really is because they are affordable per se affordable I should say but I mean for what you're getting and how long they last they are affordable and they are is high-quality is you can get for that money and for money even way beyond that so so I can't rave enough about them top-notch top-quality now if you're not ready for these completely okay totally understandable you may never ever want to get into something like this and if you don't that's fine too there are some great options out there vortex I think is one it is a cut above the raster quality and all vortex binoculars but I know people that do have recommended a lot of people and I look through every model they have in detail through stores and again keep in mind it when I'm looking through them I know what I'm looking for my life happens to be through a lens so I seen them and there's other great ones out there too but the vortex line that kind of really grabs my attention and their quality for the lower price point is phenomenal so I'll put some links below for those too but that's something I read recommend if you you're looking for good quality binoculars and on a budget or not ready to get into this those are ones that I would recommend middle of the road stuff like I said I'm not knocking it but I don't think there's a reason to go from vortex couple you know a few hundred dollars a couple hundred dollars pair of binoculars and then go to a five hundred dollar pair and then hopefully upgrade to an 800 dollar pair and hopefully upgrade to a twelve hundred dollar pair and hopefully upgrade to thee I don't think it's worth it I think you're better off just getting the the vortex lines which like I said are pretty phenomenal running with those saving up your money and then jumping straight into something like this the middle-of-the-road stuff I don't think the value is really there this whether you want to call it a monopoly or what but there isn't a better binocular in my opinion than the Swarovski SLC series so anything else is I do I can't justify spending more money on something or I should say I can't justify buying something that may cost a little less thinking you're getting closer to this I would recommend going with the low end stuff in the beginning until you get your feet wet know what you're looking for and to get set and then when you are ready to upgrade I would aim this direction that's that's my opinion that's the way I would recommend doing it I don't think the middle-of-the-road stuff can hold a candle this and I also don't think it's much better than some of these vortex optics that up it out I'll put a link in there for you below I think this video is getting kind of long so I'm gonna let it go here but definitely check those out that'll give you the specs on these again these ones no longer made they are out so they are not an option but the 8 by 40 2 s and the 10 by 40 twos and needs gold absolutely incredible and as you can see sidewise they're not really a whole heck of a lot different Gharib learning see them but there's not really a tremendous amount of difference the reason I like these was they they were at 7 power if I had a choice to go with any power in this size or an 8 power in this size I'd probably go with the 8 power in this size just because you get a little more like gathering with the 42 millimeter objective but there are 8 by 30s or even 8 by 20 weeks and again for a whitetail hunter are phenomenal binoculars if I was doing a Western hunt and things like that like I said I would definitely want it at least an 8 or a 10 power 8 or 10 by 40 to type binocular like this so thanks for watching I'll be back with more stuff soon and we'll talk to you later right [Music]

Channel: Traditional Bowhunting And Wilderness Podcast

Views: 29,643

Rating: 4.5507245 out of 5

Keywords: swarovski, swarovski binoculars, swarovski slc, swarovski el, best binoculars, best bowhunting binoculars, bird watching binoculars, best quality binoculars, best mid priced binoculars, leica binoculars, ziess binoculars, vortex binoculars, vortex optics, swarovski spotting scopes, swarovski binocular review, binocluar comparison, bowhunting, deer hunting, elk hunting binoculars, mountain hunting binoculars

Id: SX1JJpd4PbY

Length: 23min 13sec (1393 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 09 2018