Steiner

Steiner Night hunter 8x56 binoculars

Irene Palmer ispsend13581006

21 January 2021

Recently took delivery of Steiner Night Hunter binoculars. 1st the sweet spots:. material of the binoculars is really nice, much nicer than say Nikon Monarch or Olympus. Very bright and the field of view is great. Weight is ok, well considering the size of the binos the weight is quite reasonable. Quality of optics is great. Now the bitter spots: ergonomically is very poor. Let me qualify this. shape and weight are comfortable to hold. However, the binoculars are super stiff. Adjustments are not smooth at all. The binos are so stiff that one needs to apply considerable force and then adjustments are jerky. This applies to both; eyes distance adjustment (bridge) and eyepieces. Focus adjustment is terrible. Each eyepiece needs to be adjusted separately and much force is needed to turn each eyepiece. Also, it is not true that once you have adjusted focus it stays sharp from 20m to infinity. The depth of field is about 20m, which means that you do need to re-focus every time you look at the subject is outside the 20m depth of field range. This, coupled with the very stiff focusing of individual eyepieces makes focusing a terrible experience. Essentially the process is so slow that I rather leave the the subject out of focus if I don't want to lose it, than fiddling with focusing and lose the subject. I have an old pair of Russian military binos (about 40 years old) with a similar system (individual eyepiece focusing) and they work very smooth; both the bridge and the eyepieces. Nothing else matters no matter how great other components are if the ergonomics (smooth and fast focusing) are poor - very poor. I don't know whether this is the intrinsic problem of this model of just mine. I intend to get in touch with Steiner and find out the issue with the stiffness of the focusing system I have several binos in my collection including Nikon Monarchs and Steiner Skyhawk4 binos. All are better than the nighthunter having far superior focusing system even if their optics is not as bright as the nighthawk's. Would not recommend Nighthunter.

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