Nikon Binocular's Sportstar Zoom

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Below is a table comparing this Nikon EagleView Zoom with a selection of other compact binoculars. The very top of the range Swarovski 8x20B compact binoculars as well as a few others like the Pentax 9x28 DCF, Minox 10x25 BV BRW's, Kowa 8x25 BD and the Steiner 8.5x26 Wildlife Pro. With their eye-cups fully retracted, they have a length of 11.9cm (4.7in), this increases to 12.4cm (4.9n) when you fully twist out the eyecups. Fully folded, the width of the binocular is 9.2cm (3.6in), fully opened it is 11cm (4.3in). Their height is 6.3cm (2.5in), which once again all on the larger end of the scale for a full compact binocular but nothing excessively so. Another downside to them not being fully covered in rubber is that there is more chance of them making a louder sound if something like your watch or more commonly a ring on your finger strikes against them. Rubber armour dampens down the sound and helps to ensure that you don't frighten away easily spooked animals like birds or deer.

Canon offers a good range of image stabilised binoculars but higher magnifications are where you’ll benefit from it the most. Two caveats though: the high magnification makes for a narrow field of view (you see less at any given time) so it’s harder to spot the bird, star, whatever in the first place. And combined with the 32mm objective lenses, they don’t gather enough light for low light use at dusk. However, they’re great for shake-free stargazing and a delight for detailed moon gazing. Usefully, a thumb-operated zoom lever allows users to adjust magnification on the fly without taking their eyes away from the eyepieces. The construction here includes regulation issue high quality BaK-4 prisms twinned with multi-coated lenses to optimize light transmission. Given the power on offer it’s perhaps less of a surprise that close focus is a bit of a misnomer, given that the nearest subject we’ll be able to get sharp is a rather lengthy 23 metres away. By contrast with the eminently portable Nikon option, this chunky alternative offers both a huge maximum magnification and huge objective lens. That means it’s been built for tripod use – and an adapter mount is included – with not only long distance viewing but also stargazing being one obvious aim, given the power, clarity and brightness its specification suggests. As you would expect, keeping the image nice and still becomes harder and harder as you increase the magnification settings. At 24x I was able to the image still enough to take in all the details of what I was looking, but I had to concentrate on staying very still as even the smallest movement has a big impact on the amount of image shake. This is fine for short bursts, when you just want to take in a bit of detail, but is definitely not something that you would want to do over longer periods.At 8x Magnification: All binoculars with an 8x magnification and 25mm objective lenses have an Exit Pupil of 3.13 (25/8) and a Twilight Factor of 14.1, which if you compare them to a full size 8x42 binocular, which has an exit pupil of 5.25 and a twilight factor of 18.3, it shows that the increased objective lens diameter of the 8x42 binoculars will gather more light and make it possible for the binoculars to transmit more light to your eyes. This is the main compromise to using a compact over a larger pair of optics, but having said that in reasonably good lighting conditions like during the day, where your eye pupil size is only about 2 to 3mm, this will not be much of a factor, it is just at twilight and under poor light where you can really notice the difference. You must also remember that having a good pair of compacts even in poor light is still much better than having no binoculars at all! This model is the ideal companion when spectating sports events, nature-watching or pursuing other outdoor activities. Just before we get into the detail of analysing the price of this product, we want to briefly highlight the importance of setting yourself a budget before you spend too much time shopping around for a suitable product. It’s all too often that we get carried away when shopping and find ourselves buying a fantastic product, but probably actually overdelivers on what we need and therefore costs a lot more than we should have spent. So spend a bit of time looking around at the sort of price you can expect to pay for products in the Binoculars category and use that alongside your own financial situation to set yourself a budget. Next up is material. Read through the product description for Nikon Sportstar 8-24×25 Zoom Binoculars to get an understanding of the materials the product is made from. Some materials will obviously be known for delivering better quality item than others. You might also have decided that you’ll only accept a product made from a particular material. An important thing to consider when looking at the size of a compact binocular is how small they are when they are folded. When you are are looking through them, just how small they are is not that important, but size is far more important when you carrying them around with you. Different designs of compacts fold up in different ways and this can make a big difference is their size.

I could not find any details as to exactly what the interior frame or the exterior body is made of, but the exterior looks to be made from some sort of hard plastic. Nikon state that they have added a carbon fibre material in parts of the grip which they say enhances durability. I am guessing that this is in the parts of the barrels that have a thin dark grey rubber coating on them, which you can see as being the dark sections on the image below:

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Nikon Sportstar Zoom 8-24x25 binoculars come in a portable and compact body, and employ a zoom lever on the top of the body which gives a smooth 8-24x zooming experience. The focusing ring can be operated while looking through the binoculars during observation. To see this in action, you can hold these binoculars up at arm's length and look at the eyepiece lenses, where you can clearly see the circle of light in the eyepieces, this represents the exit pupil. As you increase the magnification you can actually see this circle of light in each eyepiece getting smaller and smaller - see my series of photos below that I took to demonstrate this: These Nikons are marketed as sports binoculars but they’d also be good as modern-day opera glasses – good for the theatre and big concerts. Weight and especially size really matter in a good pair of compacts and obviously we are looking for a pair that is as small and lightweight as possible. This is because if the "compact" pair is too large to suit your specific requirements, you may as well just go and get yourself a similar quality mid or full sized pair of optics that by their very design will usually perform better, especially in low light conditions: There are two buttons on top for the two types of image stabilisation. The buttons feel different, so it’s easy to find the right one with your finger without looking. The Stabiliser mode eliminates shake; then, when you’ve found your subject, use the Powered IS mode to also eliminate bigger movements. The life of the (two AA) batteries varies dramatically: around 10 hours at 23°C but only around 1 hour at -10°C.

Despite the glossy plastic exterior to the Nikon Sportstar Zoom 8-24x25 binocular, there’s enough weight and heft that we found it easy enough to hold them steady when observing. Inevitiably though, the further we went up the magnification range amplified any exterior hand wobble, with resultant image judder. As you can imagine, pricing is one of the most important factors of any purchasing decision. We can find the perfect product for our needs, that fits the brief in every single way. But if it doesn’t fit our budgets, we simply can’t (or at least shouldn’t) buy it. But other than these minor points, I would say that as you would expect of any Nikon product, they look pretty well made and considering that they have a plastic shell, they still feel fairly solid and robust and in terms of build quality are as good as any compact porro prisms found in this price range. I doubt if this very thin rubber armouring would protect the optics very much from damage, but it does make a nice grippy surface to hold onto and is well placed for this.The focusing mechanism is geared so that it takes a full 2 and 1/4 turns to go from infinity to it's minimum focusing distance of 13.1ft (4m).What this means is that focusing from near to far (or vise versa) takes a little longer than ones that take less turns, but it does have the slight advantage of making fine tuning your focus just that bit easier and more accurate. I think Nikon have got this about right with these as it really helps you to get the correct focus when you have the magnification at the higher settings like it's maximum of 24x. The brand of product you buy can vary in importance, from person to person. Some people will of course be much more particular about the brands they will use. Whilst others aren’t interested in the brand and are more interested in the overall quality or price of the product itself. Thankfully Nikon is a brand that many customers have grown to love over the years and is very popular for items in the Binoculars category. The first is brand. Looking at the brand of the product is often a really good indicator for judging product quality. For example you’d expect a much higher quality product from a brand known for providing excellent quality than you would from an unknown or even a budget brand. As you increase the magnification level and zoom in on an object, the FOV reduces even further. However this is not as big a problem as I would suggest the best way to use these zoom binoculars is to have them set at 8x to locate the object that you want to observe and the once you have it in your field of view, you can then zoom into it to get a more detailed view.

Of the 15 products, we discovered that 2 were more expensive and 12 were cheaper than Nikon Sportstar 8-24×25 Zoom Binoculars. Prices from Nikon If the brand you buy is important to you, our best advice is to spend some time writing up your own list of ideal brands. That way when you come to the point where you’re comparing product options you can filter to only show the products from brands in your list. An optional red-dot finderscope (not included) can also be attached to the rail, to help you find objects fast, if you’re aiming for a serious, tripod-based setup.This change of mind return policy is in addition to, and does not affect your rights under the Australian Consumer Law including any rights you may have in respect of faulty items. At 24x Magnification:When you increased to their maximum level of 24x the Exit Pupil reduces to just over 1 (25/24) which means that not a lot of light that enters the binocular will reach your eyes. Whereas regular binoculars might give their specification as 12x32, meaning a 12x magnification and a 32mm diameter objective lens, with zoom binoculars we’ll see the likes of 8-24x25, where between 8x and 24x is the adjustable magnification, or zoom range, and 25mm is the diameter of the lens in play.