Opticron imagic 8x42: Bins to beat the credit crunch!

As part of their sponsorship of the obs website Opticron asked us to take a look at one of their best selling models and post our thoughts. This review is based on the comments of a few of the Spurn regulars who have used them over the last six months or so.

Firstly lets make one thing clear these bins had a tough time in the hands of the Spurn regulars we all live for birding and as such have all broken the bank to afford the best we could stretch to, this means they were a little unfairly compared to the absolute top of the range bins from Leica, Nikon, Swarovski and Zeiss> Perhaps a better comparison with our own bins would have been the new top of the range Aurora model from the Opticron stable. It has to be said though they coped admirably in such company.

In the hand

The first time you hold these bins they feel good in the hand, they are well proportioned being only an eye cup length longer than the ergonomically superb 32EL's from Swarovski and balance in the hand is spot on. They should suit all shapes and sizes and indeed were tested to the extreme by Andy Roadhouse who we discovered has eyes at least two inches further apart than anyone else in the world! Presumably a evolutionary result of having such an enormous nose! The main focus wheel is perfectly placed and incredibly smooth (are you listening Swarovski?) and with just the right amount of resistance when turning. Close focus to infinity is achieved in a mere one and a quarter turns. The dioptre setting though not a locking type like on top end bins is well situated and doesn't get moved around too much, although we didn't use them with a gloved hand which may cause the odd unwanted adjustment.

Easy on the eye

You may have noticed that not many of us down here carry scopes about with us this is because we are inherently lazy and have over time changed our bins to 10x models so the scope can mostly stay in the car. The result of this is that the Imagics being 8x suffered a smaller image size but the upside of this is they were significantly brighter than our own bins in low light conditions and the field of view was impressive being slightly wider than on most of our 10x, they also had the depth of field you'd expect from an 8x optic which relulted in much less refocusing than we're used to. There was evidence of some slight colour fringing when viewing object against the sky such as a poweline, this was only really noticeable when looking specifically for it and would never detract from the superb image in normal viewing conditions.

With so many positive comments you may be wondering where the bad news comes in, well in the interest of integrity we wont hold back on the one thing we couldn't get on with, we have to say honestly almost to a man we hated the eye cups. Despite being modern twist out style 3 position locking ones they are flat and too wide with fairly sharp outer edges, this prevents them from "sitting in" your eye socket in a comfortable way. It makes it very difficult to position the bins with them twisted out and holding them pressed to your face, and folding them down and holding them slightly away from your face means you struggle to hold them in a constant position which creates moving black rings round the edges of the field of view. If you wear glasses they are apparently fine and as the rubber is flat the interface with the lens of your glasses is good

Even easier on the pocket

Up until now we haven't mentioned the price which when one considers that the newest bins from the market leaders are all coming in around £1000-£1400 the Imagics at a mere £399 are an absolute bargain, one of the lads even said that if he ever needs to buy a new pair of bins he'll buy these and not replace his Ultravids, high praise indeed!

These are a simply wonderful instrument let down only by a poor eye cup design, but at a price that is so close to stealing you'll be looking over your shoulder for officer dibble every time you venture into the field, which will be more often as with so much money left over you'll be able to substantially increase your carbon footprint!