Nikon has introduced a new series of relatively inexpensive porroprism binoculars, specifically targeted at the birding and watchable wildlife crowd‹or any outdoor enthusiasts with a genuine need for binoculars but a limited ability or willingness to spend a lot of money on them.
The main selling point, according to Nikon's press releases, is long eyerelief. More and more manufacturers are realizing, finally, that long eyerelief is attractive even to those who do not currently wear glasses. Trends being what they are, no one can be absolutely sure they won't need glasses sometime in the near or far future, and it's nice to think you won't have to replace your binoculars when you do. In the meantime, even non
eyeglass wearers can appreciate the more forgiving eye placement that longer eyerelief provides.
I have the Talon 8X40s and the Lemur 7X35s for testing. Earth and Sky also comes in a Kestrel 10x50 and a Wolverine 7X50. Cutesy names aside, both the Talon and the Lemur are worth a look for the birder on a budget.
The housing is chunky, some might say clunky, with what appears to be heaver than average rubber armor. They are not light weight binoculars, coming in at several ounces over the Swift Ultralites for instance, but, once you get used to the odd body shape, they are very well balanced in the hands and quite easy to hold steady. The body shape needs more discussion. It follows a Nikon trend toward bringing the objectives closer together by placing the prisms, and objectives, below the eyepieces instead of alongside. Thumb channels are molded into the underside of the housing, and the front two fingers of your hand warp naturally around the barrels. My middle fingers just reach the focus comfortably, which pushes my first fingers back along the prism housings toward my eyes. Those with particularly small hands would be well advised to handle the Earth and Skys before buying them. The body shape does enforce a split finger grip that spreads the weight of the binoculars over a wide surface of the hands. This, along with slinging the weight of the objectives down low, substantially increases stability without inducing any extra strain. The more I handle them, the more I appreciate the design‹at least, that is, until I set them down. You don't set these glasses casually on their objective ends and walk away. Unless the surface is perfectly flat and firm, they won't stand that way for long. It's just as well, really, since setting binoculars down on their objectives, with all that valuable glass in potential contact with whatever might be sticking up there, was never a very good idea in the first place. The Nikons simply force you to lay the glasses down correctly. The only other drawback to the body design is that the binoculars hang around your neck with the eyepieces canted out and the inner edge of the objectives digging into your chest. You get used to it, and it does make the binoculars somewhat quicker on the draw, but it's definitely different. The click stops on the adjustable eyepiece are a nice touch and are actually close enough together to make them quite useful in setting and maintaining proper individual eyepiece focus.
Optically, the whole series features multi-coatings, BaK 4 prisms, and Nikon's typical attention to quality. Both the Talon and the Lemur produce a sharp, clear, bright, contrasty image. Resolution, while not quite up to the best of the $250 birding specific porros (see the chart under Image Quality in the Consumer Testing article), is quite good, certainly adequate for all but the most demanding birding. Close focus is adequate at something over 16 feet and so is field of view at 330 feet at 1000 yards for the Talon 8Xs and 375 feet at 1000 yards for the Lemur 7Xs.
So, where do we place the Earth and Sky series in the great realm of birding binoculars. Image quality is slightly better than the Bushnell NatureViews, but not up to the quality of, say, the Swift Ultralites. At least by surface appearance, construction seems to be somewhat more rugged than the NatureViews, certainly on a par with the Ultralites. The long eyerelief will definitely be attractive to eyeglass wearers who can afford to spend a bit more than the NatureViews cost, but can't spring for the Ultralites. They aren't quite inexpensive enough to unseat the NatureViews as the Reference Standard in entry level binoculars, and they aren't quite good enough to unseat the Swift Ultralites as the Best Buy in standard full-sized 7 and 8X binoculars. I guess that about says it. The Earth and Sky binoculars fit nicely into the gap between $100 entry level binoculars and the $200-$250 birding specific porros. They offer a reasonable increase in quality and performance at a reasonable increase in price. You get the feeling that someone at Nikon stayed up late a lot of nights looking for a hole in the market to fill, and with the Talon and Lemur (and their siblings) they have delivered pretty much right on target. Good binoculars at a good price point. They deserve to sell a lot of them.
