Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Optics Best vintage (1960-70 era) binoculars?

This is promted by Ringman's "agree or not" post. Back in the 60s when I started hunting I didn't have any optics mentors. I really don't remember my Dad or his buddies ever using binoculars when we deer hunted. So I was on my own when I started using bins in the mid 70s, and all I remember was cheap Tascos and Bushnells in our local sporting goods stores, and high end Leitz Trinovids in Eddie Bauer catalogs. Since joining this forum I occasionally read about B&L Zephyrs and such.

For those of you old timers, or others that know and appreciate older optics, what was the state of the art back then? If a Leitz Trinovid was out of consideration for the average Joe, what was considered the optical/price equivalent to a Vortex Viper, Promaster ED or Pentax DCF?

John

Eremicus has the best advise of all things vintage............<g>

I bought a 7x35 B&L Zephyr for $40.00 last year at a gun show. They are in great shape. Their equlivant in todays dollars are the $1800.00 binocs. They cost like $235.00 in 1967 $.

The inflation calculator I googled put the 2008 equivalent of $235.00 at $1,507.71. You could by a 8x42 Ultravid BR brand new from Doug today for that price and get change back. I have to assume the modern fully coated Ultravid would beat a brand new Zephyr head to head? You can also still find nib 8x32 or 10x42 Nikon SEs for way less than a grand ($500-$700), that would probably more apples to apples with the Zephyr. Are you saying they are opticaly equal to $1,800 bins?

I'm keeping my eye out for a clean Zephyr, $40.00 is a killer deal. Do you think the B&L Zephyr was the paramount American binocular of all time? What was the best $75.00-$100.00 bino in 1967? That would be more equal in price to the Vortex of today.
John

In 1960 whatever the Zephyr was IT for the US. Now optics technology, coatings, etc. have advanced so the current optics are better. If you will check, O'Conner carried a pair of 9x35's and compared them to the European glass of the era. Wayne von Zowell shopped yard sales for years to find them.

I bought a pair of $100.00 Bushnell 7x35 because I couldn't afford the Zephyr's as a high school student. The Bushnells are still in use after 1 factory repair of a lens that came adrift. I used them daily for years as a wildlife researcher here and abroad and seasonally for hunting.

In fact my only modern binoc./glass is a Lupy 12-40x60 HD spotter. I don't feel handicapped.

Quality wears well.

I bought a 9x35 Zephyr at an estate sale to see what all the fuss was about and sold it on fleabay for more than expected. It was clearly behind my 7x42 Swarovski Habicht porros and not quite as good as the 8.5x45 Weaer Grand Slam bino I also have since sold. Plus, the Zephyr isn't waterproof. And yes, the Zephyr didn't have any lens scratches, was still in alignment, had never been abused and was in excellent condition when sold. The Zephyr may have been great in its day but it is easy to surpass the optics today at far less cost when adjusting for inflation. Ward

One of the really classic good binoculars, the Swift Audubon 8.5x44, first showed up during that era. On a couple of occasions, I nearly bought one in the days when I was still in college. But they were ungodly heavy and had a reputation for fogging internally at the slightest provocation. Their optics were the best I remember of the binoculars of that era. I also liked the B&L Zephyrs. One of the college professors I took a lot of courses from had a 7x35 and some of the other people I was around had them too. It has been years since I looked at a Zephyr.

I remember having the wants for a Leitz Trinovid 7x35, not necessarily because it had terrific optics, but because it had good enough optics, was reasonably compact, and was reliably durable. The Leitz/Leica and Zeiss didn't really take the optics to the top end in roofs until phase correction coatings showed up about 1988 or thereabouts. Zeiss still made good porros then, but they were way too expensive for me then. I remember that, but not how much they cost.

I'd put the optics of the Swift Eaglet 7x36 I have ahead of the Leitz Trinovid (except for the fov). I think a lot of the current crop of $4-500 binoculars are very close to the Zeiss Classics and trhe first Leica Trinovids. The Lecia Trinovid 8x32 was the first time I ever went "OK dude you better save up for one of these".

I'm still using a 9x35 Nikon bought in a PX in Korea in 1962-63. I paid $39.95, I think, about $280 now. I'm satisfied.

Bruce

I bought new 9x35 Zephyrs in the early '70's used them hard and they are still great optics. As I remember I paid around $240 for them, which was a heck of a lot of money for a kid back then to scrape together. Yes there are better optics today, but for spotting game, IMO the Zephyrs will still hold their own.

From what I remember,B&L,and Leitz Trinovids.I did not own a Zeiss till 1980.

I have a set of B&L Zephyr 6X from the 60s with great optics. I like them very much.

[quote=docbill]I bought a pair of $100.00 Bushnell 7x35 /quote]

Doc,

Were your Bushnells the 7x35 Customs. That is what I have. Good bins "fully coated optics".

They were a bit cumbersome then being 7.1" wide. I did a lot of deer driving then.

Since that time I've got to appreciate them more, as I have change my hunting technique since then.

I don't believe they are water-proof. Do you know how water resistant they are?


Thanks,

S<

I am convinced that the state of the art binocular back in 1958 was the B&L Zephur. That's when I started using one, a 9X35.
By the 1970's,I was hanging out with a guy that was far and away the best throphy mule deer hunter I'd ever met. His secret was his Zeiss 10X40's. He was, I was to discover, a master in the art of glassing. That menas he used his bin to find game, not to get a better look at something he'd already seen.
When I revealed my plans to acquire these then $800-$900 binoculars, he surprised me by telling me that I already had a binocular just as good. A few years later, I recall, I did acquire a Classic, the big 8X56. Playing with them in the abandon orchard that extended some 400 yds into the next neighborhood later that day, I realized that while they were better after the sun went down, but they really didn't show me anything more than the old Zephur could. I took them back for a refund. In recent years, I've had a chance to try both the popular 10X40 and the 7X42 Classics against the Zephur. Neither is any better based on my casual comparision. Perhaps stacking them would reveal a very small difference. I don't know.
When I bought my first Leica in about 2001, I immediately compared it to my old Zephur, which I still have BTW. Stacking them, the new Leica, one of the last of the BA's was easily better.
In all fairness to the Zeiss Classic, they are a far tougher and basically pretty waterproof binocular. The Zephur is not near a tough and is not at all waterproof.
Lately, in the last few years, I've heard that the Pentax DCF WP's and the SP's are better than the old Zeiss Classics. What I can tell you is that the SP's definately are better than my Zephurs.
So that is my take on it. The Zephur was the hot binocular in the late 50's and probably the 60's. But when Zeiss improved the Classics, they became the binocular to have. The above mentioned throphy mule deer hunter told me once that a friend had just come from a very exclusive desert sheep hunting camp in Baja California. When his friend looked at the binoculars these very well off hunters had, he discovered that every one of them had a 10X40 Zeiss Classic. E

Yes my Bushnell's are the Classic. They are not waterproof but that said I don't put them in a position to fog. I suspect the Zephyrs while more water resistant are not "waterproof" enough to soak in a bucket.

I have had thoughts of getting one of the new Zeiss models in 10x40.

I also bought a pair of Russian 20x60's and rigged a quickly removable tripod mount to use in place of a spotting scope for Texas trophy deer evaluation from a truck/blind. Beats a spotting scope cold because of the binocular vision.

I have a Swaroski 2.5-10x42 PH but think that Zeiss makes better binocs.

The old Rochester made B&L's Zephers are THE classic American made binocular as far as I am concerned. In the 1950's when Zeiss cost $70 the B&L Zephers cost more than twice as much and cost as much as a Win M-70 Supergrade!
During the 60's and 70's Bushnell made a Rangemaster model that the military spotters in Vietnam used. It seemed to be a slight bit better than the Bushnell Custom's - which were very good binocs.
In 1969 I purchased a set of 7x35 Pentax porro prism binocs in Hong Kong that were also very good. I still have a set of 7x35 Kowa porro prism binocs of the same era that are very good as well.
In small bino's the B&L custom compacts were great. I compared my 6x24's against three different Zeiss and Leica compacts and the B&L's had better resolution and were brighter. They were upgraded to B&L compacts and made waterproof and are still great for small binoculars.

Ditto on the B&L Custom Compacts.

I have a 7x35 Nikon porro-prism from the late 1970's that is incredible. I used it as my main "big glass" for several years, and then my wife did the same for most of the 80's, and it is still in very good shape and incredibly bright and sharp.

Dad purchased a pair of 10x40 Carl Zeiss "aus Jena" binoculars in the early 1980's that were made in the Zeiss plant in Jena, East Germany. They are not water or fogproof, but the glass in them is amazing, they are still the best pair of binocs that either of us own.

Okay, so it was mid-1980's, my mistake. Here are the binocs - http://www.holgermerlitz.de/czj_85/page11.jpg

I picked up a pair of 8x50 B&L's at a gun show about 5 years ago, which appeared to have never been handled at all for $25.00. They are by far the best most comfortable glass to use for extended times you will ever find. My dad had a pair identical to them that he bought in about 1970. At the time they were the cream of the crop for optics. His pair has been thru hell and back thanks to me and my brothers. I prefer both pairs to my zeiss glass.

Phi,
What I read on the specs, is that they are "water resistant" not water proof. Am I wrong?

Agree with you on the 6x24's. Carried them for many days on Northeast deer hunts. When it started to rain, I just stuffed them under my rain gear. Never fogged on me or on my son's pair.