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The New Nikon 7x42 EDG Sharp as the Name Implies! By Pete Dunne, CMBO Director
SYNOPSIS: A well conceived, well designed, well built roof prism binocular that takes its place among the ranks of the world’s best birding binoculars. If you are in the market for an Alpha birding binocular you would be remiss not to include this glass in your search. "One Must Be Honest About These Things." She said it. Not me. The she in this dialogue being the optics editor of one of the major birding magazines. The me in the dialogue was me. The we that me and she were part of consisted of a bunch of optic’s writers, magazine publishers, and high volume optics dealers plus the biggies out of Nikon’s Sports Optics Division. The place was Guatemala. The occasion was the rolling out of Nikon’s new EDG binocular. That’s right. It was a promotional tour. A junket. A cold blooded effort to sway influential hearts and minds so we would trumpet great things about the EDG binocular to the birding market. So you would go out and buy one. How’s that for honesty? Well, I’m sorry to tell you that Nikon wasted its money. Fact is pretty nearly everyone would have said great things about Nikon’s new flagship instrument anyway. No, it’s not perfect. Have you ever seen a binocular that was? Yes, it’s got some niggling but correctable pre-production bug-a-boos. Has there ever been a binocular that didn’t? But the plain, honest, on-the-ground truth is that Nikon’s got a real winner here. Four days of a-la-carte frijole and pollo isn’t enough to lie for. OK, so maybe Nikon picked up the bar tab, too. I’m a moderate drinker. It still wasn’t enough to buy my soul.
EDGing Back No matter how good your current top binocular is, manufacturers are always planning for the future and the future of the EDG began in the past and it began with the melding of two minds—Mike Freiberg and Cameron Cox, two of the young Turks of birding and Nikon’s “Birding Specialists.” The EDG is their glass but just as Mike and Cameron are the products of more than one hundred years of birding tradition, the EDG is the inheritor of more than a century of optical development. In the first half of the 20th Century, the frontier in optics was image quality. It started with 4x field glasses and culminated with high quality Zeiss and Bausch and Lomb porro prism instruments. In the second half of the 20th Century the challenge was putting optical excellence into a portable package that knit to the human frame. It started with the Hensoldt inspired roof prism revolution and culminated with the Swarovski 8.5x42 EL. Now, in birding’s second Century, the challenge is “user friendliness”–i.e. putting optical excellence into an ergonomic package that is as facile, functionally forgiving, and avocationally calibrated. In other words, a binocular that’s just plain easy to use and it makes birding fun. That pretty much defines the EDG. Nikon isn’t the first company to enlist the council of birders to get their binoculars right. Humphrey Swift did it in the 50s with his Audubon. Bushnell did it in the 80s with their Elite. Swarovski did it in 2000 with their EL. No, Nikon wasn’t first. But they are, in AD 2008, the latest. I got my 7x42s EDG three days before the trip. I immediately went to the optics case here at the Center for Research and Education and pulled out a 7x42 Zeiss FL and a 7x42 Leica Ultravid HD–two of my favorite binoculars of all time. I ran all three through our standard test. Testing for: Ergonomics, Weight, Focusing, Resolution, Field of View, Close Focus, Depth of Field, Field Quality, Brightness, and Color Bias. All three instruments scored comparably high. None were less than good-to-excellent in any application. All were within quibbling distance of each other. The Nikon showed an ever so slight reddish color bias. The Leica had a marginally smaller field of view for both eyeglass and non-eyeglass wearers. Eh. Quibbling distance. They are all great performing instruments. Top of the glass pyramid. One of the things Nikon strove mightily to build into this glass was superior depth of field. Their LX line didn’t have it and it cost them market share. Depth of field is an interesting quality–something that is at once both fixed and fluid. Fixed because magnification is the greatest determinant. Depth of Field decreases as power increases. That’s one of the reasons 10x are less user friendly than 7x or 8x binoculars. But depth of field can also be influenced by the optical quality, field quality, and especially brightness. If a company tells the engineers, “make a binocular as sharp as you possibly can”, they say, in the same mathematical breath, “weigh the optical performance toward the center.” If they tell the engineers “make it uniformly sharp across the field”, they are as good as saying, “sacrifice a bit of resolution at the center.” It’s only physics, boys and girls. You can only tweak it so many ways. You give to Peter, you steal from Paul. BUT the very interesting thing about Depth of Field in binoculars is that it is not wholly a function of the binocular. It is a function of the optical team–that is YOU and THE GLASS. Because while the physical limits of a binocular are fixed, the human eye is not. Your pupil adjusts. Constricts in bright light; opens in dim. Just like a camera lens! If you are a photographer, you know that when your aperture is wide open your photo has a shallow depth of field (so only the subject, or part of the subject, is in focus). When the aperture is narrow, you increase depth of field (so more of the world remains in focus). It stands to reason that a binocular that is very bright will result in the user’s pupil constricting, thus increasing depth of field. And the Nikon EDG is very bright. It does have a very commendable depth of field. About on par with the Leica and not quite as good as the Zeiss. But, once again, they’re all within quibbling distance. Jungle Fever The EDG did very well in the cloud forests of Guatemala–a bird rich country whose popularity among birders is beginning to wax. From White-collared Swifts at the limit of conjecture to Barred Antshrikes in the shadows, the glass did great. Or would have except for a functional, but very fixable, flaw in the focus wheel design. The snap down cover which conceals the individual eye adjustment ring had a tendency to snap up, causing birders to literally spin their wheels (and to no effect) when trying to focus. Everybody noticed it. Nikon already new about it. Assume the problem will be fixed before the instrument goes into full production (but check to make sure that the focus wheel on the instrument you buy doesn’t lift up easily before you walk out of the store). My instrument was also vexed by eyecups that retracted down into the barrel as I walked. I’m a non-eyeglass wearer in the field and wear my binoculars bandolier fashion where they rub or press against my lower ribs. Despite the click stops on the eyecups, the cups had a tendency to slip out of their fully extended mode. On multiple occasions, while bringing the instrument to my eyes, I discovered that one cup was shorter than the other. Efforts to get on target were impeded until I could figure out the problem and reposition the cups. The eye relief is a whopping 22 mm–and while eyeglass wearers with deep set eyes will appreciate this, those who need only 14 to 16 mm (which is most eyeglass wearers) may find this too much. For some reason, the adjustable click stops don’t click in until the cups are extended to 11 mm (mid-point). A couple of clicks down at the low end of the range (at about 4 mm and 6 mm) would be optimal for most eyeglass wearers. The neck strap is double-adjustable and commendably long–long enough for us bandolier birders. I just wish that companies would stop putting non-skid rubber on the inside of the neck band portion of the strap. The functionality of the bandolier method is contingent on the strap sliding smoothly, not catching on your clothing as the glass is slid/lifted into position. It’s why I continue to put the old Zeiss Classic nylon strap on every instrument I own (which is getting harder to do since Zeiss stopped making these wonderful, simple, utilitarian neck straps over a decade ago). I believe that these are the niggling concerns that my colleague was referring to when she said: “One must be honest about these things.” OK. There they are. Honestly addressed. But anyone who can make a binocular as fundamentally fine as the EDG can certainly fix a glitch or two. To assume any less would be less than honest. But is it Rugged? Nikon has always put its accent on optical excellence. Bomb proofing their binoculars is not something that the people in marketing have hitherto demanded and nothing the guys down in R&D gave concerted thought to. A premium Nikon will take more than the usual amount of abuse birders dish out. But they aren’t built like a Steiner (which could probably deflect a bullet) nor are they built like a Leica (which might not stop a bullet, but could take the hit and continue to function). On the last day of the Guatemala trip I took the glass on a walk. In a downpour. I adjusted my complimentary Nikon EDG jacket to allow the water that was not leaking through the fabric to trickle neatly into the eyecups–which filled right up to the 22 mm point before needing emptying and refilling. After about two hours of this nominal abuse, the barrels remained fog free–and stayed fog free despite then being left overnight in a hotel room whose air conditioning chilled the air to a temperature better suited to aging beef than sustaining life. But is it rugged? OK. I’ll be honest. I’m afraid to find out. I’m afraid.... Because I really, really like this glass. It is so elegant, so well crafted, and just so handsome that I’m reluctant to abuse them or take a chance of breaking them because.... Because they are so hard to come by if I knock these things out of alignment I’ll bet it will take forever before Nikon gives me another pair. Oh the agony. Oh the indecision. Oh the great, moral tug of war between self indulgence and meeting the needs of our optics buying constituency. Oh.... All right. Thunk, Crash and Yee Haw in Real Time It’s about three and a half feet from the top of my desk (where the EDG sits) to the floor of my office (where I file all my important documents) and.... Oops! A perfect one and a half onto the floor belly flop. Landed with a solid thunk. Shake, shake, shake...no, nothing loose. Alignment? Looks smack on! Easy test. Cake walk for a premium binocular. Lets move on. It’s about a ten foot throw to the plastic recycling barrel in my office (that was just emptied of all the paper I don’t file on the floor). If I miss the bucket and hit the wall, well.... Drat! You’ll never believe it. On my first attempt, the strap caught around the door handle and the binocular smacked the door instead of the bottom of the barrel. Not a fair test! Requires a second heat. Ah. Much better on the second try. Swish. Make that crash. (Scared the bejeebers out of Deb Shaw in the next office who admonished me to warn her when a binocular test was in progress). Instrument still fine. Alignment perfect. OK. Now the big test. Excuse me while I step outside.... (Five minutes later) Not my best throw (I blame the pre-frontal headwind). Just under 100 feet. Binoculars landed on baked, dry soil on the elevated leach field, with a sparse cover of weeds–which the glass neatly avoided. Judging by the deposition of dirt on the lenses I’d say it landed ocular first then tumbled onto it’s belly. Results? No problem. Alignment fine. Mechanical function fine. I’d say it’s a pretty tough glass. The good news is I won’t have to ask Nikon for another. The bad news is it might be a while before you get a chance to abuse, or even use, an EDG yourself. They were supposed to be in our hands in June. My guess is they are holding them back until they address those little pre-production concerns mentioned in this review. The instrument is being offered in a 7x, 8x and 10x42 as well as, a 10x32 and an 8x32 (of which there seems to be only one in the world but it is, nevertheless, very, very, very sweet!). We expect the member price to be about $1,800 for the 42 mm models, and the arrival of first instruments in...well...you’ll know as soon as we do. Until then, if you want to see an EDG, stop by CRE and ask Brian Moscatello, Sales Manager, for a sneak peek. He’s got mine. Dirt and all.
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