| This Vixen 12 x 80mm binocular is a young person’s binocular. It has an extra-large 6.67mm exit pupil that may be larger than your dark-adapted pupil can dilate to if you’re in your late 30s or older. As we age, our eyes’ natural ability to dilate is reduced, so that our eyes may only be able to dilate to 5mm or 6mm as we approach 50 years. That means that some of this binocular’s large and bright exit pupil will fall on our iris, instead of entering our eye. That light will be wasted, reducing the effective light-gathering of this superb optical instrument to perhaps that of a 60mm or 70mm binocular. Why pay for light gathering you can’t use? But . . . if you want the brightest possible 80mm binocular images of low light subjects, this Vixen 12 x 80mm is the one to choose. At a mid-power 12x magnification, it combines a wide 4.1° field-of-view with huge rich field exit pupils nearly 7mm in diameter. You see faint details of the night skies and early morning and twilight nature in sharp, high contrast detail. Detail during the day will be sharp, due to the 80mm objectives, but buying this 80mm binocular for primarily daytime use is a waste of its light-gathering capacity. This should be considered strictly a night and evening binocular. The 12 x 80mm is sealed and nitrogen-purged to be totally waterproof and fogproof. You don’t have to worry about it fogging up internally in the middle of an evening of cold wintertime observing. You don’t have to worry about the binocular leaking if you get caught in a sudden shower while birding, and bringing your early morning observing to a sudden halt. You don’t have to worry about setting it down in dew-soaked grass or a puddle. It laughs at moisture. Simply pick it up, shake off the excess water, and start observing again. It has a pebble grain finish that provides a sure grip if it gets wet. A reinforcing bar runs from the prism housings to the objective lenses. In addition to providing structural rigidity that keeps the optics firmly collimated, it provides a sturdy support for the integrated photo tripod adapter. The tripod adapter can slide along the bar to balance the binocular on a tripod, no matter what part of the sky you are viewing. Once you find the correct balance, a large thumbscrew locks the adapter in place. Using the binocular on a tripod is virtually mandatory, as few people will have the wrist strength needed to hold this 5 pound 5 ounce binocular steady enough for extended hand-held use. This Vixen binocular uses high light transmission BaK-4 porro prisms and multicoated achromatic optics for bright wide angle images of faint deep space objects and early morning/late evening nature studies. It offers the equivalent light gathering capacity of two 3.1" refractor telescopes – one for each eye. Using two eyes to observe increases the resolution of details by as much as 40% over the resolution visible when using only one eye, as you do when looking through the single eyepiece of a telescope. The objective lenses are recessed, allowing the binocular body to act as a lens shade to improve contrast by blocking ambient light during the day, and slowing the formation of dew in the evening. A quarter turn of the soft twist-up eyecups extends them to shield your eyes from stray light. A quarter turn in the opposite direction retracts the eyecups to cushion eyeglass lenses for eyeglass use. The specified eye relief of 18mm is good, although the usable eye relief is somewhat shorter and the image will vignette slightly for most eyeglass wearers. Central focusing makes it easy for different observers to quickly adjust the binoculars to their individual eyesight. A diopter adjustment collar on one eyepiece lets you compensate for focus differences between your two eyes for the sharpest images. The 12 x 80mm offers admirable astronomical viewing on its own, as well as serving as a wide-field observing complement to the much narrower field of a telescope. With its very broad field of view and extra bright exit pupils, it excels at sweeping the dense star clouds of Sagittarius, searching out the Great Galaxy in Andromeda or the Pinwheel Galaxy in Triangulum, taking in open clusters like the Beehive and the Wild Duck, revealing large faint nebulas like the Veil and North American, and more. In the low light of dawn or dusk, this big and bright Vixen 12 x 80mm binocular will clearly reveal secrets of nature that smaller binoculars don’t have the light-gathering capacity to show.
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