Pete,

Pete Rasmussen wrote:

The $38.88 sale priced Whitetail 10x50 I also announced is probably an
even better buy than this BSA due long 19mm eye relief and indicated
better edge sharpness. Would be swell if someone getting some in
would report to us soon.

I did get a pair of the Whitetail 10x50 and did a quick daytime check of
them. Unfortunately, the night before my wife was to take them to the
lucky young recipient of these binos (one of her students) I saw nothing
but clouds when I went outside to test them on the night sky. So I can
only say a little about their daytime use.

I compared the Whitetail with Bushnell Explorer 10x50 that I acquired in
the 1970s. These were Bushnell's top of the line at a time when their
good stuff was highly regarded. The center of the field might have been
a tad sharper in the Bushnell and the field was clearly wider in the
Bushnell. The field of the Whitetail stayed sharp at least 2/3 of the
way to the edge of the field, however, in contrast to the Bushnell where
the sharpness seemed to suffer with almost any deviation from the
center. Edge performance was quite acceptable.

Eye relief was comfortable even with glasses (with the rubber eye cups
folded down). There was a slight problem with blackout (or kidney bean)
but only just a bit. This might be at least partly due to my lack of
experience observing with glasses on (I usually wear contact lenses).

Focus was easy to achieve although there are separate focus mechanisms
for each eyepiece and no center focus, which I dislike intensely (but
that's just my personal preference). Maybe this isn't a problem for
astronomy since you stay focused at infinity but I wouldn't know since I
won't buy binos with that arrangement.

A quick look at solar reflections from the front lenses indicated the
internal surfaces were not coated. I'm no expert on coatings, though.
Coatings were perfectly uniform with no blemishes. Color was a light
purple, I think. I was able to see a thin arc of reflected light --
looked like the edge of a lens element -- when looking close to the Sun
but this required looking past the edge of the field so it didn't
represent a problem. I noticed no other reflections when using them.
Baffling looked good to me and the interior of the tubes were lightly
grooved and well blackened.

Color was good but I didn't check this out very carefully. Color
correction was excellent during the day. I wanted to check this at
night, though, and didn't do an extensive examination of this.

Exit pupils were sharp and round. Collimation was good but I would have
preferred to test this on a star. They were comfortable and easy to
handle.

All in all a great bargain. Are they good for astronomy? I hope
someone else gets a chance to test them out at night.sigh But I
suspect they'll be very good performers, especially considering the
bargain price.

Mike Simmons