- Banned
- #1
I was extremely blessed to win the Maven bino's from the Cold Bow Challenge this year! Shout out to Robbie and the entire Rokslide staff for putting it on, and a thank you to Eric Whiting from Maven for getting the bino's to me incredibly quickly. I went with the 12x50's because I'd been wanting to try out some 12x's for a while. I received them in mail on the 11th and, it being Spring bear season here in MT I've had the chance to put some serious time behind them on evening hunts as well as the last 2 weekend trips and figured the least I could do would be to give you guys my thoughts on them.
First off, a disclaimer: my background up until this last year when I moved to Montana was hunting WT's out of a treestand in MN and hunting archery elk out west once a year so I've gotten by with a set of Bushnell 10x42s for a LONG time. Scouting trips last summer here in MT with those bino's had me looking at different ways to upgrade and back in April I purchased my very first tripod from Doug at Cameraland (smoking deal on a Sirui A-1205!) and then I won the CBC. Bottom line: I have never spent any serious time behind a pair of optics until this bear season and don't have much of a frame of reference for these bino's but I'm going to give you my thoughts. Spoiler alert - I like them very much!
With that out of the way, here are my thoughts. As soon as I got them out of the box I was curious to see how well they worked just holding in the hand. At 12x power they are more sensitive to any unsteadiness but really not very much which was pretty much what I expected. I can pull them out of my bino harness and quickly scan a nearby hillside and pick out movement and animals pretty easily and was never wishing I had brought my 10x pair with me.
The real test was putting these on my tripod and spending hours behind them. As I stated above I've been out hunting 2-3 nights per week and have spent the last two weekends, including a 4-day Memorial Day weekend hunting trip behind them. Evening hunts were generally from 5 PM to 9:30 PM or so. Up here in NW MT we have LONG periods of twilight so I was glassing until the end of legal shooting light most evenings, but not until dark which is around 10 PM up here this time of year. My weekend hunts I'm usually finding a hillside that looks promising and spending anywhere from 6-12 hours behind the glass.
Brightness: I could tell the 50mm lenses on these things was pulling in significantly more light than my 10x42 bushnells so I found the brightness to be more than enough for me until the end of legal shooting light. In fact, end of shooting light often snuck up on me because I could see almost as well at 9 PM as I could at 6 PM. I did find that as it got darker I had to adjust the focus a bit more to get a clearer image (more on that later) but once in proper focus I could still see really well at very long ranges. I was glassing up groups of deer in ag-fields over 3 miles away and could still count the number of deer up until the end of legal shooting light.
Focus: Man, this was amazing to me! On my bushnells I am playing with the focus a LOT when I'm looking at stuff in order to get a better depth of field. On these Maven's I found that I could see stuff relatively close and things very far away without touching the focus knob much, if at all. My hunting partner has a set of Vortex Diamondback 12x50's and we did some back-to-back testing and he also commented on how little he had to adjust the focus on them compared to his 12x's. As stated above, as it got darker I did have to adjust a focus a bit to keep a clear picture, but for the majority of my glassing sessions I hardly touched the focus at all!
Edge to edge clarity: This is an area where it's harder for me to know what is good or not, but I spent some time scanning my eyes around the entire area I was glassing with the tripod locked down. I can't be very accurate with this but I would say that during that majority of the day the image was crystal clear for about 80-85% of the picture, with the outermost 15-20% being a bit less clear regardless of adjustments to the focus. Please take those percentages with a HUGE grain of salt as I am just estimating this based on what I could see with my eye...it's not like I was actually measuring the area of in focus vs. out of focus and making a calculation. As things got darker the area that would be in focus shrunk a bit, but not noticeably so unless I was specifically looking for it. Bottom line, I didn't find this to be an issue at all and, since I don't have much to compare it to, I don't know if this is good or not.
Eye relief: Again, this was an area that I was really impressed by, at least when comparing these to my buddy's Diamondback 12x50's (and again, my hunting partner commented on the same thing). Once I had the distance between the eye cups set properly, as I was scanning up/down and side-to-side I could see just fine without the edges blacking much at all. I moved my head with the bino's and the picture was always there for me with the black creeping in only slightly from time to time. This was not the case with the Diamondbacks. As I was scanning with the Vortex bino's the edges were constantly blacking out on me and I found my head position was extremely critical throughout the entire time I spend behind that glass. This got really old really quickly so I was always happy to get back behind the Maven's. This feature alone has my buddy looking at a pair of Maven's as I write this!
Construction: These bino's feel very good in the hand and the fit and finish is really great compared to my Bushnell's and my buddy's Diamondbacks. They feel substantial and seem like they will hold up well over time, but I obviously can't comment on that to much at this point. I had them out through a couple of rain showers and had no issues with fogging or anything like that which was to be expected as far as I'm concerned.
BONUS - Thoughts on the Sirui A-1205 Carbon Fiber Tripod. My goodness, I LOVE this thing! If you are looking for your first tripod I don't really see how you could do much better from a cost-quality perspective. After rebate it basically cost me 150 bucks from Cameraland (Doug gave me the sale price before it actually went on sale!) for a tripod that weighs under 3 pounds WITH a head. The head it came with is a ball head with a dedicated pan feature and it works GREAT for scanning hillsides. Again, I don't have much to compare this to but I was loving life with this setup. The tripod is very compact when not in use, and extends up high enough that I could glass standing up by crouching over just a little bit (I'm 6'2"). With an angled spotter you could glass very comfortably standing up with this setup.
Here are a couple of pics, first of my typical setup when glassing, and second an example of the types of stuff I was looking at. If you have any questions on the bino's or the tripod or anything else I would be happy to answer them so feel free to hit me up!
First off, a disclaimer: my background up until this last year when I moved to Montana was hunting WT's out of a treestand in MN and hunting archery elk out west once a year so I've gotten by with a set of Bushnell 10x42s for a LONG time. Scouting trips last summer here in MT with those bino's had me looking at different ways to upgrade and back in April I purchased my very first tripod from Doug at Cameraland (smoking deal on a Sirui A-1205!) and then I won the CBC. Bottom line: I have never spent any serious time behind a pair of optics until this bear season and don't have much of a frame of reference for these bino's but I'm going to give you my thoughts. Spoiler alert - I like them very much!
With that out of the way, here are my thoughts. As soon as I got them out of the box I was curious to see how well they worked just holding in the hand. At 12x power they are more sensitive to any unsteadiness but really not very much which was pretty much what I expected. I can pull them out of my bino harness and quickly scan a nearby hillside and pick out movement and animals pretty easily and was never wishing I had brought my 10x pair with me.
The real test was putting these on my tripod and spending hours behind them. As I stated above I've been out hunting 2-3 nights per week and have spent the last two weekends, including a 4-day Memorial Day weekend hunting trip behind them. Evening hunts were generally from 5 PM to 9:30 PM or so. Up here in NW MT we have LONG periods of twilight so I was glassing until the end of legal shooting light most evenings, but not until dark which is around 10 PM up here this time of year. My weekend hunts I'm usually finding a hillside that looks promising and spending anywhere from 6-12 hours behind the glass.
Brightness: I could tell the 50mm lenses on these things was pulling in significantly more light than my 10x42 bushnells so I found the brightness to be more than enough for me until the end of legal shooting light. In fact, end of shooting light often snuck up on me because I could see almost as well at 9 PM as I could at 6 PM. I did find that as it got darker I had to adjust the focus a bit more to get a clearer image (more on that later) but once in proper focus I could still see really well at very long ranges. I was glassing up groups of deer in ag-fields over 3 miles away and could still count the number of deer up until the end of legal shooting light.
Focus: Man, this was amazing to me! On my bushnells I am playing with the focus a LOT when I'm looking at stuff in order to get a better depth of field. On these Maven's I found that I could see stuff relatively close and things very far away without touching the focus knob much, if at all. My hunting partner has a set of Vortex Diamondback 12x50's and we did some back-to-back testing and he also commented on how little he had to adjust the focus on them compared to his 12x's. As stated above, as it got darker I did have to adjust a focus a bit to keep a clear picture, but for the majority of my glassing sessions I hardly touched the focus at all!
Edge to edge clarity: This is an area where it's harder for me to know what is good or not, but I spent some time scanning my eyes around the entire area I was glassing with the tripod locked down. I can't be very accurate with this but I would say that during that majority of the day the image was crystal clear for about 80-85% of the picture, with the outermost 15-20% being a bit less clear regardless of adjustments to the focus. Please take those percentages with a HUGE grain of salt as I am just estimating this based on what I could see with my eye...it's not like I was actually measuring the area of in focus vs. out of focus and making a calculation. As things got darker the area that would be in focus shrunk a bit, but not noticeably so unless I was specifically looking for it. Bottom line, I didn't find this to be an issue at all and, since I don't have much to compare it to, I don't know if this is good or not.
Eye relief: Again, this was an area that I was really impressed by, at least when comparing these to my buddy's Diamondback 12x50's (and again, my hunting partner commented on the same thing). Once I had the distance between the eye cups set properly, as I was scanning up/down and side-to-side I could see just fine without the edges blacking much at all. I moved my head with the bino's and the picture was always there for me with the black creeping in only slightly from time to time. This was not the case with the Diamondbacks. As I was scanning with the Vortex bino's the edges were constantly blacking out on me and I found my head position was extremely critical throughout the entire time I spend behind that glass. This got really old really quickly so I was always happy to get back behind the Maven's. This feature alone has my buddy looking at a pair of Maven's as I write this!
Construction: These bino's feel very good in the hand and the fit and finish is really great compared to my Bushnell's and my buddy's Diamondbacks. They feel substantial and seem like they will hold up well over time, but I obviously can't comment on that to much at this point. I had them out through a couple of rain showers and had no issues with fogging or anything like that which was to be expected as far as I'm concerned.
BONUS - Thoughts on the Sirui A-1205 Carbon Fiber Tripod. My goodness, I LOVE this thing! If you are looking for your first tripod I don't really see how you could do much better from a cost-quality perspective. After rebate it basically cost me 150 bucks from Cameraland (Doug gave me the sale price before it actually went on sale!) for a tripod that weighs under 3 pounds WITH a head. The head it came with is a ball head with a dedicated pan feature and it works GREAT for scanning hillsides. Again, I don't have much to compare this to but I was loving life with this setup. The tripod is very compact when not in use, and extends up high enough that I could glass standing up by crouching over just a little bit (I'm 6'2"). With an angled spotter you could glass very comfortably standing up with this setup.
Here are a couple of pics, first of my typical setup when glassing, and second an example of the types of stuff I was looking at. If you have any questions on the bino's or the tripod or anything else I would be happy to answer them so feel free to hit me up!
