Swarovski binoculars, spotting scopes, and riflescopes are rated as being amon the world’s finest optics by discriminating hunters who demand the best. Now they have added an impressive high-quality laser rangefinder to round out their line-up.
Swarovski has been famous for their crystal glass and fashion jewellery ever since the firm was founded in 1895. Swarovski Optik, the division of greatest interest to hunters and shooters was established in 1948 in Absam, Austria near Innsbruck. For several decades I have hunted with rifles fitted with a number of Swarovski scopes and have formed the opinion that there’s none better.
Recently, Highland Sports kindly sent me a representative sample of the new Swarovski Laser Guide 8×30 laser rangefinder (LRF) for review. This is a compact instrument which measures 120mm long by 99mm wide. It has a a height of 46mm and weighs a mere 375 grams. The Laser Guide comes with a plastic holster that attaches to your belt and can be released by simply pressing a button. It will fit in a jacket pocket, and carried around your neck slung on a strap, you’d soon forget you had them while hiking in rough country. This rangefinder doubles as a fully functioning 8×30 monocular, doing away with the necessity for carrying a separate binocular in the field.
The numbers indicate an 8 power with 30mm objective lens and they have twist-up rubber-buffered eyepiece for use with or without glasses. Top performance can be attributed to the best quality optical glass, anti-reflection coatings on all air-to- glass surfaces and, of course, fine workmanship. Swarovski uses a highly-sophisticated multi-layer, broad band lens coating, applied through a vacuum evaporation process. Unlike some broad band coatings used by the competition, this has been tailored to the light wavelengths to which the eye is most sensitive. “Swarotop” is the registered trade name for this proprietary coating which gives Swarovski optics their brilliant contrasty images. The 8×30 monocular has a 3.75mm exit pupil. This size
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