Orion Mini Giant 15x63

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Orion Mini Giant 15x63
I own a pair of Orion 16x80mm, and wanted a bino that had better eye relief and would be easier to transport and set up, so I purchased the Orion 15x63 Mini Giant. While the 16x80 gives slightly brighter images, overall, I prefer the 15x63. The 15x63 has much better eye relief (19mm vs 16mm) - I can comfortably wear my eyeglasses and see almost the entire FOV. The 15x63 has much better edge sharpness (despite its slightly larger FOV: 3.7 deg vs 3.5.) Furthermore, the 15x63 seems to me to have better resolution: I can just about make out the rings on Saturn, but on the 16x80, that planet merely has an slightly oblong shape. (Perhaps my pair of Orion 16x80 binos need collimation.) The mini-giant also show a lot less color when viewing bright planets than the 16x80. I mostly use them to view star clusters, and the wide field and good optics are well suited for this.
The 15x63 are light enough to hand-hold, but my opinion is that any bino over 10 power needs to be mounted for astro viewing. I use a Blaho Stedi-Vu Jr from Oberworks on a Bogen 3011, and that works fine. A pleasure to use and worth the price ($199.) Recommended

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:9 Value:9
Weight: 1 (Unreliable Vote)
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=162939

Orion Mini Giant 15x63
Just recieved my 2nd pair of Orion 15x63 mini giant binoculars. My first pair was nicely collimated by the postal service. My follow up pair showed up only a week later thanks to Orion's good service and the excellent attention given to this matter buy the local dealer Island Eyepiece and Telescope. First impressions have been very good. Spot on collimation, nice and sharp across most of the field of view. No ghosting or flares and good contrast. Remarkably they are light enough for short hand holding sessions.Most of the time they will be mounted on a tripod. Extra power brings out more detail on objects for daytime and evening viewing. Recommended.

Stan Taylor Vancouver B.C.

Overall Rating: 9
Optics:8 Value:9
Weight: 10 (Trustworthy Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=403777

Orion Mini Giant 15x63
01/18/06 The Mini Giant is an excellent pair of binoculars. It’s right on the border of being almost too big. Anything larger and I would need a tripod to keep things comfortable and steady. The focuser is nice and smooth, and you can adjust the optics individually for a nice, sharp dual focus. Rubber eyecups are at the viewing end, keeping things nice and dark when viewing. I took it down to Panama City Florida over the summer. Along the dark shoreline in lawn chairs, me and by brother scanned over the Centaurus. The NGC 5139 Omega Centauri was quite a treat, because the southern Globular Cluster is an impossible object to view from Ohio. We saw a large fuzzy cotton ball with a bright center, quite a site, I just wished I had my XT10i to pull in more of its light. In Scorpius, the M4 Cat’s Eye G/C, NGC 6231 open cluster, and M7 Ptolemy’s O/C were all a nice site and easy to find. In Sagittarius, we easily scanned the M22 Sagittarius Cluster and M28 G/C. Off to the right, the M8 Lagoon, and M20 Trifid Nebulas were easily recognizable and glowed quit nicely. On the northern end of the constellation, the M17 Omega Nebula was a nice site as well. To the north of M17 in Serpens Cauda, the M16 Eagle Nebula glowed its way into the Milky Way night sky. All these sites were easily seen hopping around with the Mini Giant, while sitting comfortably in a lawn chair on the beach. Terrestrial views are excellent as well, 15x of pure sharpness and clarity. The Mini Giant is a might tool in my observing collection.

Overall Rating: 10
Optics:10 Value:10
Weight: 10 (Trustworthy Vote)
Date:
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Link to this vote: http://www.excelsis.com/1.0/displayvote.php?voteid=549641

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