Kenko Monoculars Real Scope 8x20 Near Focus

This is a very solid piece with good optics. I like the barrel of the focus ring, reminiscent of the Tokina lens barrels (I always found them very tactile and nice to hold). The optics are very nice for the price and I love the close focus option. We took this on a trip to Colorado and had a blast looking at many tiny plants, rock surfaces, insects, etc up close. Everyone must understand though how depth of field (DOF) works, the closer you are to something, the smaller window you have where it will be in focus. If it was made with a very tiny aperture to have a bigger DOF, you would have very little light let in and everything would be very dark. I see this as a common complaint against many near focus monoculars and it is not really fair to the manufacturers. They can not overcome the laws of physics, people need to understand this.Overall this has excellent build quality and very nice glass. Kenko/Tokina are well known for their excellent camera filters and lenses, so this is the quality I would expect from them. You also get a nice quality pouch for storage. I would definitely recommend this as I think it is very fairly priced with lots of quality and performance.

It's a great light weight and compact. Just what I wanted. Because it is so compact, it is a little hard to keep steady at times.The close-focus is fantastic and you can easily get a full flower view from a couple feet back.There are a couple things I do not like, which is why I gave it 4 stars not 5:- It needs more of a lens hood. If you are looking towards a light you can get some ghosting. Solution is to put your hand out there to shade it, but then you cannot steady it with two hands.- The lens caps fall off pretty easily. I just ditched them at home and keep it in the nice little case it comes with.- The case has a belt loop and an awkward long wrist loop that competes with the cord attached to the monocular. It cut off the wrist wrap and use an S beaner to attach it to my pack.