Kowa Genesis XD33 8x33 Binoculars

Understanding Prominar XD glass: The Genesis Series incorporates Kowa’s “PROMINAR XD” lenses. To attain the highest point of binocular performance, a total of 4 XD lenses (2 sets of 2 lenses) are utilized in the objective end of the binoculars. What do these XD lenses do? Well when light passes through a prism, it causes a dispersion (spreading out) of the colors. XD glass reduces this dispersion of chromatic (color) aberration and therefore creates a much sharper image with more accurate color fidelity so you can see the important details in your target. However, this type of glass is much more expensive to manufacture and is thus found in higher end optics. This is the one of the reasons for the Genesis series being at the top of Kowa’s product line.

Schmidt-Pechan Prism & Coatings Many binoculars in the middle-upper range feature BaK-4 prisms made of superior glass to produce clearer images, but Kowa has gone one step further and incoroporated the Schmidt-Pechan prism design that have both BaK4 and SK15 prisms. This prism design is more compact, but has a few drawbacks. One of which that the two prisms are separated by an air-gap and one surface of the Pechan prism does not provide total reflection. To get around this Kowa have added their own highly reflective multi-coating they call the C3 coating that gives a reflectance of 99% or more across the entire visible spectrum. On top of this Kowa uses a phase-corrective coating on the Schmidt prism that prevents the loss of contrast and resolution so that colors appear much more accurate. It is a feature that is only found on high end roof prism binoculars.