What about light transmission and optical coatings?

Light transmission describes the percentage of available light that passes through your binoculars. The amount of light can be increased with the use of anti-reflective coatings on binocular lenses. When an anti-reflective (AR) coating is applied to the glass surface of a binocular it increases the amount of light that reaches your eye.

The more complete and complex the coating scheme is, the brighter and sharper the binocular image will be. Multiple and complete coatings on a binocular allow more light to reach your eye, improving brightness and overall binocular performance.

Coated lenses are of basic quality, with a single-layer coating on some of the optical surfaces. Fully coated means that all air-to-glass surfaces are coated with a single-layer coating. Multicoated lenses have multi-layer coatings applied on some surfaces, and finally, fully multicoated lenses have multi-layer coatings applied to all of the surfaces, and provide the brightest image.

Originally published on January 25, 2011