What are the purpose of lens coatings?
All the optical components of binoculars (the objective lenses, oculars, and prisms) should be coated to minimize light loss and reflection problems inside the binocular. A poorly coated binocular can lose up to 50% of the light initially gathered through the objective lens, resulting in a poor quality image. By coating the optical components with a fine film of certain chemicals, light loss can be greatly decreased. The highest quality binoculars have multiple coatings on all the optical components. These are known as “fully multi-coated” binoculars. These binoculars have the least loss of light and the result is a higher quality image.
