Surveyor
Friday 14th March 2008, 20:10
I have, for a while, been actively looking for someone to do NIST or, preferably, ISO standard tests such as % Transmittance and wave front error tests.
I have found a couple but one is in Europe and shipping costs and customs are prohibitive plus 350 Euro/unit. There is one that has been going to give me a price now for some 3 months but the last I heard, they were still testing there software and this is the best known in Binocular circles. Also one of the BF members told me to get in touch with Bushnell. I have been bouncing emails and phone calls but they do not seem interested in testing for individuals or other brands because of liability. If there are liability issues to testing for or by individuals, maybe someone could fill me in. To me, this seems to be a logical extension of doing a review. It seems a lot harder to get this type of information than it should. BTW, this only came up with Bushnell. It was not mentioned by Orb, Gamma Scientific, Nikon or Leica or anyone else I contacted.
I have found a lab willing to give it a try at a moderate charge and who seem willing to work with a group if the volume is sufficient. Their charge to me (I was the guinea pig and neither of us knew how to go about this) was $450 setup fee and $150/hr. labor. The quoted fees were less for wave front testing but I had nothing to compare against so I will try that later.
I had four binoculars that I was not using as much these days since I have upgraded or have duplicates so I decided to retire them and have them tested to use as reference sets. These were a Leica 8x32 BA, Leica 8x20 Ultravid, Swarovski 8x20B and a Nikon 8x20 LXL.
Overlaying their curves with my own and some commercial test reports that I have on file; their correlation seemed to be excellent. They claim to be NIST traceable. The returned reports showed an “Illuminate A” xy value and color temperature, but were the same for all reports. I contacted them and asked if they could be recomputed for D65 illuminate and they did, but the results do not appear as they should to me. This very likely is my fault since I may not have specified the desired parameters and the raw data may have needed to be reacquired. I know that is the case with my $2 setup. My charge for the initial testing of 4 units was $975 or about $250/unit with shipping (they only measured the left tube). The desired report format and specifications need to be worked out.
This may be a tad high for routine work but if some binoholics wanted to get together and split the setup fee and combine shipping it may be a viable option.
Orb Optronix also indicated if there was enough interest out there, they may be able to come up with a set fee once they had some idea of volume and desired specifications for a standard report.
For those interested, please let me know. The link is http://www.orboptronix.com/services_opticaltest.html
If any out there have similar or better sources of testing, I would like that information also. I would like to build a list. It would be nice if some of you who visit other forums would pass this along.
The folks at Orb have no problem with me posting and attributing to them, matter of fact, they really encouraged it.
Ron
I have found a couple but one is in Europe and shipping costs and customs are prohibitive plus 350 Euro/unit. There is one that has been going to give me a price now for some 3 months but the last I heard, they were still testing there software and this is the best known in Binocular circles. Also one of the BF members told me to get in touch with Bushnell. I have been bouncing emails and phone calls but they do not seem interested in testing for individuals or other brands because of liability. If there are liability issues to testing for or by individuals, maybe someone could fill me in. To me, this seems to be a logical extension of doing a review. It seems a lot harder to get this type of information than it should. BTW, this only came up with Bushnell. It was not mentioned by Orb, Gamma Scientific, Nikon or Leica or anyone else I contacted.
I have found a lab willing to give it a try at a moderate charge and who seem willing to work with a group if the volume is sufficient. Their charge to me (I was the guinea pig and neither of us knew how to go about this) was $450 setup fee and $150/hr. labor. The quoted fees were less for wave front testing but I had nothing to compare against so I will try that later.
I had four binoculars that I was not using as much these days since I have upgraded or have duplicates so I decided to retire them and have them tested to use as reference sets. These were a Leica 8x32 BA, Leica 8x20 Ultravid, Swarovski 8x20B and a Nikon 8x20 LXL.
Overlaying their curves with my own and some commercial test reports that I have on file; their correlation seemed to be excellent. They claim to be NIST traceable. The returned reports showed an “Illuminate A” xy value and color temperature, but were the same for all reports. I contacted them and asked if they could be recomputed for D65 illuminate and they did, but the results do not appear as they should to me. This very likely is my fault since I may not have specified the desired parameters and the raw data may have needed to be reacquired. I know that is the case with my $2 setup. My charge for the initial testing of 4 units was $975 or about $250/unit with shipping (they only measured the left tube). The desired report format and specifications need to be worked out.
This may be a tad high for routine work but if some binoholics wanted to get together and split the setup fee and combine shipping it may be a viable option.
Orb Optronix also indicated if there was enough interest out there, they may be able to come up with a set fee once they had some idea of volume and desired specifications for a standard report.
For those interested, please let me know. The link is http://www.orboptronix.com/services_opticaltest.html
If any out there have similar or better sources of testing, I would like that information also. I would like to build a list. It would be nice if some of you who visit other forums would pass this along.
The folks at Orb have no problem with me posting and attributing to them, matter of fact, they really encouraged it.
Ron