Zen ED2/Nikon SE Field of View

[rivergazer]

I've been reading most, if not all of the postings about the Zen ED(2), with many remarks about the huge field of view, and several seemed to think that it was appreciably bigger than that of their reference bin, the Nikon SE 8X32. Being a new owner of the SE, and future owner of Zens, did some homework. Zen's spec for FOV at 1000 yards is 426 feet; On the Nikon website, the SE spec is 131 meters, which I calculate to be 429.8 feet. Both are quite wide for an 8X, and it seems that this difference would be totally negligible, but unless I'm missing something, does favor the Nikon slightly. I'm not getting this FOV claim for the Zen. I'm pretty sure they were comparing 8X to 8X, not an apples & oranges 7X to 8X comparison or something like that. Is one or both of the company specs wrong? Can anyone that has compared the two in hand shed some light?

marty

[henry link]

The SE spec is 393 feet at 1000 yards. The metric spec is 131 meters at 1000 meters, not 1000 yards.

[Steve C]

There has been some posting of the user measured fov of the ZEN ED binoculars, along with Hawke, Atlas and Promaster. Typically those were somewhat smaller than the advertised FOV except for the Promaster, which had a listed fov of 393', same as the SE.

[rivergazer]

The SE spec is 393 feet at 1000 yards. The metric spec is 131 meters at 1000 meters, not 1000 yards.

Ooooooh ..... DUHHH! My bad!!! This reminds me of the original pictures that came back from the Hubbell that were all fuzzy; someone mixed metric & English measurements in the original design. Good thing I wasn't on that team or it might have been WORSE!!

marty

[Kevin Purcell]

Ooooooh ..... DUHHH! My bad!!! This reminds me of the original pictures that came back from the Hubbell that were all fuzzy; someone mixed metric & English measurements in the original design. Good thing I wasn't on that team or it might have been WORSE!!

marty

Rather off topic but that's a confusion between the Mars Climate Orbiter (thruster's thrust given in newtons but assumed to be in pounds)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter#The_metric.2Fimperial_mixup

and the Hubble's issue was a problem with assembly of the device used to track the shape of the mirror.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubble_Space_Telescope#Origin_of_the_proble
m

Both notable errors missed by not testing. Clearly that wouldn't have got by us ;)

[Pinewood]

Ooooooh ..... DUHHH! My bad!!! This reminds me of the original pictures that came back from the Hubbell that were all fuzzy; someone mixed metric & English measurements in the original design. Good thing I wasn't on that team or it might have been WORSE!!

marty

Hello Marty,

Someday, perhaps, Americans will join the rest of the world and then everything will be metric. Nevertheless, it will take a long time. I meet Australians and British, who are still not happy using metric. A Scottish tourist asked me how big was Central Park but he could not fathom my answer of 320 hectares.

It is not just a matter of FOV but of usable FOV.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood

[FrankD]

Good point Arthur. The Nikons have better edge sharpness than the current Zen EDs but the transition from the sweet spot to distortion in the Zens is very gradual.