james holdsworth
Consulting Biologist
After months of wondering what the SV was really all about, I finally laid eyes on a pair for awhile in a birding situation. What follows will be my mini-review, without much attention to ergonomics and concentrating on the view. The comparison is a straight up with my 10 x 42 FL, as the SV was the 10 x 42 as well.
Ist off, for Brock, the focus was butter smooth with just a touch more resistance in one direction. Focus was quick and precise from about 50 m to infinity but was dog slow from close-focus to the mid-range, requiring a lot of agonizing cranking, resulting in missed birds. I'm a bug guy too, so this was a big turn-off, others will find it less of a problem. Close focus, though, was the best I have seen, with a wonderfully tight view with no image separation...better than the FL in this respect.
The FL was brighter, not much but enough to notice, especially in darkly shaded foliage. I could see more detail with the FL in shadows and high-contrast situations. The FL seemed to enhance white or pale areas more so than the SV, giving birds a more luminous appearance.
I tested briefly for glare by looking at the sun as it peeked through some high branches. A surprise here as the SV showed some flare as well as pretty obvious veiling glare that was present in the FL but to a lesser degree.
Colour seemed very neutral in both, with the SV slightly warmer [maybe richer] than the FL.
In terms of resolution / apparent sharpness / contrast, it's a bit hard to say. On the face of it, the FL seemed clearly sharper, especially in the centre-field but I'm not sure how much of this might be down to diopter adjustment - or lack there-of. The SV was set near neutral, which is where I like it for most bins, but try as I might, I never did find the centrefield to be acceptably sharp. The FL, to me, has always seems startlingly sharp, almost painfully crisp in some situations. I never was able to find that feeling with the SV.
Two things that I was eager to sample was edge sharpness and rolling ball, if present. The edge sharpness was a big dissapointment.......not that they weren't sharp [they were] but, by trying to look to the edges, I got nothing but black-outs, no matter how hard I tried to position my eyes. You could see the edges clearly only when you canted the bins in odd and unnatural positions, so there seemed no real benefit from a birding perspective. True, the edges were sharper in the SV than the FL but only really appreciable on a test bench.
Rolling ball was present but appeared in a very different way than I expected. I expected to see edge distortion as I panned but, instead found the whole center part of the image seemed to bow inward and flatten towards the edge. That said, I found it unobtrusive and liken it to the reverse of what I see in my Zeiss 10 x 40 BT, which has a bit of that fishbowl effect due to high pincushion. Nothing I couldn't live with but still seemed a bit unsophisticated.
Another aspect of the view that confused me was that, clearly, the sharpest part of the field of view was a circular band outside of the traditional sweetspot. This band seemed very sharp, contrasting with the slightly soft centrefield. I can't really speculate as to what I was seeing, was it partly due to a diopter adjustment that didn't suit my eyes or a defective unit or just an optical effect for my eyes only?
I would have liked to have spent the day with them, to try to understand them better but it was a good 1st taste and I hope to try another soon to see if they have the same sort of view.
I would also like to hear from owners. I suspect that the sharpness issue is down to a poorly adjusted unit and not some sort of optical flaw.
Overall, a very nice piece of glass with some very unique attributes, some of which I think I would need some time to appreciate.
Ist off, for Brock, the focus was butter smooth with just a touch more resistance in one direction. Focus was quick and precise from about 50 m to infinity but was dog slow from close-focus to the mid-range, requiring a lot of agonizing cranking, resulting in missed birds. I'm a bug guy too, so this was a big turn-off, others will find it less of a problem. Close focus, though, was the best I have seen, with a wonderfully tight view with no image separation...better than the FL in this respect.
The FL was brighter, not much but enough to notice, especially in darkly shaded foliage. I could see more detail with the FL in shadows and high-contrast situations. The FL seemed to enhance white or pale areas more so than the SV, giving birds a more luminous appearance.
I tested briefly for glare by looking at the sun as it peeked through some high branches. A surprise here as the SV showed some flare as well as pretty obvious veiling glare that was present in the FL but to a lesser degree.
Colour seemed very neutral in both, with the SV slightly warmer [maybe richer] than the FL.
In terms of resolution / apparent sharpness / contrast, it's a bit hard to say. On the face of it, the FL seemed clearly sharper, especially in the centre-field but I'm not sure how much of this might be down to diopter adjustment - or lack there-of. The SV was set near neutral, which is where I like it for most bins, but try as I might, I never did find the centrefield to be acceptably sharp. The FL, to me, has always seems startlingly sharp, almost painfully crisp in some situations. I never was able to find that feeling with the SV.
Two things that I was eager to sample was edge sharpness and rolling ball, if present. The edge sharpness was a big dissapointment.......not that they weren't sharp [they were] but, by trying to look to the edges, I got nothing but black-outs, no matter how hard I tried to position my eyes. You could see the edges clearly only when you canted the bins in odd and unnatural positions, so there seemed no real benefit from a birding perspective. True, the edges were sharper in the SV than the FL but only really appreciable on a test bench.
Rolling ball was present but appeared in a very different way than I expected. I expected to see edge distortion as I panned but, instead found the whole center part of the image seemed to bow inward and flatten towards the edge. That said, I found it unobtrusive and liken it to the reverse of what I see in my Zeiss 10 x 40 BT, which has a bit of that fishbowl effect due to high pincushion. Nothing I couldn't live with but still seemed a bit unsophisticated.
Another aspect of the view that confused me was that, clearly, the sharpest part of the field of view was a circular band outside of the traditional sweetspot. This band seemed very sharp, contrasting with the slightly soft centrefield. I can't really speculate as to what I was seeing, was it partly due to a diopter adjustment that didn't suit my eyes or a defective unit or just an optical effect for my eyes only?
I would have liked to have spent the day with them, to try to understand them better but it was a good 1st taste and I hope to try another soon to see if they have the same sort of view.
I would also like to hear from owners. I suspect that the sharpness issue is down to a poorly adjusted unit and not some sort of optical flaw.
Overall, a very nice piece of glass with some very unique attributes, some of which I think I would need some time to appreciate.
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