10x42 SE "close" focus (1 Viewer)

I would be very interested in completing my SE line set by purchase of the 10x42 SE, but for the inadequate (for me) "close focus" of 16.4 feet.
Back in the day, (1970's-1980's) Leica and Zeiss used to offer a service of taking some of the play "past" infinity, and putting in at the minimum focus distance end.
I do not use a bino for daytime that cannot hit at most 10 footish on the near end.
Does anyone know if that could be done with this model? Does Nikon offers that with this model?
Any lurkers from Nikon hereabouts

jaymoynihan said:

I would be very interested in completing my SE line set by purchase of the 10x42 SE, but for the inadequate (for me) "close focus" of 16.4 feet.
Back in the day, (1970's-1980's) Leica and Zeiss used to offer a service of taking some of the play "past" infinity, and putting in at the minimum focus distance end.
I do not use a bino for daytime that cannot hit at most 10 footish on the near end.
Does anyone know if that could be done with this model? Does Nikon offers that with this model?
Any lurkers from Nikon hereabouts

Click to expand...

I think it could be done. I owned a 12x50 SE that had a 16 ft. close focus like the 10x42. Steve (mooreorless) and Professor EDz owned this same sample.

I thought this was going to be great for birding, but the DOF was so shallow at 16 ft. that I could only watch one bird at a time, a bird slightly in back or slightly in front of the one I was focused on was out of focus. Not sure if that would happen as extremely in the 10x at 10 ft.

There was still enough focus travel past infinity with the modified 12x50 SE to comfortably use it for stargazing.

The issue with porros at close focus is that you see overlapping circles in the view. This annoyed me with the 8x32 SE, which was very prone to that. My 8x EII does better in this regard, focuss 3 ft. closer than the SE w/out overlap.

If they can take 8 ft. off the close focus on the 12x50 SE, they should be able to knock 6 ft. off the 10x42. The question is would Nikon make that modification for you? I'm not sure if the 12x50 SE was a sample variation or if a previous owner modified it.

You might be able to make the modification yourself. If you can get the top end cap off, underneath is a screw. Turn the screw one way the close focus increases, the other way, it decreases.

I modified my Swift 8x42 Ultralite this way. Got it down from 16 ft close focus to 13 ft. I might have been able to get it closer, but the screw seemed to be getting loose and I didn't want the whole focusing mechanism to fall apart on me.

Brock

Brock & Jay,

The problem with Porros at close focus is that the circles DON'T overlap, or at least not sufficiently for comfortable binocular vision, but this is probably what you meant anyway.

The Nikon close focus spec. for the 10x42 SE is 5 m but would probably be less for the near-sighted or those with good accommodation. For a 10x bin this is equivalent to viewing with the naked eyes at 50 cm, but because the objective spacing is around double the IPD, it would effectively be equivalent to squinting at 25 cm - not comfortable! At closer distances your master eye would probably dominate and give you monocular vision.

There is plenty of space between objective and prism for movement of the focussing element of a roof prism bin, and sometimes factory modifications are carried out to extend the focus overtravel and allow the strongly near-sighted to achieve infinity focus without glasses.

However, extending the close focus of an externally focussing Porro is another kettle of fish. If it could be done, the gains would be small and one would inevitably compromise the guidance and possibly sealing of the eyepieces.

John

John Russell said:

Brock & Jay,

The problem with Porros at close focus is that the circles DON'T overlap, or at least not sufficiently for comfortable binocular vision,

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Thanks John for your post. I had not thought of the above aspect at all.

brocknroller said:

...You might be able to make the modification yourself. ....

Click to expand...

:eek!: