It is hard to believe that Meopta would have introduced a significant improvement like ED glass in the objectives without advertising the fact, but in the "Vögel" test of 10x42s the B1 was commended for its suppression of colour fringing and the reviewer speculated on the use of ED glass! In what is inevitably a subjective assessment, it bettered the Ultravid HD, Leupold GR HD, Nikon HG L (the worst) and Swaro EL (old model). The Kowa XD44 Prominar stood out as best in this respect.
This same B1, however, had a yellowish tint and the transmission curve exhibited the gentle decline into the red, which is typical of silver prism coatings, as opposed to the rapid cut-off of dielectric coatings.
If there have indeed been upgrades in the past five years, I would have expected dielectric coatings to precede an objective redesign. All rather puzzling!
John
I agree, it is puzzling, particularly that Cabela's never states explicitly that the new HD model has dielectric coatings, but with the prism reflectivity of 99%, it couldn't be anything else.
Well, Cabela's is probably using just what information Meopta sent them, they don't make the binoculars. However, if I were the guy writing the promotional copy for Cabela's, I would have asked Meopta about the dielectric coatings.
Allbinos rated the 10x42 Meopta B1's CA as "slight". However, they rated the 10x42 HGL's CA as "Low in the centre, medium at the edge." If the HGLs were rated the worst by Vögel, I doubt if Vögel's reviewers would have written "low in centre, medium at the edge".
Here's what Frank D. had to say when asked how the 10x Meoptas compared to the 10x42 HGL in regard to CA:
"After having owned/tried both I would say they are pretty much equal in this area....that is assuming we are talking about the newer 42 mm LXLs and not the original LX/Venturer. The original Venturer/LX/HG displayed less CA when compared to the newer version...at least in my opinion."
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=200848
I'm beginning to question the objectivity of allbino's CA tests, not just because I think the HGL has more than average CA, but because other users have said the same thing. Ditto for the 10x42 B1.
The problem is I don't think there is any standardization in measuring CA even if someone bench tests a bin for CA. You can compare one bin to another and tell which is better, but it's not like there's a measuring stick like there is for resolution such as arc seconds. If there is, Henry please chime in here and enlighten us.
I'm not sure if objective tests would necessarily be helpful, because when you're just eyeballing with the bin yourself, CA levels will vary from person to person, depending on the user's sensitivity to it.
Brock
