Collimation (1 Viewer)

Bill,

You may have noted it in the past, and I apologize if I'm re-hashing, but what binoculars do you have, what do you like [favourites] and do you have opinions / experience on the current alpha's?

Thanks.

james holdsworth said:

Bill,

You may have noted it in the past, and I apologize if I'm re-hashing, but what binoculars do you have, what do you like [favourites] and do you have opinions / experience on the current alpha's?

Thanks.

Click to expand...

Hi James:

Well, you have sinned. I don’t think I need answer someone who has . . . “rehashed.”

Oh, my friend how many times have I chosen to cover the same subject trying to help the helpable, and frustrate the rest. Look at all the words expended trying to get people to understand there are NO American commercial binocular manufacturers in the States. It was not the first time I have gone to such lengths, nor will it be the last—on the same subject. The people who believe everything they read in a magazine, magazine ad, or on the side of a box, will keep the issue going as long as the Internet lasts. Thinking has never been my strong suit.

I have about 30 binos—Zeiss, Canon, Minolta, Swift, and many I can’t remember. I didn’t set out to be a nutcase; it just happened. Most came by way of doing optical work for folks. The best I have ever looked through was the 8x Swarovski EL. But, that was just one of a tier of quality. I was willing to SPEND the money for my 8x32 Nikon SE. I have owned their Prostar, which I used for astronomy. I had two. The first was pawned and lost by my pharmaceutically-inclined son. And, I can’t find the other.

I have used the Swift Audubon 8.5x44 and its big brother the Audubon (later Kestrel)10x50—take your hat off, Ed. When travelling, I used to use Swift UltraLite (same as the Celestron Ultima), which ARE NOT the same as the instruments that carry that name today.

I’m probably not a good person to ask about current “Alphas,” because I don’t get wrapped around the axle like some folks on BF. I have good binoculars; I use them when I can; I’m happy to leave the armchair speculations to armchair speculators. I try to muddy the water from time to time with a splash of reality. But, for myself, I don’t give a rat’s butt. I think I started this thread on an eye-opening point. That is: people will expend thousands of words talking about myriad things they can’t do a bloody thing about, while ignoring the one thing they can. To me, that says a lot.

And too, the depth of possible problems just keeps getting deeper. Above, Henry talked about the aberrations that could be created by the objective and eyepiece not being centered. But, does the story end there? It does not. The attached photo is of a fellow using my lens centering machine to make sure the lenses were centered as good as possible before being re-cemented. And what about the elements of the EP? Humm! Ah, but you’re making me remember things I did at Captain’s that were head and shoulders above what most of the big boys even had the capacity to do. I felt my customers were worth it.

I know it’s been more than you ever wanted to know. But then, I was never a “sound bite” journalist.

Cheers,

Bill

Just a simple question:
How closely parallel do the two sides need to be collimated, in arc-minutes or arc-seconds?

OPTIC_NUT said:

Just a simple question:
How closely parallel do the two sides need to be collimated, in arc-minutes or arc-seconds?

Click to expand...

See 3.4 of the following: https://sites.google.com/site/rchamon/home/sun-images-method-for-collimation-of-binoculars

Wow! Is this the first time that Bill and Henry have been in the same thread? Henry, thanks for the detailed explanation. This does make complete sense to me. In photography, I sometime use a tilt/shift lens, and there is a palpable loss of quality when the lens is shifted off of it's intended optical axis. Plus, when I was a kid, I made a cardboard off-axis mask for my 10" scope for planetary observing, and, yes, there was an effect on aberrations (but a good trade off to avoid diffraction from the secondary). Bill (and you can call me either "Pete" or "Peter", "peatmoss" is a play on my name as well as that fuzzy green stuff that grows in the woods behind my house), I suppose my original question was in regard to whether or not 3-axis collimation of the whole system and telescope collimation of the individual sides were related from a mechanical standpoint. In other words, if a tech wants to correct 3-axis collimation, he's got access to certain movements to accomplish this, and if he wants to correct individual telescope collimation, then he's got access to other movements to accomplish that. Are the screws for 3-axis collimation the same as the screws for telescope collimation? It seems to me that in a "perfect" system (ok it doesn't really exist), if you turned the eccentric ring on one of the objectives, you'd mess up both the 3-axis collimation and the telescope collimation. And yet, nowadays, with the ZR (and others) we have examples of binoculars that simultaneously have good 3-axis collimation (at least according to the review) but not-so-good telescope collimation. I'm wondering if we come across such a binocular, how should we interpret what might have gone wrong? Is this a QC issue relating to how the workers align the optics (which implies that a repair tech could fix it later on), or is there a deeper QC problem, such as tubing which is hopelessly misaligned.

As always, the path to enlightenment includes many little steps!

Peter

OPTIC_NUT said:

Just a simple question:
How closely parallel do the two sides need to be collimated, in arc-minutes or arc-seconds?

Click to expand...

A simple answer:

Sec. 9.1 MAXIMUM THEORETICAL COLLIMATION ERROR FOR BINOCULARS

A study of how much binoculars can be misaligned before the observer finds it objectionable can be found in the 1977 work of M.A. Ostrovskaya, N.M. Putyatina, and I.N. Krivenko. They tested 16 subjects of various ages and their conclusion, published in the October 1978 Soviet Journal of Optical Technology, was as follows: The maximum allowable deviation from parallelism of the ray bundles from the eyepieces in binoculars amounts to 30 arc minutes vertically, and 40 and 100 arc minutes horizontally in the case of axis divergence and convergence, respectively, for most test subjects.”

Please note that this study was to find the maximum error of several subjects. There are those who find lesser deviation objectionable.

The US Navy trained its Opticalman personnel to use the goal of 2 minutes of divergence [lateral image displacement], 2 minutes of step [dipvergence, or vertical image displacement], and 4 minutes of convergence [image crossover].

Often considered too stringent—2 minutes is the best resolution the brain can discern—it should be remembered that the procedure was developed at a time when marginal alignment could take an instrument out of service faster and a well collimated instrument could be used the instant it was put to the eyes.

I believe the 2-minute standard is too tight, especially considering what the average user has been proven to accept.

However, with the collimators at hand, and the Navy training I had, if a person wanted to pay for a full collimation, they were given the Navy standard. For me, the Russian work would do just fine.

Bill

LPT said:

See 3.4 of the following: https://sites.google.com/site/rchamon/home/sun-images-method-for-collimation-of-binoculars

Click to expand...

Thanks, great article. I love that technique. Fairly practical tolerances.
I was wanting to relate them to the axial differences caused by the
distance to target. That can get high, depending on the type.

Steve C said:

Well my first experience was most assuredly conditional. I bought through the big internet auction site a large Binolux 7x35. It is a Hyoshi (J-B 56) and looks identical to the Swift Holiday series with the tripod adapter cast into the right side frame.

When I got the thing out of the box, it rattled like a tin can full of screws. I thought to myself...this can't be good. Thankfully my whole outlay was only about $20, including shipping. So I decided I really had nothing to loose. I had enough basic skills to get it apart and I literally poured parts onto a towel on the top of my bench. Most of the screws were completely loose inside, free from their threaded bounds. Those that were not free were very loose. One of the prisms was completely detached, the others loose. Both objective lens eccentric rings were so loose the lens moved freely. So with one side apart, I spent the time I needed to figure out where everything went. Then the other side. I wish at least one objective would have been solidly in place, but neither side was. So I then did the other half of the binocular. I cleaned the lenses and prisms to the best of my limited ability. There are some specks still in the view I strongly suspect are scars from everything rattling around in its journey from New Jersey to Oregon. The amazing thing was everything was there, no extra screws, no places without a part.

Talk about a seriously screwed up view, this was the poster child. So it was winter and chores were at a minimum and I had some spare time. Using far more of that spare time than that binocular is worth, I slowly pecked away,conditionally aligning, bit by bit, one side until it looked to be about centered. Then the other side. Then I began to get both sides together. It took several weeks, sometimes I was so frustrated at times I had to just walk away before I used a hammer on the bloody thing. But I did get it back to conditional collimation for my eyes. It also seems to be OK for my brother and my nephew who both have narrower IPD than I do, my brother being narrower than my nephew.

I have sometimes been curious how closely I got to real collimation and I ought to send it someplace and see. But I'll never do that again, and I'll never complain about competent repair costs.

Bill, I happen to use Swift's former head optics guy, Nicholas Crista. You are a lot closer, maybe you'd be interested in giving these a look.

Click to expand...

Hi Steve:

I haven't been with Captain's in 6 years and Emery has SOLD the 100+ year old company. It's an 80-mile RT for me, so I seldom even go down. I can say this, I have seen instruments that were "perfectly collimated," or that were "Spot on," turn out to be several TIMES the maximum tolerance when placed on the collimator.

Bill

peatmoss said:

Wow! Is this the first time that Bill and Henry have been in the same thread? Henry, thanks for the detailed explanation. This does make complete sense to me. In photography, I sometime use a tilt/shift lens, and there is a palpable loss of quality when the lens is shifted off of it's intended optical axis. Plus, when I was a kid, I made a cardboard off-axis mask for my 10" scope for planetary observing, and, yes, there was an effect on aberrations (but a good trade off to avoid diffraction from the secondary). Bill (and you can call me either "Pete" or "Peter", "peatmoss" is a play on my name as well as that fuzzy green stuff that grows in the woods behind my house), I suppose my original question was in regard to whether or not 3-axis collimation of the whole system and telescope collimation of the individual sides were related from a mechanical standpoint. In other words, if a tech wants to correct 3-axis collimation, he's got access to certain movements to accomplish this, and if he wants to correct individual telescope collimation, then he's got access to other movements to accomplish that. Are the screws for 3-axis collimation the same as the screws for telescope collimation? It seems to me that in a "perfect" system (ok it doesn't really exist), if you turned the eccentric ring on one of the objectives, you'd mess up both the 3-axis collimation and the telescope collimation. And yet, nowadays, with the ZR (and others) we have examples of binoculars that simultaneously have good 3-axis collimation (at least according to the review) but not-so-good telescope collimation. I'm wondering if we come across such a binocular, how should we interpret what might have gone wrong? Is this a QC issue relating to how the workers align the optics (which implies that a repair tech could fix it later on), or is there a deeper QC problem, such as tubing which is hopelessly misaligned.

As always, the path to enlightenment includes many little steps!

Peter

Click to expand...

Yes, Henry and I are planning to take our show on the road!

Bill

LPT said:

See 3.4 of the following: https://sites.google.com/site/rchamon/home/sun-images-method-for-collimation-of-binoculars

Click to expand...

I will be giving Rafael credit for his work, in my book. Having scoured the Internet, he appears to be the only ONE with a clue about collimation. However, while it is surely of interest for those with endless amounts of time on their hands, I should point out that it is 31 pages long.

With the proper equipment and training, the process would be hard-pressed to take up 2 pages. Both are explained in my paper.

I keep offering the SPIE paper to those who will send me their email address. With only one taker, I can only surmise it is much more important to speculate than to learn the simple science and method of the procedure. Am I not making a logical assumption?

Bill

WJC said:

I will be giving Rafael credit for his work, in my book. Having scoured the Internet, he appears to be the only ONE with a clue about collimation. However, while it is surely of interest for those with endless amounts of time on their hands, I should point out that it is 31 pages long.

With the proper equipment and training, the process would be hard-pressed to take up 2 pages. Both are explained in my paper.

I keep offering the SPIE paper to those who will send me their email address. With only one taker, I can only surmise it is much more important to speculate than to learn the simple science and method of the procedure. Am I not making a logical assumption?

Bill

Click to expand...

Bill,

The photo's are from 3 collimators (the same but for the three Porro models) from Bleeker optical plant from the fifties and one collimator from ???.

Do you reckonize this model?

Jan

WJC said:

I will be giving Rafael credit for his work, in my book. Having scoured the Internet, he appears to be the only ONE with a clue about collimation. However, while it is surely of interest for those with endless amounts of time on their hands, I should point out that it is 31 pages long.

With the proper equipment and training, the process would be hard-pressed to take up 2 pages. Both are explained in my paper.

I keep offering the SPIE paper to those who will send me their email address. With only one taker, I can only surmise it is much more important to speculate than to learn the simple science and method of the procedure. Am I not making a logical assumption?

Bill

Click to expand...

This went "wrong".

This is the other collimator

LPT said:

See 3.4 of the following: https://sites.google.com/site/rchamon/home/sun-images-method-for-collimation-of-binoculars

Click to expand...

Wow!

Finally, something I can (almost) understand.

Brilliant!

WJC said:

A simple answer:

Sec. 9.1 MAXIMUM THEORETICAL COLLIMATION ERROR FOR BINOCULARS

A study of how much binoculars can be misaligned before the observer finds it objectionable can be found in the 1977 work of M.A. Ostrovskaya, N.M. Putyatina, and I.N. Krivenko. They tested 16 subjects of various ages and their conclusion, published in the October 1978 Soviet Journal of Optical Technology, was as follows: The maximum allowable deviation from parallelism of the ray bundles from the eyepieces in binoculars amounts to 30 arc minutes vertically, and 40 and 100 arc minutes horizontally in the case of axis divergence and convergence, respectively, for most test subjects.”

Please note that this study was to find the maximum error of several subjects. There are those who find lesser deviation objectionable.

The US Navy trained its Opticalman personnel to use the goal of 2 minutes of divergence [lateral image displacement], 2 minutes of step [dipvergence, or vertical image displacement], and 4 minutes of convergence [image crossover].

Often considered too stringent—2 minutes is the best resolution the brain can discern—it should be remembered that the procedure was developed at a time when marginal alignment could take an instrument out of service faster and a well collimated instrument could be used the instant it was put to the eyes.

I believe the 2-minute standard is too tight, especially considering what the average user has been proven to accept.

However, with the collimators at hand, and the Navy training I had, if a person wanted to pay for a full collimation, they were given the Navy standard. For me, the Russian work would do just fine.

Bill

Click to expand...

Bill,

Were the Navy standards expressed in minutes of the real field of the tested binocular? The Russian standards appear to be so lax that I wonder if they're being expressed in minutes of the real field of the examination telescope, which would correspond to minutes of apparent field of the tested binocular. Hard for me to believe anyone could tolerate such large real field errors.

Here are the old JTII standards for binoculars between 4.5x and 10x expressed in minutes of the real field of the tested binocular (from J. W. Seyfried's book, "Choosing, Using & Repairing Binoculars").

Divergence - 6'
Dipvergence - 4'
Convergence - 10'

Much more in line with the Navy standards. The Russian standards would be similar if they were being expressed in minutes of apparent field of an 7-10X binocular.

Henry

WJC said:

Hi Steve:

I haven't been with Captain's in 6 years and Emery has SOLD the 100+ year old company. It's an 80-mile RT for me, so I seldom even go down. I can say this, I have seen instruments that were "perfectly collimated," or that were "Spot on," turn out to be several TIMES the maximum tolerance when placed on the collimator.

Bill

Click to expand...

I have little doubt that these are off of being truly collimated. At times I wonder how much or wonder how close my guesstimate is. I may send these to Nicholas one day.

jan van daalen said:

This went "wrong".

This is the other collimator

Click to expand...

Hi Jan:

I recognize the US Navy Mk 28 on the right, the grinding/polishing stuff on the left, and the predominantly French field glasses also on the right, but not the collimators. It looks similar (though less sophisticated) to the setup used in Gail Fisher’s shop at Swarovski USA. Please understand that at this period, people were scrambling to come up with a better means of alignment, and that many setups were only capable of handling Conditional Alignment. But then, people weren’t as picky back then. It should be remembered that the viable prismatic binocular had been around just over 10 years!

It should also be noted that our personal spatial accommodation was depended heavily upon to make the instrument serviceable. That’s why ALII Service Notes, Edmunds Collimators and Collimation, and Jan Seyfreid’s Choosing Using and Repairing Binoculars, all deal only with Conditional Alignment while calling it “Collimation.”

I have attached two photos. One is Gail at her collimator and the other is of a British Mk4. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. It’s just that many of these setups didn’t have a particular name or model designation.

Cheers,

Bill

PS Consider those two photos of yours . . . stolen, for the good of the cause!

henry link said:

Bill,

Were the Navy standards expressed in minutes of the real field of the tested binocular? The Russian standards appear to be so lax that I wonder if they're being expressed in minutes of the real field of the examination telescope, which would correspond to minutes of apparent field of the tested binocular. Hard for me to believe anyone could tolerate such large real field errors.

Here are the old JTII standards for binoculars between 4.5x and 10x expressed in minutes of the real field of the tested binocular (from J. W. Seyfried's book, "Choosing, Using & Repairing Binoculars").

Divergence - 6'
Dipvergence - 4'
Convergence - 10'

Much more in line with the Navy standards. The Russian standards would be similar if they were being expressed in minutes of apparent field of an 7-10X binocular.

Henry

Click to expand...

Hi Henry:

Those figures are just one set of many, everything really revolves on what causes a PARTICULAR observer NO discomfort or fatigue.

The Mk 5 collimator has graduations (in minutes) on the target. I’m sure you know—but others may not—that tolerances change with the magnification of the binocular being tested.

I have attached Dr. Johnson’s take on the matter and “Collimation vs, Conditional Alignment,” which illustrates this and which is a less geeky subset of my SPIE paper. It should be noted that I don’t want to mislead anyone to believe collimation should IN PRACTICE be set for any distance other than infinity. Some have come away from part of my explanation with that conclusion. In a perfect world, and at one IPD, that would be true. But we don’t live in a perfect world, and being set for anything other than infinity is just Conditional Alignment.

Bill

Thanks!.....2 minutes seems a bit more reasonable. (120 arc-seconds),
especially considering focus roll-off and vignetting at the edges of the view.

I'm trying to relate that to off-axis viewing close up.
If I look at a point on a bird 50 ft away with the Meoptas, whose barrels
are almost exactly 3 inches apart on center, that represents
17.2 arc-minutes of shifting my optics+cortex must do.
I need to misalign the views, as it were. Every point in
both images needs to be shifted in my brain.

Since 17 arc-minutes is about 9 times the standard, would that cause me all the trouble
you would expect with binoculars misaligned 17 arc-minutes?...migraines, headaches, eyestrain?
I could bring the axes closer, but that reduces the 3D effect.

That scenario seems to cast some light on how such standards pertain to our usage.
I view things at 50 feet fairly often. I would need to view them at 450 feet to be comparable
to the 2 arc-minute standard. I do admit to the view being awkward-looking at 30 feet
with Porros spaced 5 inches. So....the view is bad with any well-tuned Porros at that
distance due to the 'straddle'.....about 30 arc-minutes.
But 17 doesn't seem too bad. I don't think I could tell at 8 arc-minutes,
using the Meos on a bird at 100 ft.

WJC said:

Hi Jan:

I recognize the US Navy Mk 28 on the right, the grinding/polishing stuff on the left, and the predominantly French field glasses also on the right, but not the collimators. It looks similar (though less sophisticated) to the setup used in Gail Fisher’s shop at Swarovski USA. Please understand that at this period, people were scrambling to come up with a better means of alignment, and that many setups were only capable of handling Conditional Alignment. But then, people weren’t as picky back then. It should be remembered that the viable prismatic binocular had been around just over 10 years!

It should also be noted that our personal spatial accommodation was depended heavily upon to make the instrument serviceable. That’s why ALII Service Notes, Edmunds Collimators and Collimation, and Jan Seyfreid’s Choosing Using and Repairing Binoculars, all deal only with Conditional Alignment while calling it “Collimation.”

I have attached two photos. One is Gail at her collimator and the other is of a British Mk4. I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help. It’s just that many of these setups didn’t have a particular name or model designation.

Cheers,

Bill

PS Consider those two photos of yours . . . stolen, for the good of the cause!

Click to expand...

Hi Bill,

You're welcome, everything for the good cause!!!
Just tell me when you need detail photo's.

To bad you don't reckonize the collimator for the roofs.
You must be right about the fact that in the 70s a lot of "home made collimators" excisted, but in fact the mechanical collimators must work according the same principle.

I've PM you for your SPIE ware.

Thanks

Jan

jan van daalen said:

Hi Bill,

You're welcome, everything for the good cause!!!
Just tell me when you need detail photo's.

To bad you don't reckonize the collimator for the roofs.
You must be right about the fact that in the 70s a lot of "home made collimators" excisted, but in fact the mechanical collimators must work according the same principle.

I've PM you for your SPIE ware.

Thanks

Jan

Click to expand...

Hi Jan:

I sent the SPIE piece at least two hours ago. Did you not get it? Also, I wasn't talking about the 70s but about the early portion of the last century.

Bill