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New Swarovski SLC 42 Binoculars (2 Viewers)

Interdisciplinary approach

I fully agree that it is regrettable that, for reasons known best to them, people who haven't bought, used, or sometimes even tested certain binocular models seem to feel the need to criticize them over and over again.

People who behave like that certainly don't have any idea about the reasons, that's for sure. But those who are interested about these reasons could find here a good starting point for better understanding: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance Warning: We are now leaving the subject of optics. Do we really?

Steve
 
..... As for the word "logarithmic", whatever it's supposed to mean in the supposed innovation, that is in material put out by Swaro, as it is quoted by both Gijs and an optics review website. ....

Pomp, do you have a link to that "material" ?

None of the sales staff I have spoken to have ever mentioned this. I don't recall seeing it anywhere online either. If it's on printed material, perhaps someone has it in their possession, and could scan it and post it?

I'd be interested in seeing that original material, and its context.

Given that Kimmo has already put the issue to bed - it would want to be one heck of a shock to revive it ...... Clear !! |8.|



Chosun :gh:
 
Chosun,

It may be nothing more than an unfortunate interpretation of what Swaro said in their 2011 Catalog (see Post #178). I personally rack it up to hyperbole combined with cognitive dissonance — the essence of clever, misleading advertising.

Ed
 
Chosun,

It may be nothing more than an unfortunate interpretation of what Swaro said in their 2011 Catalog (see Post #178). I personally rack it up to hyperbole combined with cognitive dissonance — the essence of clever, misleading advertising.

Ed
Is there an actual "logarithmic" citation from a Swarovski publication?
 
CJ, I saw the above three posts only just now. Again possibly a problem with my brevity! In my text copied there "as" means because, i.e., I didn't see "logarithmic" in material from Swaro. but infer that Gijs and the other party did. Didn't name the latter because earlier I make a negative comment about them, viz. that they've misunderstood the purpose of the innovation. Here's their text: "The Swarovski EL binoculars' focus mechanism is interesting in that it's geared to require two full turns of the focus wheel to go fully from close focus to infinity, but their cleverly designed logarithmic adjustment mechanism takes it quickly from infinity to somewhere around 1.5m where the focus is much slower and precise." (It would be faster at close distances.)

In the material from the Swaro. catalog, the text Ed brought up earlier is not the one I thought more relevant, which is "Patented center focus system allows rapid focusing".

• Another puzzle from Swaro. Dropping the numerous parts of the mysterious system in the SLC HD is said to make the SLC lighter. But the Swaro. website states exactly the same weight for the latter under Tech. data.

• Hope the actual field of view is retained. For both it is stated to be 7.8⁰ in the 8x42 spec., but the one SLC HD 8x42 I have looked through seems to show at least 8.0⁰. After doing a "side-by-side" comparison vs Swaro. EL Sv. reported earlier did the same vs a Zen-Ray ED3 8x43. This is well known for its wide field, stated by the maker to be 8.1⁰. The one I looked through seems actually a decimal or two less (by yet other comparisons involving at one stage approx. measurement). The field through this one SLC HD is clearly wider than through this one Z-R ED3. The angles are my estimates and may be off, but about the comparisons reported I'm sure. The Swaro. SLC HD may thus possibly be the widest-angle 8x among "alphas" and "near-alphas".
 
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Is there an actual "logarithmic" citation from a Swarovski publication?

Not that I've seen, Pileatus. What pompadour mentioned is as close as I've seen: "Patented center focus system allows rapid focusing." I'd like to see the patent and what they mean by rapid focusing. It's shrouded in mystery, to put it kindly. Then to remove it, whatever "it" is, is cruel and unusual punishment. My mind wanders to the great moral philosoper Harry Frankfurt.

Ed
 
More re the mystery mechanism:

• The Swaro. SLC HD focus knob goes from the min. focus of ~ 2 m to infinity in 2 turns, and at halfway point in the rotation is focused at ~ 4 m, acc. to a friend who tested this and estimated, not measured, that distance. As a good comparison, the Zen-Ray ED3 8x43 focus knob goes from the min. focus also of ~ 2 m to infinity in 1 turn, and at the halfway point in the rotation is focused at ~ 5 m. The Swaro. knob is much smaller, so the distances the finger moves is much closer than 2 to 1. The Z-R gives to me that pleasing sense of focus speed being matched to the user's need which Ed writes of earlier in the Swaro, except I wouldn't mind it a bit faster close in. So, seems there's nothing really significantly different or special about this model in that regard.

• [Item deleted in edit! From a post by Gijs. Happened to see it just before this post and copied it here, but, on checking now, find it has been cited in this thread before.]
 
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The Swaro. SLC HD focus knob goes from the min. focus of ~ 2 m to infinity in 2 turns, and at halfway point in the rotation is focused at ~ 4 m, acc. to a friend who tested this and estimated, not measured, that distance.
That’s the behaviour I would expect. What’s more, refocusing from 4 m to 8 m would require turning the knob halfway from the 4 m position to the infinity position (i.e. half a turn with your friend’s binocular); and refocusing from 8 m to 16 m would require turning halfway from the 8 m position to the infinity position (i.e. another one-quarter of a turn); and so on and so forth.

This behaviour is:
  • a consequence of the physics of how lenses focus (roughly following the thin-lens equation)
  • a requirement for the binocular to offer a consistent speed and precision of focus across its range.
The frequent calls for binoculars to focus faster in the close-focus range are just that: requests for the binocular to focus faster (relative to its depth of field) when focused closely, which is the same as saying the focus precision should be lower in the close-focus range.

So why do people ask for it? Because:
  • subjects at close range often move quickly, demanding frequent, large, quick changes of focus. Moving from one close subject to another (e.g. 2 m to 4 m) also requires a large change of focus. It may be better in such circumstances to have a quick approximate focus than to have a super-precise focus that can’t keep up
  • typical close subjects, being three-dimensional, have many possible ‘correct’ focus distances, so high precision of focus is less important, and missed focus is less obvious, than with distant two-dimensional subjects (e.g. a mountain landscape, all of which is at infinity: the slightest hint of focus imprecision throws the whole view out of focus).
To illustrate the latter point, have a look at these flowers. If the photographer had chosen a slightly different focus point the viewer would likely not have questioned the alternative focus. Different flowers, or different parts of the same flowers, would have been in focus instead, but the photo would have been much the same. A similar situation arrises when viewing close subjects with binoculars, and this greatly reduces the precision of focus required compared to distant subjects.

If binoculars were typically used to focus on flat, two-dimensional subjects in the close-focus range (such as test charts!), the required focus precision would be the same as it is when viewing distant subjects, and there would be far fewer calls to trade precision for speed in the close-focus range.

Of course they are not and therefore the calls make some sense, though I would probably find a non-linear focusing arrangement confusing to use.
 
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DG, thanks for that thorough explanation. Does seem to me, though, that a fast-close-range focus system will not really sacrifice precision, even the high degree that really is sometimes needed closer in. Such a non-linear system is, we are told earlier in this thread, featured in the Pentax Papillio and the /a Brunton Epoch.
 
OK, so now that the same thing has been explained yet again, can we get a gun and finally put this dead horse down for good?!

Absolut storm in a (H)T-cup !!

Righto! Give it a rest Mulder ;) ..... why not turn your attention to something "less complex" - like the Illuminati, New World Order, or which strand of Islam (Sunni, or Shi'ite) is the one true word after near 1400 years of blowing the cr*pper outta one another, or even why with 1.5trill spent annually on arms - why we don't just chuck all of that into perfecting Nooklear Fusion instead ?! ...... :cat:



Chosun :gh:
 
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CJ, thanks for the advice and the suggestion. Turned my mind to that lesser problem, quickly worked out some possibilities, and just now posted <this idea> on the 'net. Note 1. Hackers may have playfully altered authorship details, etc. Note 2. Subject to revision.

PS But, getting serious: does seem to me a good idea to discuss pros and cons of varying focus speeds, within one instrument with close range faster, or among models with the usual mechanism at different gearing. (BTW, inevitable, of course, that some tangents off a thread run on within it, without movng to a new thread.) For instance, before I add this PS, Brock has an interesting post below on the focus speed of a Nikon.
 
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Oh my goodness, did somebody mention physics?

I don't have my cousin Sheldon's head for ciphering but I can offer my observations with the focus mechanism on the Nikon 8x32 LX/HG in regard to the discussion above.

The ultra fast focuser on the 8x32 LX (< 1/2 turn from cf to ) I found the focus at medium distance tedious for focusing on birds because the objects immediately in front or in back where out of focus and just a slight nudge on the focuser and you'd overshoot or undershoot your target.

To add another variable to the equation, there are those rare fellows who actually prefer the shallower depth perception in fast focusing roofs because of this shallower "slice of life" since the great depth perception of porros makes it harder for them to find the bird since objects in front and back of it are also in focus. To me, it's just the opposite, so there's a human perception aspect to this that is often left out of scientific evaluations.

But to continue, at close focus, the precision of focusing with the 8x32 LX was a horse of a different color. I could quickly focus on birds, butterflies and bugs down to 6 ft. without worry about overshooting or undershooting my target.

Oddly, the depth perception at close focus was better than medium distance. I'm not sure if that defies the laws of physics, I'll leave that for Dorian and Sheldon to work out, but that's what I experienced. If I had deeper pockets, I would have kept the 8x32 LX for close in observing, because that's what it excelled at. No breakdown in the stereoscopic view at 6 ft (the 8x32 SE's stereo view is already breaking down at 12 ft.) and the color saturation and contrast were superb. With the "roof illusion" the magnification seemed larger than 8x at close focus. So even little butterflies looked big.

Brock
 

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At least one store in Sweden have now received the new Swarovski SLC. Discovered it today and just ordered a 8x42 SLC for 14490 SEK. In other currencies equivalent to:

$ 2,137.39 (-459 USD)
€ 1590.25 (-341 EUR)
£ 1,320.65 (-283 GBP)

The number in parentheses is the difference in price to what the old SLC HD normally cost.

I have previously owned a 8x42 SLC HD, but sold it and bought an EDG 8x42 instead. Since I can not really decide which I most prefer, I will now keep both!|=)|
 
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Well, that's very nice news, is it? The rumor mill, and I think some PR from Swaro, did have the story that the newSLC was going to cost less than the original SLC-HD version, having less parts;

Hopefully, this price drop is not limited to the Norwegian peninsula where shipping is cheaper because optics have to be carried by dog sleds, but that the lower prices also apply to Europe and the USA. ;)

<B>
 
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Well, that's not very nice news, is it? The rumor mill, and I think some PR from Swaro, had the story that the newSLC was supposed to cost less than the original SLC-HD version, having less parts;

Hopefully, this price hike is limited to the Norwegian peninsula where optics have to be shipped by dog sleds and not the rest of Europe and the USA. ;)

<B>

Read closely.

Anyway, Eagle Optics has them both in stock: 8x $1729; 10x $1799.
 
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