Steiner Binoculars On How its Made (1 Viewer)

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MPeoples

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #1

A few years ago How It's Made did a short show on the Making of Steiner Poro Prism Binoculars. Here is the youtube link if anyone missed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKSholGNWW0

Mike

 

S

Swedpat

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #2

MPeoples said:

A few years ago How It's Made did a short show on the Making of Steiner Poro Prism Binoculars. Here is the youtube link if anyone missed it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKSholGNWW0

Mike

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Thanks for the link Mike,

Really interesting to see for a binocular nerd like me! :t:

Having that said: I am really sad that manufacturers like Zeiss, Leica and Swarovski abandoned the development of porro glasses!
Roofs may be more popular and compact but with porro design they could offer higher optical perfromance at lower cost. And actually I find porro binos with modern design to provide superior hold comfort.

 

Last edited: Dec 4, 2014

M

MPeoples

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #3

The same here I love Porro's I use them now mostly for astronomy (16x70 Fujinon). I'm sorry I sold my Nikon 10x42 SE, Old Pentax 7x50 and my old Celestron Ultima 10x50's.

Mike

 

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Gijs van Ginkel

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #4

Swedpat, post 1,
If you study the quality developent of Swarovski binculars from 1948 until now, you can not say that the company did not develop their porro's: they became better and better and it is not so strange that some of them are well-liked in the military.
Gijs

 

M

MPeoples

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #5

Thanks Swedpat

 

S

Swedpat

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #6

Gijs van Ginkel said:

Swedpat, post 1,
If you study the quality developent of Swarovski binculars from 1948 until now, you can not say that the company did not develop their porro's: they became better and better and it is not so strange that some of them are well-liked in the military.
Gijs

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I don't oppose that. What I mean is that manufacturers like Swarovski abandoned the development of porros since 90s to only offer modern roof models. Swarovski still offers a few porro models but these have the same design like 30 years ago. I would like modern porro models with large long eye relief eyepieces and a good hold comfort body design like Nikon SE. That would be just awesome. And you would get Swarovision performance to half the price.
Unfortunately it seems like Nikon also abandoned the modern line of high performance porro models.

 

Last edited: Dec 4, 2014

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Gijs van Ginkel

Well-known member

• Dec 4, 2014

• #7

Swedpad, post 6,
What puzzles me, is that the military Swarovski porro has the same price as some of the top roof models. I have seen that the optical quality is excellent and they are really waterproof and probably very good shock resistant.
Gijs

 

S

Swedpat

Well-known member

• Dec 5, 2014

• #8

Gijs,

When I search for the Habicht models I find that these are much lower priced than the roofs. For example 7x42 and 10x40 are between half and 2/3 of the price of similar sized SLC models. And less than half the price of Svarovision.
It's well known that roof prism design is much more expensive to provide equal quality as porros. For example according to what I read the only 10x50 binocular rivalling Svarovision 10x50 is the porro Fujinon FMT-SX. And it's less than half the price. Among cheaper glasses there are some ~$100 porros with sharpness rivalling $1000 roofs. One example is Leupold Yosemite. Ok, it has not the same mechanical quality, but anyway: the cost for producing high quality roofs is much higher.

What I mean is that if Swarovski would produce a high end and modern design porro with large ocular lenses at the same price as SLC it had been better than Svarovision. I wish that Zeiss, Leica and Swarovski had continued to develop the porros as well.

 

G

Gijs van Ginkel

Well-known member

• Dec 5, 2014

• #9

Swedpat,
I know that the civilian Habichts are much cheaper than the Swarovski roofs and that is why I am puzzled about the high price of the swarovski military porro binoculars.
And I am also aware that (high quality) porro's in general are much cheaper than high quality roofs. If you have seen the production process and choice of materials for the roofs in comparison with porro's it is quite understandfable that porro's can be cheaper.
Gijs

 

S

Swedpat

Well-known member

• Dec 5, 2014

• #10

MPeoples said:

The same here I love Porro's I use them now mostly for astronomy (16x70 Fujinon). I'm sorry I sold my Nikon 10x42 SE, Old Pentax 7x50 and my old Celestron Ultima 10x50's.

Mike

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10 years ago or so I visited a swedish dealer and they offered a demonstration sample of Nikon 10x42SE for 4000SEK(~$570). That is almost half of the normal price at that moment. Unfortunately I then could not afford it. This binocular is claimed to be the sharpest ever 10x42, and it may be right. It also worked pretty well with eyeglasses.

A few years ago before that I sold my Vixen Ultima 8x32 and Celestron Ultima 8x56(these are the same binocular series sold under both Vixen and Celestron brand). The reason is that none of them had adequate eye relief for eye glasses, it was at the moment I decided to get only binoculars I could use with eyeglasses. I think the later versions of Ultima had better eye relief, however.