• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Best Binoculars of 2013: The Cornell Lab Review (2 Viewers)

What I find tragic about this Cornell Labs report, just like the last one done five or six years ago, is the abysmal ignorance of survey design, measurement theory, and applied statistics.

The reason is probably that if they (or anyone else) would take survey design and statistics seriously, they had to admit that such tests are just not feasible (at reasonable cost).
- How many copies of the same binocular you need to test to exclude bias from sample variation? 10? 100?
- How many testers you need to exclude bias from eyesight, personal preferences, too much reading birdforum, Swarovski marketing etc.? 100? 1000?

Just sorting out the question if the SV 32 or the FL 32 is better (=considered better by the majority of users by a statistically signicative margin) would easily take a few hundred to thousend rounds of testing. And it would still not help your personal decision.

The whole ranking thing is just pointless, regardless whether it's based on a couple of people looking through binoculars and telling what they think, or measuring transmission at 550 nm in an university lab.
 
Last edited:
Distance single for astigmatism will be perfect for binocs, Annalee!
I'm going old-school bifocals next visit. Doing overlays with reading glasses
has come out great.

Add up all the extra price points across your collection...post a tally.
You may need some cheap binocs to set the 'before' condition (with the new glasses).

I'm glad to hear that the type of glasses I'll be wearing will work well with bins. I was a little worried about it.
I'll see how the glasses do with my current bin (swaro CL). I'm hoping it will be ok.
I also got the diamond protection coating and anti-reflective on the new eyeglasses.
 
For the most part I agree with you. And it seems strange to me for someone to cheap out on glasses that they will be in day in and day out but spend the bank on binocs.

That's a good point, but glasses being purchased with health insurance has its dilemna: I thought about getting the expensive progressive lenses (distortion-free), but if I had them for a while and then realized that I didn't like them I would be out a lot of money (out of pocket expenses). Once the insurance is submitted there are no returns/refunds. This is what the Dr.'s office told me. The progressive lenses I tried in the store were horrible (to me), but those were the cheaper ones. I didn't want to take a chance on them, so I decided on the single vision glasses. They're still very good lenses. I got extra features like anti-reflective coating. Also, I wondered if the progressive lenses would be ok with binoculars; I though maybe the single vision
would be better. I was just guessing there.

With binoculars you can try them for a little while and return them if needed.
 
Last edited:
That's a good point, but glasses being purchased with health insurance has its dilemna: I thought about getting the expensive progressive lenses (distortion-free), but if I had them for a while and then realized that I didn't like them I would be out a lot of money (out of pocket expenses). Once the insurance is submitted there are no returns/refunds. This is what the Dr.'s office told me. The progressive lenses I tried in the store were horrible (to me), but those were the cheaper ones. I didn't want to take a chance on them, so I decided on the single vision glasses. They're still very good lenses. I got extra features like anti-reflective coating. Also, I wondered if the progressive lenses would be ok with binoculars; I though maybe the single vision
would be better. I was just guessing there.

With binoculars you can try them for a little while and return them if needed.

For me I dont notice any difference in binocs between single vision (the top part of my bifocal) or progressive. In sunglasses or safety glasses I pretty much have bi focal. In everyday I stick with progressives. I dont scan back and forth with my eyes in the field of view, I center my view so that may be why I dont see a lot of an issue. As I read, I move my head instead of my eyes. Takes some adapting but I have never had an issue with adapting to differences in anything. (At one point I owned 3 motorcycles all at the same time, one had a 4 down rotary shift pattern, one was 1 up and 4 down, the other was 1 down and 4 up. Never had problems). If you dont adpat quickly the single vision was probably best, but more than likely this is going to be a problem in the future as your eyes will likely get worse. At least that is my experience. They are single vision above the reading portion.

Be aware that there are different shapes of the enhanced portion of progressives, Nikon, Hoya, Varilux and Zeiss are the ones I have tried. I had trouble with the varilux pattern. The optician you used should be able to guide you through what would work best with binocs. Mine had me bring my handgun into their shop to set up my shooting glasses correctly.
 
Last edited:
If you dont adpat quickly the single vision was probably best, but more than likely this is going to be a problem in the future as your eyes will likely get worse.

.

I'm not sure how fast I will adapt. It's hard to say since I've never worn
glasses except for reading small print once in a while.
In the future my vision will change. I may need progressives or something
different down the road. My prescription for distance (and for reading) is sort of weak
according to the doctor, so my eyes aren't in real bad shape...for now. :)
 
I'm not sure how fast I will adapt. It's hard to say since I've never worn
glasses except for reading small print once in a while.
In the future my vision will change. I may need progressives or something
different down the road. My prescription for distance (and for reading) is sort of weak
according to the doctor, so my eyes aren't in real bad shape...for now. :)

I hate doing my spell checking when I see my quotes. LOL

You'll be fine, but it is a change.
 
I went through it more thoroughly, what happened is they gave everybody (60 reviewers!) a couple binoculars and asked them to rate it. So you ended up with a bunch of very subjective ratings that doesn't compare at all, they even admit to that.

So there's nothing scientific, or useful about the review.

Kind of sounds like this forum....|=)|

CG
 
The reason is probably that if they (or anyone else) would take survey design and statistics seriously, they had to admit that such tests are just not feasible (at reasonable cost).
- How many copies of the same binocular you need to test to exclude bias from sample variation? 10? 100?
- How many testers you need to exclude bias from eyesight, personal preferences, too much reading birdforum, Swarovski marketing etc.? 100? 1000?

Just sorting out the question if the SV 32 or the FL 32 is better (=considered better by the majority of users by a statistically signicative margin) would easily take a few hundred to thousend rounds of testing. And it would still not help your personal decision.

The whole ranking thing is just pointless, regardless whether it's based on a couple of people looking through binoculars and telling what they think, or measuring transmission at 550 nm in an university lab.

For the most part I agree with you, although I'm less skeptical of such enterprises. I'm more inclined to say that the resources involved in this Cornell Lab survey, like the earlier one, could have produced meaningful results. It takes working with survey experts to make that possibility a reality. In fact, if just anyone could do it without training there would be no need for a statistics department at Cornell, or anywhere else.

Ed
 
Last edited:
So you know more than all 60 of the testers, including the two editors. Impressive, Dennis! I'm sure they're happy to have you set them straight….

|^|


Swarovision 8x32 is still the best all around birding binocular. The Zeiss 8x42 HT is too big and the Zeiss 8x32 FL is old school. That is why 90% of birders use them. They ain't stupid!
 
What I found most interesting about this review was the graph with price on the x-axis and 'quality index' on the y axis. Seems like the law of diminishing returns really starts to take place around $1000, with extremely small improvements in 'quality index' only occurring when spending DOUBLE or even TRIPLE the amount of money.

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/Page.aspx?pid=2675
 
Swarovision 8x32 is still the best all around birding binocular. The Zeiss 8x42 HT is too big and the Zeiss 8x32 FL is old school. That is why 90% of birders use them. They ain't stupid!

Leaving aside the fact that the way you have constructed your contribution means you think 90% of birders use HT and FL, I will assume you think they are using Swaros and this is because they are super intelligent.

Could be.

Or it could be they feel safer following the fashion so as not to risk being different, and after all Swaros cost a lot so they must be the best. Maybe we should get Cornell to do research on this.

And there is nothing old school about FL 8x32, HT is gorgeous and right-sized and SLC beats Swarovision so there:eat:

Lee
 
Last edited:
Warning! This thread is more than 10 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top