How are roofs colimated? (1 Viewer)

Steve · Jun 21, 2016

If you know the complaints are about the way you behave on the forum,why don't you just address the situation and stop rubbing people up the wrong way? Stop insulting people, stop ramming your theory or observation's down everybody else's throat and think before you post?

Trust me when I tell you that you are not the worlds expert on optics,there are one or two in the silent majority who have forgotten more than you will ever know! I have met several.

Seriously just take a deep breath before you put your keyboard warrior head on and you will make a lot more friends.

If you like controversy join a war craft forum or conspiracy forum or whatever, but believe me when I tell you that Im getting sick of reading complaints.

Do not reply with another war and peace post to this thread please because I will delete it, just take note and move on.

Thanks

Steve

CliveP · Jun 21, 2016

WJC said:
"Whether it works for others with different IPD is getting further down the road than that which I was aiming to accomplish."—CliveP

That’s a totally respectable and realistic position! On occasion, I have done a conditional alignment on one of my own binoculars, when nothing more was needed. I, too, was not worried about anyone else; most had their own binos and my kids are LONG grown.

I just get wrapped around the axle when people start talking about how the “collimated” their binocular, when I know bloody well they haven’t, and that, more often than not, they have taken their bino farther away from a clinical collimation job by following the silly, screw tweaking instructions plastered all over the Internet. Of course, it’s mostly a matter of semantics. But, it’s a matter of semantics that can take the uninitiated down a costly road.

I’ll bet that even with what you have done, you are relying heavily on your spatial accommodation to make the images acceptable. I have had customers tell me the collimation on their binos was perfect, even when the collimator showed the instrument to be out of alignment by 5 or 10 times the most lenient industry standards.

My whole gig was: if they’re happy, I’m happy for them. BUT, please guys, don’t call it what it’s not!

Good viewing.

Bill

Hi Bill

I do take your interesting and logical point on board and find no offense (not sure what all the warning postings are about and haven't read or tried to decipher it).

I was just messing about to try and see what I could maybe achieve and learn with tampering with the bin as it wasn't one of my main bins that already work well but I am pleased with the result as I checked it again this morning after my eyes had rested and reset and I am especially pleased with the great sharpness and easy detail I can now get (with both sides) and it's especially observable being easily able to focus on and track birds very sharply in flight and it definitely didn't do that as easily before and these are things I iook for or notice.

It was the first time that I tried to collimate (to my eyes lets say) a roof bin and I knew basically nothing about it beforehand so along the way I did constantly wonder what I was doing and finding that I was practising a bit of a black art to me. It of course occurred to me that if I started with one side in one position then I would be adjusting the other side to match that and I had no way of referencing the initial side or zeroing it if you like. In the end I tried many different start points etc and made many alignments which were not that difficult and in the end I just settled when I thought it was good for me and happily it is.

I actually came to a point of doubting that if I sent it in for this real collimation that I would get this personalised alignment back or one with an equal effect but I do like how the RSPB has been done though a lot of my bins I do actually wonder about on occasion.

On balance though it's hard to beat getting a good new bin initially and having a good warranty and professional service backup but it's ok to mess around a bit also with some cheap auction bins. Not sure what I really learnt of certainty but I'm sure I know something more. At least I have have no desire to remove the leatherette on the bins to make any more adjustment and for now it lets me have a chance to get some proper use with the bins and maybe down the line if I like them enough I might have them refurbed by the pro's but I imagine I will have moved on to something else by then probably.

I couldn't help being astounded yet again when I picked up my cheap little Carson 7x18 after checking the Pentax this morning. The Pentax will never have that sorcery and this I find most confusing. I must maybe take them both out for a head to head but I'm not so secretly coveting the new 7x20 Carson Falconer or some variant. Could that really actually be even better?

CliveP · Jun 21, 2016

Just remembered something else in this case which could be quite significant. It came to me while making a brew and having another quick glance through the Pentax.

Eye sockets and eyecups.

These compact Pentax don't have the softest and most comfortable and easy to align eyecups which means that I perhaps hold them somewhat askew pressed against my eyesockets -I think the eyelid bones- and I'm pretty sure they (my eyesockets) aren't 3 axis collimated. So this effect is much more prominent with small bins such as these.

So could it in fact be better for me to have aligned the bins according not only my own eyes but the sockets also and that if I did have them theorically correctly lab corrected that they could in fact be less good for me than my own personal real life bins to my eyes outdoors settings?

I think this could be true. You may add this as an appendix Bill. I did just read your chapter on collimation and yes there are many folks who would make incorrect claims perhaps. Phew I'm glad I did not do that. I would have been embarrassed but most people I imagine don't care really anyway and will use any old rubbish bin. Freedom to choose but yes it would be incorrect to say that just twisting screws alone creates perfect collimation unless one were extremely fortunate to have just hit exactly on the correct setting.

I hate lending bins to other people if they adjust them. Bridge ok but I know they aren't really getting the proper effect unless they fine tune the diopter also and even the eyecup positions.

I did let two folks try the Pentax last evening and they had a quick look without adjusting anything and seemed satisfied but they were just passers by I got chatting to. I can't imagine they got much of a view but I am happy with this kind of quick lending if it's enough for them.

Troubador · Jun 21, 2016

Bill

In amongst the stuff you post that we love to read you are constantly being tempted to post these kinds of remarks:

"No, I will still be hated by some for not pussyfooting around and offering what I THINK as opposed to what I KNOW. A dirty job? Yes. Necessary? Still yes."

And

I'm saving that for the marginal humanoids who want me to milquetoast all my comments.

Neither of these remarks were in response to attacks from anyone, you just tossed them in for no apparent reason other than fighting a battle that nobody else had entered.

After your self-imposed exile one might have expected a fresh start or at least a truce, but here you are firing off shots before anybody else has picked up a gun.

Take another look at what Chosun Juan posted recently, soothe your simmering resentments and in future stick to the point.

Lee

CliveP · Jun 21, 2016

I think when people such as my sweet self get frustrated there is always some-one calm hiding in there behind the whatever but they may be being blocked by something not apparent to the viewer and of course not caused by the recipient.

Yes, lets hope we get the good calm vastly knowlegable and experienced Bill
(it's amazing to me that I can even converse with some-one with such greater experience than myself) and that he himself is happier as a result and this BTW goes for everyone myself included.

Ok enough of all that now please. The thread is about collimation after all and Bill has made a valuable contribution for thought on the subject which I should have conceded early but I was kind of busy turning screws and stuff with my trusty jewel screwdriver

Andy Bright · Jun 21, 2016

Keep to the topic of the thread please, Steve's post wasn't an invitation to debate his message.
thank you.

elkcub · Jun 22, 2016

Hi Bill,

I'm extremely impressed with your 2012 SPIE paper! Although familiar with alignment and collimation via textbooks, no exposition to date has been so complete as to illustrate the tools and mechanism that have been developed over the years to control it. Of course, the article is also not devoid of your style signature — exposing the pitfalls of home-spun tinkering.

My personal take-away is to leave such matters to experts (assuming one can be found). Indeed, this is consistent with my guiding principle of not buying any binocular, new or used, that isn't worth paying to repair.

Good job. :t:
Ed

Pinewood · Jun 22, 2016

Hello Clive P,

Like Ed, I rely on qualified optical technicians to work on my binoculars. I would no sooner try to collimate a valuable binocular than I would try to repair an expensive watch. In fact, I just dropped about twice the amount of money a good optical overhaul would cost on a watch repair, cleaning, lubrication and adjustment. The watch had more than twenty years of occasional use. Leaving collimation to experts has been my policy. Fortunately, my last binocular repair was covered by the manufacturer's agent.

Collimation of all three axes is required when a properly made glass leaves the factory and is needed when there is more than one user. American users of inexpensive astronomical binoculars seem to be fiddling with dodgy glasses from the time they are takes from their boxes.

I would add that even robust roof binoculars, more shock resistant than Porro binoculars, may still show signs of usage when put on an optical bench, after a decade of use.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur Pinewood :hi:

WJC · Jun 22, 2016

elkcub said:
Hi Bill,

I'm extremely impressed with your 2012 SPIE paper! Although familiar with alignment and collimation via textbooks, no exposition to date has been so complete as to illustrate the tools and mechanism that have been developed over the years to control it. Of course, the article is also not devoid of your style signature — exposing the pitfalls of home-spun tinkering.

My personal take-away is to leave such matters to experts (assuming one can be found). Indeed, this is consistent with my guiding principle of not buying any binocular, new or used, that isn't worth paying to repair.

Good job. :t:
Ed

Thanks Ed; I try. You can ask Steve. I'm sure he will tell you I am very trying.

Those in need or understand something about optics, tend to appreciate my approach. Still, there are nameless whiners behind every bush, these days. I think it all revolves around each person's perceived purpose for the Bino Section of BirdForum.

One who recently seemed not to be able to get his head around the principles of bino functioning, has called Conditional Alignment a “theory.” Actually, it is no more a “theory” than gravity, magnetism, or electricity. Although it’s true, some would rather spend their time on foolish notions of alignment; I can’t be blamed for that. I’ve done the best I could to raise the bar for the betterment of all who care.

Conditional Alignment was born with the creation of the world’s first binocular. All I did was give a name to it, that it might be differentiated from “Collimation” for those who give more than lip service to wanting to know more.

And it’s not restricted to amateurs! One bino mega Mogul used to tell Cory and me: “I don’t need a collimator; I can eyeball collimation to 100 power.” Cory and I would just roll our eyes, knowing he couldn’t. Do you think this man had ever heard of “Spatial Accommodation,” or “ciliary muscles,” or knew what part they played in alignment!?

Fortunately, after many years of selling and repairing binoculars, he took one of Cory’s seminars. Alas, this man now has a collimator and has had some of his long-standing, but faulty, philosophies tweaked.

Cory was also with me the day I took a call from a fellow who had been a repair manager at his company for more than 10 years. His call went something like this:

“Bill, I don’t understand it; I’ll get the binocular collimated, but when I move one of the barrels, it’s off again!”

This fellow was very helpful and conscientious. But, not understanding the basics of 3-axis collimation and following the ever so flawed techniques described in certain literature and on the Internet, he had been selling conditional alignment as collimation all those years, with his repair customers having to use their spatial accommodation to do much of the job they had paid him to do. It was this experience that caused me to first suggest:

“There’s a big difference between 20 years of experience and one year of experience 20 times.”

I get in trouble every time I say it, but I will do so again: most of the guys who were really qualified to do serious work on binoculars, are pushing up daises these days. Cory and I want others to carry on. Still, so many think they already know all they need to know. As Master Birder, Pete Dunn, once told me concerning magazine editors: “... they don’t know what they don’t know.” :cat:

Cheers,

Bill

PS And Arthur, collimation is not hard at all. It’s just that so many who will spend DAYS every year discussing collimation, are loath to spend MINUTES trying to understand what they’re talking about. Pontification is much less taxing than research.

CliveP · Jun 22, 2016

elkcub said:
Hi Bill,

I'm extremely impressed with your 2012 SPIE paper! Although familiar with alignment and collimation via textbooks, no exposition to date has been so complete as to illustrate the tools and mechanism that have been developed over the years to control it. Of course, the article is also not devoid of your style signature — exposing the pitfalls of home-spun tinkering.

My personal take-away is to leave such matters to experts (assuming one can be found). Indeed, this is consistent with my guiding principle of not buying any binocular, new or used, that isn't worth paying to repair.

Good job. :t:
Ed

Hi Ed

I'm happy for you and your "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

I now know what it is like to attempt what I did. I don't know if you have done anything like this previously yourself but it seems as though you have not and so have no knowledge regarding practicing what you might have read?

From looking through the result of my interesting and fun and occasionally frustrating experience over the last few days I think it's safe now to say that I definitely am not getting the eyestrain that I was, in fact none at all now. I still find to get the best from the bins I need to take some care with eye placement but I don't think this is unusual and given that I now have a nice relaxing clear circle with darkened edges evenly on each side and all around and a fully sharp accurately focusable view, I'm happy with what I did and with no help from anyone on here I am sad to say unless you count pointing out negatives which to be honest is the kind of impression I got/get and then of course there was some sort of bickering thrown in. No-one could or would actually simply say if you wanted to attempt to collimate your roofs then this is how to best to go about it. Perhaps I should make a video! I'm not going to though. I'm not taking it apart again lol.

In fact if I had sent them off and paid a lot and they came back like this I would be similarly happy.

So to any naysayers who might say this cannot be done or I wouldn't do it or attempt it or whatever I say to largely ignore this at least in the case for setting the bins for your own use. I cannot say whether they work for others with different ipd's or eye sockets but this is not an issue for me in this case or of great importance to me that others are able to get the best out of my personal bins. Everyone should have their own bins of whatever level but I'm sure mine are good enough in the worst scenario that some-one who needs to use them temporarily for a quick view can merely close one eye if they find it impossible to use both and two folks have already tried these and found no problem.

So there is a choice. Anyone who would be satisfied with what I have done as I am should not be put off trying it themselves if they feel they wish to.

Those who wish not to are free also to make that choice.

I perhaps should also state that I am a qualified engineer B.ENG Hons although have not worked in sport optics, rather more with fibre optics and industrial engineering so I am not completely unconfident to have a go at such a thing and it is not the first binocular/monocular I have accosted so I wasn't completely without any knowledge or ability beforehand.

If you are lucky enough to have lots of money to throw at Swarovski or Leica or whoever then I'm sure it's an easy choice to do so but perhaps I am catering for other folk -if there are any on the forum as the concern with alphas seems very much to predominate- but if there are and you are one of those and reading this and have an old bin or whatever and you wish to try this and feel confident enough to undertake the challenge (and if not so confident then take it slowly) then I say go ahead. Don't let anyone discourage you. At the least you will only destroy an old bin that didn't work anyhow (I have done this also). If you have the technical curiosity then you will have fun and undoubtedly learn by your mistakes and be better the next time and you just might end up with a good working bin that you can take some pride in having repaired/restored yourself and that's how I feel about this Pentax.

Just thinking about the bins being collimated for different IPD's. It's actually quite easy to check and here's the amazing way to do it. Place your eyes up to the bins and look through them as normal and now here's the amazing bit, change the IPD in and out and if you still get one image (you won't see the whole image but you will notice if it splits or does anything strange) then what do you know, they must be pretty well properly collimated as is the case with my Pentax.

So that's it. I've had enough of this thread. I'm off out shortly and I'm bringing a certain Pentax 8x20 to enjoy instead of posting it off for repair.

WJC · Jun 22, 2016

CliveP said:
Hi Ed

I'm happy for you and your "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

I now know what it is like to attempt what I did. I don't know if you have done anything like this previously yourself but it seems as though you have not and so have no knowledge regarding practicing what you might have read?

From looking through the result of my interesting and fun and occasionally frustrating experience over the last few days I think it's safe now to say that I definitely am not getting the eyestrain that I was, in fact none at all now. I still find to get the best from the bins I need to take some care with eye placement but I don't think this is unusual and given that I now have a nice relaxing clear circle with darkened edges evenly on each side and all around and a fully sharp accurately focusable view, I'm happy with what I did and with no help from anyone on here I am sad to say unless you count pointing out negatives which to be honest is the kind of impression I got/get and then of course there was some sort of bickering thrown in. No-one could or would actually simply say if you wanted to attempt to collimate your roofs then this is how to best to go about it. Perhaps I should make a video! I'm not going to though. I'm not taking it apart again lol.

In fact if I had sent them off and paid a lot and they came back like this I would be similarly happy.

So to any naysayers who might say this cannot be done or I wouldn't do it or attempt it or whatever I say to largely ignore this at least in the case for setting the bins for your own use. I cannot say whether they work for others with different ipd's or eye sockets but this is not an issue for me in this case or of great importance to me that others are able to get the best out of my personal bins. Everyone should have their own bins of whatever level but I'm sure mine are good enough in the worst scenario that some-one who needs to use them temporarily for a quick view can merely close one eye if they find it impossible to use both and two folks have already tried these and found no problem.

So there is a choice. Anyone who would be satisfied with what I have done as I am should not be put off trying it themselves if they feel they wish to.

Those who wish not to are free also to make that choice.

I perhaps should also state that I am a qualified engineer B.ENG Hons although have not worked in sport optics, rather more with fibre optics and industrial engineering so I am not completely unconfident to have a go at such a thing and it is not the first binocular/monocular I have accosted so I wasn't completely without any knowledge or ability beforehand.

If you are lucky enough to have lots of money to throw at Swarovski or Leica or whoever then I'm sure it's an easy choice to do so but perhaps I am catering for other folk -if there are any on the forum as the concern with alphas seems very much to predominate- but if there are and you are one of those and reading this and have an old bin or whatever and you wish to try this and feel confident enough to undertake the challenge (and if not so confident then take it slowly) then I say go ahead. Don't let anyone discourage you. At the least you will only destroy an old bin that didn't work anyhow (I have done this also). If you have the technical curiosity then you will have fun and undoubtedly learn by your mistakes and be better the next time and you just might end up with a good working bin that you can take some pride in having repaired/restored yourself and that's how I feel about this Pentax.

Just thinking about the bins being collimated for different IPD's. It's actually quite easy to check and here's the amazing way to do it. Place your eyes up to the bins and look through them as normal and now here's the amazing bit, change the IPD in and out and if you still get one image (you won't see the whole image but you will notice if it splits or does anything strange) then what do you know, they must be pretty well properly collimated as is the case with my Pentax.

So that's it. I've had enough of this thread. I'm off out shortly and I'm bringing a certain Pentax 8x20 to enjoy instead of posting it off for repair.

In true, 3-axis collimation, the hinge must be taken into consideration, as in G. Dallas Hanna’s view (1953), the hinge is the heart of a binocular. Even so, this vital piece of the process is rarely mentioned in popular literature or on the web. Instead, both sources are filled with the adventures of inexperienced technicians sharing what they have read, or importers trying to offer knowledge as a service.

THE IMPORTANT IFs

IF one optical axis is parallel to the axle, and IF screws are only adjusted on the offending side, technicians will find elementary techniques involving rooflines, power poles, or anything else—given the object is distant enough—adequate to restore the binocular to its original collimated condition without the need of more sophisticated techniques or test equipment.

IF one must TEST his binocular to SEE if it’s collimated, the test is unnecessary. We all have varying degrees of spatial accommodation. IF the error in parallelism falls within that range, he might say his bino is “collimated.” And, although it is NOT "collimated," it may be aligned just fine... for him!

I have performed a conditional alignment on one or two of my binos, when nothing more was needed, and for customers who didn’t want to spend the extra money to get the “Full Meal Deal.”

It comes down to whether one MUST have a full collimation job to see better, or his spatial accommodation will do the trick.

Clinical or practical? The user must decide. However, following the willy-nilly instructions plastered all over the Internet, the user is not giving that option and although he may perform a fine conditional alignment, he may also be taking the instrument farther away from clinical, 3-axis collimation in the process. In the worst case scenario, it’s like giving a child a hammer, and a handful of bullets, and telling him to do play in the street.

There are various studies on the maximum allowable collimation error—and, of course, they’re all different. As soon as I find the one I like best, I will post it on this memo. :cat:

Bill

elkcub · Jun 22, 2016

Hi Clive,

My primary reason for writing post #27 was to compliment Bill for writing an outstanding SPIE article. It was not to disparage you or anyone else who wishes to fix their own binoculars.

As for what I learned (i.e., "My personal take-away") the article reinforced my self-imposed working rule to always consider (qualified) maintenance/repair costs when making a purchase. It has not the slightest thing to do with those interested in restoration projects, and should not be interpreted that way.

So, I wish you well and hope you enjoy your success with the 8x20.

Ed

How are roofs colimated? (1 Viewer)

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