Newbie questions.....Monarch ATB or X or LX L (1 Viewer)

NDhunter said:

Karen:

Brock means well, of all the posts on BF, he seems to have the largest
sensitivity to the rolling ball. I have yet to induce it in any binocular I've tried.

I do remember someone did refer to him as "Brocknrollingballer', I am not
sure who that was but someone may know.

From what I've seen you post, you are so far happy with your purchase, and
good for you. Enjoy your quality binoculars.

Jerry

Click to expand...

Of course, I mean well, and Karen thanked me for cluing her in on the "rolling ball" issue and the fact that it might take some time to adjust to it if she does see it.

And I was just "clowning around" about the bubble nose. "-)

While I admit those poor souls who see "rolling ball" are in the minority, and I might have griped about this issue more than others (or perhaps articulated the issue better - yeah, let's go with that , I do not think I deserve the dubious distinction of being in a class by myself when it comes to seeing "rolling ball".

As anyone who has followed the more recent discussions of this issue in the SV EL knows, not everyone is pleased with the new design, and there were enough buyers/samplers who found the "rolling ball" objectionable in the SV EL to raise the issue above the status of rumor to the point where Holger wrote an article about it (good read and more accessible than his technical report on the globe effect):

http://www.holgermerlitz.de/globe/globe_faq.html

If we are to take to heart Holger's statement that "the approach [of low pincushion] chosen by Swarovski may imply that the globe effect appears undercorrected to the average binocular user" then how much greater must this apply to the full sized LX/LXLs, which have no pincushion at all?

For my eyes, Nikon achieved the right balance with the EDG and SE - not too little pincushion, not too much.

The EDG and SE prove that designers can use field flatteners to sharpen the edges of bins w/out eliminating pincushion or even greatly reducing it.

Though Nikon may never admit it, I suggest that the gripes about the "rolling ball" in the LX/LXL's from "greasy wheels" like me might have been the reason or at least been a contributing factor to why Nikon chose to go with a more balanced design for the EDG.

And they will be rewarded for that effort as soon as my pig's feet jars are filled with quarters (I also have four gold plated dollar coins in there now).

Brock

"The EDG and SE prove that designers can use field flatteners to sharpen the edges of bins w/out eliminating pincushion or even greatly reducing it."

Brock,

I must be SLOW.....! Now I think I get it.

Thursday I had commented to my husband about how FLAT the view was using the LX L's. The round squirrel baffle on our feeder pole and the trees almost look 2 dimensional. Now I get it. The engineers maximized flatness and edge to edge sharpness at the expense of allowing some pincusion to mitigate rolling ball. Right?

Anyway, I will happily buy a used EDG in great condition for $600 and send back the LX L's. Let's see who is the first to respond! 8-P

butlerkid said:

"The EDG and SE prove that designers can use field flatteners to sharpen the edges of bins w/out eliminating pincushion or even greatly reducing it."

Brock,

I must be SLOW.....! Now I think I get it.

Thursday I had commented to my husband about how FLAT the view was using the LX L's. The round squirrel baffle on our feeder pole and the trees almost look 2 dimensional. Now I get it. The engineers maximized flatness and edge to edge sharpness at the expense of allowing some pincusion to mitigate rolling ball. Right?

Anyway, I will happily buy a used EDG in great condition for $600 and send back the LX L's. Let's see who is the first to respond! 8-P

Click to expand...

The optics mavens could provide you with a more definitive answer, but my crude understanding is that the field flatteners in the LXL quash the field curvature, which is the out of focus image at the edges of most binoculars created by the curved lenses. Field curvature helps give the view of more 3-D look. Since that's been eliminated, that's why trees look "2-D".

In addition, taking out the pincushion helps eliminate the distortion at the edges that you get with pincushion, which stretches the image and causes a cat's eye effect at the edge with stars and bends vertical lines inward. When I look at my rectangular outdoor trash bin with the ZR ED2, which has a lot of pincushion, the bin looks saddle shaped. When I looked at it with the 8x32 LX, it looked flat like it had been run over by the garbage truck.

Using field flatteners to quash (today's "magic word") the field curvature and eliminating the pincushion, provides an even image from center to almost the almost the very edge, but the trade off is that this is not the usual landscape geometry the eyes sees.

For people who don't have enough pincushion in their eyes, the image will appear to roll over a curved surface. You will also see that the image scale is larger in the center and smaller near the edges.

So there's no "free lunch". You can only make the best compromise for your eyes and your budget.

I've gotten to the point where my focus accommodation has deteriorated such that too much field curvature gives me eyestrain. If the sweet spot (where the image is in focus near the center) is too small or is decentered and intrudes into the centerfield, my eyes will try to focus the out of focus image to complete the picture, and I experience eye strain.

For a relaxed view, I need binoculars with a large sweet spot and gradual blurring at the edges.

Since you didn't mention "rolling ball," could I assume that you don't see it in the LXL?

Brock

brocknroller said:

Though Nikon may never admit it, I suggest that the gripes about the "rolling ball" in the LX/LXL's from "greasy wheels" like me might have been the reason or at least been a contributing factor to why Nikon chose to go with a more balanced design for the EDG.

Brock

Click to expand...

I am mystified as to why Nikon has not put you on their Technical Support or Product Development Staff. Guess those MBA's, Market Research Teams, and Focus Groups owe you a debt of gratitude.
I always wondered what the old Zen saying about "what is the sound of one hand clapping" meant - now I know - Patting brock on the back.

I almost finished painting the ceiling in my husband's office - almost since the last cut in trim coat I did was satin and the ceiling is flat! Now I get to do another coat on the cut in!

Today I finished half of the cut in for the walls. Hopefully tomorrow I will finish the cut in so he can roll the walls.

Too much painting - no time for using the bins! However, I wish the LX Ls weren't sooooo flat!:-C

butlerkid said:

I almost finished painting the ceiling in my husband's office - almost since the last cut in trim coat I did was satin and the ceiling is flat! Now I get to do another coat on the cut in!

Today I finished half of the cut in for the walls. Hopefully tomorrow I will finish the cut in so he can roll the walls.

Too much painting - no time for using the bins! However, I wish the LX Ls weren't sooooo flat!:-C

Click to expand...

If the ceiling looked flat through the LXL, that's actually a good sign. If you were a "brocknrollingballer," his office ceiling would have looked like this:

http://www.securitymirror.net/image/cache/data/ceiling-dome-400x400.jpg

lilcrazy2 said:

I am mystified as to why Nikon has not put you on their Technical Support or Product Development Staff. Guess those MBA's, Market Research Teams, and Focus Groups owe you a debt of gratitude.
I always wondered what the old Zen saying about "what is the sound of one hand clapping" meant - now I know - Patting brock on the back.

Click to expand...

Forget the gratis gratitude, I'd rather they sent me a fat check as a consulting fee so I could buy an EDG!

You know, I never understood that Zen saying, but now it makes perfect sense!

Now if you can just explain the one about "If a tree falls in the forest and Brock isn't there...."

The sun is shining and it's a gorgeous day! I just took the LX L's out for a walk in the woods. Spotted a Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker and "my friend" the Red Headed woodpecker.

So what do I think of the LX L's?

Bright, sharp view. Very, very flat. Sharpness almost to the edges, so it seems to have a large sweet spot.

I didn't notice any rolling ball, however the CA is quite pronounced at times. With proper alignment of my pupils with the bins, I could generally minimize the CA. But a modest amount of CA was generally visible. A small amount doesn't bother me a lot, however, strong CA is very distracting.

All in all, I am very happy with the bins. They are so very sharp and bright. Only occasional strong CA is a disappointment.

I definitely need to practice using the bins. I'd like to get to the point of being able to "lock on" a subject pretty quickly when bringing the bins up to me eyes.

Also, I need to get better at aligning the bins to my eyes. My narrow IPD is challenging. And sometimes I'd just "lose it" - meaning the view through the bins! :-O

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this thread! Your comments have really helped me learn a lot in a short amount of time!

butlerkid said:

The sun is shining and it's a gorgeous day! I just took the LX L's out for a walk in the woods. Spotted a Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker and "my friend" the Red Headed woodpecker.

So what do I think of the LX L's?

Bright, sharp view. Very, very flat. Sharpness almost to the edges, so it seems to have a large sweet spot.

I didn't notice any rolling ball, however the CA is quite pronounced at times. With proper alignment of my pupils with the bins, I could generally minimize the CA. But a modest amount of CA was generally visible. A small amount doesn't bother me a lot, however, strong CA is very distracting.

All in all, I am very happy with the bins. They are so very sharp and bright. Only occasional strong CA is a disappointment.

I definitely need to practice using the bins. I'd like to get to the point of being able to "lock on" a subject pretty quickly when bringing the bins up to me eyes.

Also, I need to get better at aligning the bins to my eyes. My narrow IPD is challenging. And sometimes I'd just "lose it" - meaning the view through the bins! :-O

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this thread! Your comments have really helped me learn a lot in a short amount of time!

Click to expand...

"So what do I think of the LX L's?"

Glad you asked that question.

Yes, the fast focuser, even a tad fast by today's standards, takes some getting use to such that you can "hit" your target w/out overshooting it. But once you mastered the art, you will wonder how you ever put up with slow focusers and all the exotic birds you missed because you were focusing...focusing...focusing...(are we there yet?)...still focusing...

If you ever tried an early Swaro EL you know what I mean.

What do you mean you "lose" the image because of your narrow IPD? That unless you keep your eyes perfectly aligned, the image blacks out?

My friend Steve (mooreorless) experiences blackouts in every bin he's ever tried (and hence, co-discovered the MOLCET technique along with Bob [Caesar] to deal with it). However, the one line of bins he has never experienced image blackout with was the Nikon LX series.

I'm not sure if image blackout is the problem you're describing, but if so, I'm sure Steve or Bob would be happy to describe the MOLCET cure for blackouts.

I'm happy to hear you do NOT see the dreaded "rolling ball": (1) for your sake, and (2) for my sake since if you did, my detractors (though few in number) would blame me for influencing you to see it!

To me, the "rolling ball" is a bigger deal killer than CA, because CA is usually only seen in high contrast situations (at least in 8x bins) whereas the "rolling ball" if you see it and it doesn't go away, will be distracting whenever you use the bin, and you would have wound up like poor ole' Pagliacci!

Act! While in bino-nirvana,
I no longer know what I say,
or what I do!
And yet it's necessary... make an effort!
Bah! Are you not a photographer?
You are a clown!

Put on your costume,
powder your face.
The people pay to be here, and they want to laugh.
And if chromatic aberration shall steal your Columbina,
laugh, clown, so the crowd will cheer!
Turn your distress and tears into jest,
your pain and sobbing into a funny face - Ah!

Laugh, clown, laugh
at those who see "rolling ball,"
Laugh in relief that you are not plagued like them!

Brocco Leoncavallo

Brock,

What a pleasure you are! You never cease to make me laugh!

I LOVE the fast focus on the LX L's! And it is fairly easy to keep the view in focus while moving the bins around.

What I need to get better at is AIMING the bins to lock on to a target. I'm so new at this, that I'll bring the bins up, wonder where my subect is, take 'em down to re-orient myself, bring 'em up again, and after a few times, I actually can see what I was searching for through the bins!

By "losing the image" I mean that everything goes black! Sometimes it's easy to hold the bins lightly against my glasses - other times things go black and then I'm searching to get lined up again. I figured it was just my nose getting in the way! 8-P

Hi Karen,
It is probably primarily a slight misplacement of your IPD. Make sure you have it correct, then try this: Press the eyecups firmly against your glasses. I hope they are rather sturdy and not the light fashionable ones my wife wears. Then,very slightly, tilt the binoculars upward and see if the blackouts go away. Don't give up right away. Experiment a bit, soon it will become 2nd nature. This slight tilt is really the MOLCET technique that Brock talks about. If one doesn't wear glasses it is also used in combination with a technique called "eyebrow propping" which is different than placing the eyecups into your eye sockets as some people do.

I know you will enjoy your LX L. I have 2 of them. 8 x 32 and 10 x 32. None of the 32's have "rolling ball" I am told. I am not bothered by CA although I can see it if I look for it. I suggest that you don't look for it as I have been told some people learn to see it if they do.

The LX L's have wonderful colors and great edges. Brilliant reds of course, but I particularly like them in damp, overcast conditions when looking into the canopy. One can see all kinds of subtle variations of greens from mosses and other growths on the trunks and branches of the trees.

Bob

Bob,

Thanks for the tips. I'm going out again this afternoon....more woodpecker hunting!

I'm glad I got the 8x's...I think the magnification suits me well at this time. The 42's are fine when just walking around. However, when I'm also carrying my camera gear the 8x42's may be too big.

I guess the 32's are smaller.....YIKES! I shouldn't even be THINKING about a 2nd pair of bins! :eek!:

I guess NAS is not limited to photography!

butlerkid said:

Brock,

What a pleasure you are! You never cease to make me laugh!

I LOVE the fast focus on the LX L's! And it is fairly easy to keep the view in focus while moving the bins around.

What I need to get better at is AIMING the bins to lock on to a target. I'm so new at this, that I'll bring the bins up, wonder where my subect is, take 'em down to re-orient myself, bring 'em up again, and after a few times, I actually can see what I was searching for through the bins!

By "losing the image" I mean that everything goes black! Sometimes it's easy to hold the bins lightly against my glasses - other times things go black and then I'm searching to get lined up again. I figured it was just my nose getting in the way! 8-P

Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm glad I make you laugh. Then again, that's not hard to do with someone as naturally jolly as a clown!

The MOLCET (MooreOrLess/Caesar Eyebrow Technique) or it's more common name "eyebrow propping," will not work for eyeglass wearers unless you have granny glasses that sit below your eyebrows. You use your eyebrows as pivot poins to tilt the bins, as Bob mentioned above, until you get the right angle where blackouts don't occur.

Given that image blackout is not as common with the LX's as it is with the SE series (3 out of 4 dentists see it), it could be that you are not setting the IPD properly or that the LXL's don't close narrow enough for your IPD. To get the IPD correct for your eyes, look at the sky and try to form a perfect circle around the edges of the field of view. This should help you avoid blackouts if they are do to alignment issues.

What can throw this off is if your eyes are not equidistant from your nose. Even when I set the IPD to form a perfect circle, I can still get blackouts, though usually only with small exit pupil bins, because my right eye is a few mm farther from the center of my nose than my left eye. So I can't get both eyes to line up with the exact center of the bin's exit pupils.

A Nikon 8x30 EII, with its W-I-D-E 8.8* FOV, would probably solve your problem with aiming. Same with a Zen Ray 7x36 ED2, with its 9* FOV. However, neither have enough ER for most eyeglass wearers.

While the 8x42 LXL's 7* FOV isn't restrictive, it is somewhat less than most premium roofs made today.

I remember having the same problem when I started using my 5* FOV Nikon 12x50 SE for birding. I spotted some Cedar Waxwings in my backyard, and found them easily with my 8x32 SE (7.5* FOV), but when I trained the 12x50s on them, I couldn't find them in the thick bushes. So I kept looking over the bins and then looking through them until I finally found them. Most birds would have been gone by that time, but the Waxwings were resting from their migration south. They stop by each year for a week or two to rest and to feast on my backyard berry bushes.

If you haven't seen Cedar Waxwings, they are very beautiful birds, but also very mysterious with their Zorro masks:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cedar_Waxwing/id?gclid=CLfF7IG4sKcCFQJN4Aodf3MSUQ

To a newbie, 7* probably feels like 5* since you are not used to looking through binoculars.

Perhaps you should start out by looking for larger birds such as the Dryocopus rodanus, a Japanese woodpecker, which is the largest bird in the world:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081218214445/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/f/fa/Rodan01.jpg/320px-Rodan01.jpg

Brock

brocknroller said:

Perhaps you should start out by looking for larger birds such as the Dryocopus rodanus, a Japanese woodpecker, which is the largest bird in the world:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081218214445/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/f/fa/Rodan01.jpg/320px-Rodan01.jpg

Brock

Click to expand...

Bolded should be 'was' as I'm pretty sure Godzilla took Rodan out decades ago.

Since I'm in the middle of nowhere in Tennessee (the state which discovered the most meth labs in the nation in 2010...) perhaps I can find a Dryocopus rodanus !

Thanks for the link to Ceder Waxwings! I'd love to see them, but apparently they avoid north eastern Tennessee!

butlerkid said:

...

By "losing the image" I mean that everything goes black! Sometimes it's easy to hold the bins lightly against my glasses - other times things go black and then I'm searching to get lined up again. I figured it was just my nose getting in the way! 8-P

Click to expand...

Karen,

A technique that might help is to fix your eyes on the bird, and then bring the binoculars to your eyes without looking away from it. A little practice should make the aiming process more instinctual. Birds in flight are the same way. Keep following the bird as you bring the binoculars to your eyes and you should be on target. Don't look away.

Ed

Karen,

I think you bring up something that is quite important and not talked about a whole lot. That is binocular use technique. You have seemed to grasp at its importance, and from what I have seen over the years you are pretty typical. Loosing what you are looking at when you first try to find it in the binocular, and loosing the image from time to time. That gets better with time, that was the first thing that I had to overcome as well...way back when. Your own 1x optical system is the most useful one you have while birding. Making it function in harmony with the binocular system is paramount to overall satisfaction.

I recommend you practice (practice and practice) around home. You don't need to be birding. Just pick out some object, lock on it with your eyes and bring the binocular up to your face. Keep doing this over and over until you get your own optical system, the binocular optical system, and your physical features...I guess "sighted in" is a term that comes to mind . After some practice you may find you need to look say high to the right of your target to find it in the view. Just a function of the fit between you and your binocular. Use an object that you will instantly be able to recognize because sometimes a little magnification makes what you thought was a "something or another" simply vanish into maybe just the shadow between a couple of bushes or otherwise reveal what you thought you saw was a big nothing. This can be disorienting for awhile. While you are doing this, experiment with some different ways to grasp the binocular. Experiment with ways, as suggested by Bob above to vary the way you need to position the oculars in relationship to your glasses/eyes. I'm not saying you need to go weird and invent some brand new way to hold a binocular. We are all different in physical size, hand size, strength, facial features, eye sight accommodation...and well all sorts of things. Maybe what you find won't seem quite right when you first hit upon the way you need to hold the glass in relationship to your own features, but after awhile it will become more or less second nature.

Also don't be afraid to look at other binoculars too. The ergonomics of some other binocular or another, may in fact make the "just grab it and look...you are naturally lined up" become a subconscious reality for you. If that happens, you either have a superb second pair, or you got a good enough deal that you may well recoup most of your original purchase. What ultimately matters is that your binocular has the right image and feel for you. That does not necessarily mean that since you have a good Nikon that you need to hold brand allegiance if you find another brand you like better, or that you have to "make it work" because it is a good Nikon. You are the one who has to like it, not somebody else. However it seems from your comments so far that you and your Nikon should get along just fine.

brocknroller said:

Thanks, I'm glad I make you laugh. Then again, that's not hard to do with someone as naturally jolly as a clown!

The MOLCET (MooreOrLess/Caesar Eyebrow Technique) or it's more common name "eyebrow propping," will not work for eyeglass wearers unless you have granny glasses that sit below your eyebrows. You use your eyebrows as pivot poins to tilt the bins, as Bob mentioned above, until you get the right angle where blackouts don't occur.

Given that image blackout is not as common with the LX's as it is with the SE series (3 out of 4 dentists see it), it could be that you are not setting the IPD properly or that the LXL's don't close narrow enough for your IPD. To get the IPD correct for your eyes, look at the sky and try to form a perfect circle around the edges of the field of view. This should help you avoid blackouts if they are do to alignment issues.

What can throw this off is if your eyes are not equidistant from your nose. Even when I set the IPD to form a perfect circle, I can still get blackouts, though usually only with small exit pupil bins, because my right eye is a few mm farther from the center of my nose than my left eye. So I can't get both eyes to line up with the exact center of the bin's exit pupils.

A Nikon 8x30 EII, with its W-I-D-E 8.8* FOV, would probably solve your problem with aiming. Same with a Zen Ray 7x36 ED2, with its 9* FOV. However, neither have enough ER for most eyeglass wearers.

While the 8x42 LXL's 7* FOV isn't restrictive, it is somewhat less than most premium roofs made today.

I remember having the same problem when I started using my 5* FOV Nikon 12x50 SE for birding. I spotted some Cedar Waxwings in my backyard, and found them easily with my 8x32 SE (7.5* FOV), but when I trained the 12x50s on them, I couldn't find them in the thick bushes. So I kept looking over the bins and then looking through them until I finally found them. Most birds would have been gone by that time, but the Waxwings were resting from their migration south. They stop by each year for a week or two to rest and to feast on my backyard berry bushes.

If you haven't seen Cedar Waxwings, they are very beautiful birds, but also very mysterious with their Zorro masks:

http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Cedar_Waxwing/id?gclid=CLfF7IG4sKcCFQJN4Aodf3MSUQ

To a newbie, 7* probably feels like 5* since you are not used to looking through binoculars.

Perhaps you should start out by looking for larger birds such as the Dryocopus rodanus, a Japanese woodpecker, which is the largest bird in the world:

http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20081218214445/uncyclopedia/images/thumb/f/fa/Rodan01.jpg/320px-Rodan01.jpg

Brock

Click to expand...

Brock,
The technique will work with glasses but they have to be solidly constructed with good frames and have to fit well along the sides of your nose without moving. An aquiline nose helps to hold glasses firmly.
Bob

ceasar said:

Brock,
The technique will work with glasses but they have to be solidly constructed with good frames and have to fit well along the sides of your nose without moving. An aquiline nose helps to hold glasses firmly.
Bob

Click to expand...

You don't have to tell me Bob, with my high bridged nose, I have a built-in monopod. But I'm not sure of the psi in the ButlerKid's bubble nose.

Resting the weight of 28-35 oz. bins against my wire rim glasses for extended periods can cause the nose guards to make nose shards. Of course, this will save you money if you were thinking of having rhinoplasty.

A 2010 Johns Hopkins EN&T research paper, which is still out for peer review, suggests that resting the weight of binoculars against one's glasses can cause nasal congestion and even deviated septum in susceptible birders.

However, these medical conditions are 13.4x more prevalent in four-eyed amateur astronomers who handhold bins since they generally use larger aperture, heavier bins, and rest all of the weight against their glasses.

Here's a good example in the photo above the caption "Astronomy (hand-held):

http://www.bigbinoculars.com/

MOLCET + wire rim glasses can also cause a condition known as "rimitis," which is closely related to binoculitis (see last definition on page):

http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/newword_display_alpha.php?letter=Bi&last=50

So while MOLCET can work with glasses, I think for purposes of full disclosure, it's important to include WARNINGS about the side effects, like they do in TV commercials for prescription drugs, which in most commercials, take up 90% of the commercial.

"The good news is that you no longer have the heartbreak of Psoriasis, the bad news is that because of the side effects, you now have the liver ache of Cirrhosis."

Brock

butlerkid said:

The sun is shining and it's a gorgeous day! I just took the LX L's out for a walk in the woods. Spotted a Yellow Bellied Sap Sucker and "my friend" the Red Headed woodpecker.
So what do I think of the LX L's?
Bright, sharp view. Very, very flat. Sharpness almost to the edges, so it seems to have a large sweet spot.
I didn't notice any rolling ball, however the CA is quite pronounced at times. With proper alignment of my pupils with the bins, I could generally minimize the CA. But a modest amount of CA was generally visible. A small amount doesn't bother me a lot, however, strong CA is very distracting.
All in all, I am very happy with the bins. They are so very sharp and bright. Only occasional strong CA is a disappointment.

I definitely need to practice using the bins. I'd like to get to the point of being able to "lock on" a subject pretty quickly when bringing the bins up to me eyes.

Also, I need to get better at aligning the bins to my eyes. My narrow IPD is challenging. And sometimes I'd just "lose it" - meaning the view through the bins! :-O

Thanks to everyone who has participated in this thread! Your comments have really helped me learn a lot in a short amount of time!

Click to expand...

s you have used the Nikon 8x42LXL glasses for some months now, perhaps a more systematic review would help Birdforum readers. Could you set down your perception of the glasses on these counts:
i)Sharpness in the centre of the field and across the field(edge sharpness)
ii) Brightness and contrast: the luminosity of the image and the ability to distinguish between delicate differences in colour or shadow; picking out skulking birds in hedges or rushes at dawn or dusk;
iii) Lack of flare from angled sunlight or reflected sunlight;
iv) Perceived width of the field; ease of view and whether there is a perception of having moved closer to objects viewed without there being any intervening glass;
v) Lateral chromatic aberration and the extent to which it annoys you; does it prevent you from identifying a bird which you would otherwise have identified on colour alone?
vi) Ease of use: does it allow fast dioptre alignment with the moving right eyepiece? can you adjust dioptre, inter-pupillary distance and eye relief (by raisng of lowering the eyepieces)quickly?
vii) Do images, especially of moving birds, snap into focus; does the fast focus lead to focus on points beyond your target; do you have to adjust the focus wheel when shifting between objects which are relatively close to each other or do they remain in focus?
viii) Does rolling ball persist when scanning or does one get used to it over time?
Seems like a tall order but it might worth the time invested in writing the relevant paragraphs.
Best wishes,
Chhayanat