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Omid's innovation (split from 'new Leica binocular' thread) (1 Viewer)

Omid

Omid

Well-known member
United States
etudiant said:
I'm really put off by this.
We know what we would like, six sigma quality control so we could buy sight unseen, generous eye relief, a wider field of view, maybe someday actual innovation such as zoom or stabilized image. None of that is happening, except for a gain in FoV on the SF. This industry is stagnant and it shows.
Click to expand...

I am with you here. The industry has been stagnant for decades. I have made an "actual innovation" which does produce "generous eye relief". I have told Leica about my innovation but they have not been very eager yet (?)

In my design (for which I have been granted a US patent), there is no "eye relief". You can see the picture from almost any distance behind the eyepiece. See picture below which shows this concept applied to a riflescope.

-Omid
 

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Omid said:
I am with you here. The industry has been stagnant for decades. I have made an "actual innovation" which does produce "generous eye relief". I have told Leica about my innovation but they have not been very eager yet (?)

In my design (for which I have been granted a US patent), there is no "eye relief". You can see the picture from almost any distance behind the eyepiece. See picture below which shows this concept applied to a riflescope.

-Omid
Click to expand...

That may be useful for a riflescope but not so much for binoculars. Extraneous light which adversely affects the view is dealt with very effectively by eyecups; it's not just about placing the eyes to fit the eye relief of the binocular, it's about providing the very best viewing experience.
 
Dialyt said:
That may be useful for a riflescope but not so much for binoculars. Extraneous light which adversely affects the view is dealt with very effectively by eyecups; it's not just about placing the eyes to fit the eye relief of the binocular, it's about providing the very best viewing experience.
Click to expand...

You are dead right about the riflescope bit as the eye needs a good clearance from the riflescope eyepiece to avoid a recoil-induced poke in the eye.

But in binoculars an infinite (?) eyerelief would mean an eyecup would work fine at any distance so could be designed not just with eye relief in mind but concentrate on comfort and sidelight intrusion.

Lee
 
Dialyt said:
That may be useful for a riflescope but not so much for binoculars. Extraneous light which adversely affects the view is dealt with very effectively by eyecups; it's not just about placing the eyes to fit the eye relief of the binocular, it's about providing the very best viewing experience.
Click to expand...

This invention can be used in rifle scopes, binoculars and spotting scopes (practically any Keplerian telescope). The concept is expanding the exit pupil of the telescope such that the diameter of the beam emerging from the eyepiece is much larger than the standard value D/M (D: Objective diameter, M: magnification). The attached picture (in my original post) shows two identical rifle-scopes set to 6X magnification and with 50mm objective lens. The exit pupil of the rifle scope shown on the left side is 50/6 = 8.3mm wide and is located about 10cm behind the eyepiece. The exit pupil of the "new" system shown on the right side is loosely defined. For practical purposes we can say it is as large as the eyepiece lens itself and is located at the eyepiece.

In the new system, you can see the image from practically any point behind the eyepiece even if your eye is not on the optical axis. If this is incorporated in binoculars, it makes it very easy to see the image with or without glasses. It also makes the view much less sensitive to hand shake (your eye pupil won't move outside the exit pupil).

In a spotting scope, the exit pupil is rather small (about 1mm to 2mm in diameter) making it very uncomfortable see the image. Even a modest wind can make it difficult to keep the eye on the exit pupil. I have a Swarvoski ATS 80 HD spotting scope and it is not easy to view through it at max power. Kids and any "guests" can't see anything and usually give up looking through it after about a minute!! This invention can solve this problem too ;)

The drawbacks are some loss of light and a bit lower resolution but I am working on it...
 
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Omid:

I think your idea has merit, except for your last words about the topic.

"The drawbacks are some loss of light and a bit lower resolution"

That says it all, I suppose most all optical engineers, understand the situation.

Good luck in your pursuits, I hope it works out for you.

Jerry
 
NDhunter said:
Omid:

I think your idea has merit, except for your last words about the topic.

"The drawbacks are some loss of light and a bit lower resolution"

That says it all, I suppose most all optical engineers, understand the situation.

Good luck in your pursuits, I hope it works out for you.

Jerry
Click to expand...

Many birders would accept that trade imho.
If scope viewing actually became comfortable, rather than a 'squint and try to see' exercise, more people might buy one.
 
etudiant said:
Many birders would accept that trade imho.
If scope viewing actually became comfortable, rather than a 'squint and try to see' exercise, more people might buy one.
Click to expand...

I am wondering about what you mean ?

Do you have vision problems?

Jerry
 
NDhunter said:
I am wondering about what you mean ?

Do you have vision problems?

Jerry
Click to expand...

Some folks find it tough holding one eye shut and seeing anything via a telescope through the other eye. Troubadoris was like this for years and avoided scopes as being a waste of time, but she has mastered it now. Of course some people can train themselves to keep both eyes open but only concentrate on the image from the scope. I can do this about half the time but some days it just doesn't work. All this might sound a bit wimpy and even bizarre to a seasoned scope user, but not everyone finds using a scope easy.

Anyways it sounds like the poster would like a scope that is just easier to look through.

Lee
 
I have used scopes for over thirty years by now, and still don't enjoy squinting with one eye. Not because I cannot easily do it, but because squinting with one eye results in the eyes needing to re-accommodate a bit for binocular viewing immediately afterwards.

Therefore I have for some ten years now used the system that shooters, especially biathletes, use. You keep both eyes open, but have a neutral grey or blackish obstruction attached to the scope in front of the idle eye. This does not need to be very close to the eye nor does it need to cover the entire field of view of the eye. In fact, it is better if it does not cover the eye, as then the idle eye does not dark-adapt which would be a problem when you want to view with bins again. What I have is about 3-4" in diameter and placed about an inch in front of my eye. I made it out of some copper electrical wire and some self-adhesive black flock, and it sits in place with a rubber band around the EP barrel.

But this was a digression, and I suggest this thread would go back to topic again.

Kimmo
 
kabsetz said:
I have used scopes for over thirty years by now, and still don't enjoy squinting with one eye. Not because I cannot easily do it, but because squinting with one eye results in the eyes needing to re-accommodate a bit for binocular viewing immediately afterwards.

Therefore I have for some ten years now used the system that shooters, especially biathletes, use. You keep both eyes open, but have a neutral grey or blackish obstruction attached to the scope in front of the idle eye. This does not need to be very close to the eye nor does it need to cover the entire field of view of the eye. In fact, it is better if it does not cover the eye, as then the idle eye does not dark-adapt which would be a problem when you want to view with bins again. What I have is about 3-4" in diameter and placed about an inch in front of my eye. I made it out of some copper electrical wire and some self-adhesive black flock, and it sits in place with a rubber band around the EP barrel.

But this was a digression, and I suggest this thread would go back to topic again.

Kimmo
Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be a great new item from one of the oldest excisting microscope builders. A twin oculair for a telescope like they do with microscopes.
Now THAT would draw my attention.

Jan
 
jan van daalen said:
Wouldn't that be a great new item from one of the oldest excisting microscope builders. A twin oculair for a telescope like they do with microscopes.
Now THAT would draw my attention.

Jan
Click to expand...

There is a possible link to this thread actually Andy. Leica patented some tech for stereo microscope applications several years ago to increase depth of field and 3D effect. I read it a while ago and didn't understand the tech or even if it was in principle transferrable to binoculars, but it would be an intriguing development.
Lee
 
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Troubador said:
There is a possible link to this thread actually Andy. Leica patented some tech for stereo microscope applications several years ago to increase depth of field and 3D effect. I read it a while ago and didn't understand the tech or even if it was in principle transferrable to binoculars, but it would be an intriguing development.
Lee
Click to expand...

Thanks for bringing this up, Lee.

I visited the Leica Microsystems website and read everything I could find on the subject of Leica's FusionOptics. As usual the marketing material doesn't really provide the reader with quite enough information to understand completely how the thing works, so this is my best guess. Perhaps someone from Leica will correct me if I'm wrong.

It appears that a full aperture/full resolution image is sent to one eye. The other eye gets an image from an aperture stopped down small enough to restrict the effective pupil size of that eye, thus increasing its DOF while sacrificing some resolution. The brain takes the "best" information from each eye and combines them into an image with both high resolution and wide DOF. You may notice that in this scheme one side will have to be brighter than the other, but there could be several ways to equalize the image brightness and make both sides acceptably bright in an instrument, like a microscope, with its own artificial light source.

I made a crude binocular example of this system, just to see if it works outside of microscopy, by stopping down one side of my 8x56 FL to 15mm. I set up targets in a fairly dark room, one at about 18' and the other just in front of it at about 16.5'. I focused on the more distant target with one eye open to about 3.75 mm. I could easily see that the closer target (when moved to the field center) was in better focus through the side stopped down to 15mm, indicating the expected wider DOF with my eye's pupil effectively restricted to 1.9mm. When I looked with both eyes I found that the wider DOF was more or less what I still "saw", even though only one eye actually saw it. Apparently my brain had chosen the "better" side to dominate the image. The thing I cooked up seems to offer pretty good evidence, at least to me, that the principle behind FusionOptics works (provided I understand it properly), but obviously a binocular with one normal exit pupil and one tiny exit pupil would not be very desirable.

Henry
 
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NDhunter said:
Omid:

I think your idea has merit, except for your last words about the topic.

"The drawbacks are some loss of light and a bit lower resolution"

That says it all, I suppose most all optical engineers, understand the situation.

Good luck in your pursuits, I hope it works out for you.

Jerry
Click to expand...

Thank you! There is always a price to pay for something we gain. Here my method provides "ease of view" at the expense of some loss in light transmission. This is inevitable since the the light beam existing the binoculars become much larger and not all of it will go trough the observer's eye pupil. I am guessing - don't have hard measurements yet - this new system would produce the brightness level of a 30mm objective in a 50mm binoculars. Given that we have superb 10X25 binoculars and they are perfectly adequate for they light viewing, this should be acceptable for most daylight viewing.

Now, going back to the "topic" of the thread, I am aware that Leica has recently obtained rights to some "super-large-field-of-view" eyepiece design but I don't think this would be incorporated yet. It will likely be an open hinge model with some minute optical improvements.. If you guys want something truly new, then please bear with me till I get my designs adapted by a mainstream manufacturer (and don't forget to pray for me or at least verbally encourage me here!)

-Omid
 
Moderators please note!

Lee's post #13 and my post #14 were on topic in the "New Binoculars from Leica" thread. They have nothing at all to do with Omid's innovation.

Henry Link
 
Hi Omid,

Forgive me for not having read your patent, but I recall from some previous discussion that part of your invention involves projection of the image onto a screen, which can then be viewed from any distance or angle. Of course the optics before and after that screen leave plenty of room for creativity! But could you say, if this screen projection is the brightness and resolution limitation that you mention?

We are mostly here familiar with cameras that project the image onto ground glass for composition and focusing--would it be something like that, as far as image "vividness" goes?

Ron
 
henry link said:
Thanks for bringing this up, Lee.

I visited the Leica Microsystems website and read everything I could find on the subject of Leica's FusionOptics. As usual the marketing material doesn't really provide the reader with quite enough information to understand completely how the thing works, so this is my best guess. Perhaps someone from Leica will correct me if I'm wrong.

It appears that a full aperture/full resolution image is sent to one eye. The other eye gets an image from an aperture stopped down small enough to restrict the effective pupil size of that eye, thus increasing its DOF while sacrificing some resolution. The brain takes the "best" information from each eye and combines them into an image with both high resolution and wide DOF. You may notice that in this scheme one side will have to be brighter than the other, but there could be several ways to equalize the image brightness and make both sides acceptably bright in an instrument, like a microscope, with its own artificial light source.

I made a crude binocular example of this system, just to see if it works outside of microscopy, by stopping down one side of my 8x56 FL to 15mm. I set up targets in a fairly dark room, one at about 18' and the other just in front of it at about 16.5'. I focused on the more distant target with one eye open to about 3.75 mm. I could easily see that the closer target (when moved to the field center) was in better focus through the side stopped down to 15mm, indicating the expected wider DOF with my eye's pupil effectively restricted to 1.9mm. When I looked with both eyes I found that the wider DOF was more or less what I still "saw", even though only one eye actually saw it. Apparently my brain had chosen the "better" side to dominate the image. The thing I cooked up seems to offer pretty good evidence, at least to me, that the principle behind FusionOptics works (provided I understand it properly), but obviously a binocular with one normal exit pupil and one tiny exit pupil would not be very desirable.

Henry
Click to expand...

Thanks for your summary of this technology Henry and especially for your practical experiment to verify its effect.

Lee
 
Omid said:
Thank you! There is always a price to pay for something we gain. Here my method provides "ease of view" at the expense of some loss in light transmission. This is inevitable since the the light beam existing the binoculars become much larger and not all of it will go trough the observer's eye pupil. I am guessing - don't have hard measurements yet - this new system would produce the brightness level of a 30mm objective in a 50mm binoculars. Given that we have superb 10X25 binoculars and they are perfectly adequate for they light viewing, this should be acceptable for most daylight viewing.

Now, going back to the "topic" of the thread, I am aware that Leica has recently obtained rights to some "super-large-field-of-view" eyepiece design but I don't think this would be incorporated yet. It will likely be an open hinge model with some minute optical improvements.. If you guys want something truly new, then please bear with me till I get my designs adapted by a mainstream manufacturer (and don't forget to pray for me or at least verbally encourage me here!)

-Omid
Click to expand...

Hi Omid,

The topic of the thread has changed.
Taking the risk it will be moved again:
About what kind of super large field of view eyepiece are you aware of?
 
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