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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Follow up testing Noctivid (1 Viewer)

I can understand your feelings and frustration but I am with Globetrotter on this one. TV, Cinema, computer monitor, cell phone: I love 'em all in their place and their place isn't 1/2 an inch in front of my eyes. :-O

Lee

Think you underestimate the potential of VR technology. The display won't be on a screen, but projected directly to the eye.
The scale of the effort to get there dwarfs the investments in binoculars, because the potential markets in entertainment and training are so vastly bigger.
 
I wouldn't mind get huge myopia as I am long sighted.

Military pilots fly on head up displays and I doubt that it affects their basic vision.
 
I mean nothing personal here, but whenever I see this wish for digital electronic eyes rather than analog binoculars I am reminded of a line written by Wendell Berry in his essay "Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition."

"It is easy for me to see that the next great division in the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines."
 
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I mean nothing personal here, but whenever I see this wish for digital electronic eyes rather than analog binoculars I am reminded of a line written by Wendell Berry in his essay "Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition."

"It is easy for me to see that the next great division in the world will be between people who wish to live as creatures and people who wish to live as machines."

Probably true and not a great trend, looking at people buried in their iphones. Hopefully using machines to admire nature will be a bridge.

That aside, whether the bird image is processed through a couple of inches of super refined and shaped glass coated with dozens of layers of individually tailored molecules or through some sensor and projector does not seem conceptually very different to me.
 
A new digital binocular will be obsolete almost before release, be unserviceable and designed to fail after a few years such that the owner needs the next step up - a la iphones etc.

I'll keep my antiques, thanks.
 
A new digital binocular will be obsolete almost before release, be unserviceable and designed to fail after a few years such that the owner needs the next step up - a la iphones etc.

I'll keep my antiques, thanks.

Hi James,

I tend to agree with you as I am not even enthusiastic about image stabilization, which entails optics and mechanics and not digitized imagery. It seems to me that the resolution of a good binocular still exceeds the resolution of any screen and perhaps of a heads up display. Fifty years ago, when I was concerned about such things, first class photographic optics, especially for 35 mm cameras, exceeded the ability of film to record their resolution.

Yes, those antiques do not need any batteries.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur :hi:
 
I'm on team GT, Lee , James, Arthur. I'll be content to use old fashioned
glass and metal ... or plastic ;) for the remainder of my days.

I don't carry a digital camera in the field. I did in the beginning and then came to the
conclusion that, for me, I like to keep it real simple. I like having just my binocular
and my memories of the day. I record my sightings most of the time on ebird and have a little
paper life list booklet. That's about as complicated or fancy as I want to get I think.
 
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I'm on team GT, Lee , James, Arthur. I'll be content to use old fashioned
glass and metal ... or plastic ;) for the remainder of my days.

I don't carry a digital camera in the field. I did in the beginning and then came to the
conclusion that, for me, I like to keep it real simple. I like having just my binocular
and my memories of the day. I record my sightings most of the time on ebird and have a little
paper life list booklet. That's about as complicated or fancy as I want to get I think.

I think this is a very sensible way to go, GG.

If I am out observing AND taking pictures, I realize later that I haven't really been looking at the wildlife while I was out there and have instead focused on getting that picture sharp etc (and then, my camera isn't waterproof so in bad weather, and this is the case quite frequently in this part of the world :C, only the bino is with me anyway).
 
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A new digital binocular will be obsolete almost before release, be unserviceable and designed to fail after a few years such that the owner needs the next step up - a la iphones etc.

I'll keep my antiques, thanks.

This is the way KODAK and Leica thought about digital photography. The way MAG LITE thought about LED and the list is long.
The future is digital and companies have to look 15 years from now where to stand otherwise they are history.
The youth (next customer) is the future and they want progress. Everybody can call digital optics non progress for them, but it's gonna arrive within 10 years from now.

Jan
 
This is the way KODAK and Leica thought about digital photography. The way MAG LITE thought about LED and the list is long.
The future is digital and companies have to look 15 years from now where to stand otherwise they are history.
The youth (next customer) is the future and they want progress. Everybody can call digital optics non progress for them, but it's gonna arrive within 10 years from now.

Jan


Nice to know that you can see into the future Jan!;)

What other predictions can you make for us?

Bob
 
Bob,

It just reflects the talks with the brands.

Sorry if I made the impression I can see in the future and predict.

Jan

With your experience and exposure to the overall optic market pulse, your digital future "predictions" Jan are probably a sure bet. As per several consumables in the technology realm, sometimes the old ways keep hanging on (vinyl records, film cameras, phone land lines, etc.) and others give up the days of old rather quickly (tube TV's, typewriters, etc.). I have a feeling that optical glass will eventually coexist with digital optics and as other technologies have shown, both have their strong points and dedicated followers!

Ted
 
But will Robots, Synths allow us to continue as humans?

Perhaps a thermal imager will be able to tell if one is with a warm hearted human or a cold Synth.

Mind you, there are some cold hearted humans as well.

I think that it is inevitable that digital binoculars will prevail, at least if we are around for another twenty years.
 
I have need for both photography/video and range finding - and would like to see it combined in my binoculars WITHOUT becoming an ergonomic nightmare. Others will want wireless internet connectivity with it as well.

The political environment is certain to change as technology does and such instruments will likely become heavily regulated and require government registration, ownership identification, and an assortment of other fees.

Maybe the simplicity of the "good ol' days" is best.

CG
 
The scale of the effort to get there dwarfs the investments in binoculars, because the potential markets in entertainment and training are so vastly bigger.

So why should they bother developing virtual binoculars?

Entertainment and training can easily be accomplished without creating a representation of the real world in real time, which is what binoculars are for and don't lets forget that average American won't spend more than $500 on bins. I'm not sure bins loaded with a pile of apps will open their pocket books wider either.

I am sure digibins are on the way and they will probably adjust your home heating and your car's seating and even send in your tax returns, but they will need to be ergonomically great, be lightweight and powered by sunlight (and thats before considering their representation of the world) before I will look at them.

Lee
 
In astronomy using telescopes there are some observers who still observe visually, but the majority now I think use digital imagers, cameras.
Images are stacked using from maybe 10 to 10,000 stacked images, where the best, say one third of the frames, are chosen automatically.
With thousands of images stacked, the resulting resolution achieved is about the square root of the number of frames better than a single image. The single images may look awful.

Because I have always observed visually I immediately spot fakes. In a way every digital image is a fake. The astro photos are chosen to look how the astronomer wants the photo to look.
I have seen images of Jupiter at an impossible angle to the moons. Uranus detail, which I thought was just artifacts. It was, and by a world class imager.

The telescopes are driven automatically to any one of thousands of objects. Star names are used, which were never used in the past because some bright spark inventing the programme decided to be 'clever'.

It is a mad world, but that is how it is.

I just saw a 75mm Newtonian (National Geographic?) selling by Lidl or Aldi for £49.99. It has a solar filter detachable on the front. On a flimsy mount and clearly for children at this time of the year.

I wouldn't go near it. I would not show it to a child. And I suggest no reader here should purchase it unless a very experienced solar observer.

I think that inevitably a child or several will get serious permanent eye damage from one of these scopes.
It is sold for financial gain, without proper regard for safety. To be sold to people with no knowledge of solar observing and how dangerous it is to look at the Sun.
 
This is the way KODAK and Leica thought about digital photography. The way MAG LITE thought about LED and the list is long.
The future is digital and companies have to look 15 years from now where to stand otherwise they are history.
The youth (next customer) is the future and they want progress. Everybody can call digital optics non progress for them, but it's gonna arrive within 10 years from now.

Jan

Oh, I agree they are coming - I even started a thread about that awhile back - it's just that I see more complexity, fragility, earlier obsolescence and increased costs just to keep up.

All the same reasons I hate cell phones and digital cameras - but use both grudgingly.
 
Oh, I agree they are coming - I even started a thread about that awhile back - it's just that I see more complexity, fragility, earlier obsolescence and increased costs just to keep up.

All the same reasons I hate cell phones and digital cameras - but use both grudgingly.

Absolutely. History will repeat itself. Digital camera's had a lifetime of 6 months and a better sample from another brand popped up and so it went on and on. It happened with comp's and this will happen with digioptics.
Nightvision was unaffordable 10 years back and now it's common goods. Thermal was platina and now available for a few hunderd bucks.
A few years back I saw a hybrid (optics, nightvision and thermal in one device) which costed 87.000,00 dollar (military issue) and it will reach the consumer market round 10.000,00 dollar in a few years.

Warranty will be brought back to 2 years because of the electronics and sales will be done more and more directly from brands to consumer (vertical integration) which means the price can go down.

Jan
 
The one point in which I think digital is a way forward, is as a means to replace the large and cumbersome spotting scope with some hand-held that can achieve a sharp 200 x image in as small package. After all, who wants to lug a scope and 'pod half-way round the world when you might be able to replace it with something that looks more like a palm-sized camcorder?
 
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