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Buying Chinese products (binoculars) yes or no (1 Viewer)

Like I said, if they don't do this, someone else will do it for them.

On another note, I'm curious as to what others think about "copying" the alphas really means. What features/innovations do the alphas possess that are actually patentable? If any, have they been infringed?

Innovations in pure optics are rare though they are seen in the patent literature but they don't cover the optics were talking about.

Most of the innovation is in optomechanical design (and it's where the major bins makers all hold patents): clever focuser designs especially with center diopter setting.

In this case the Chinese EDs use a simple "move the right ocular" (sort of individual focuser) design. Old as the hills, so to speak, check your favorite porro. The Top Bins (and some others) use a more clever mechanism with center diopter setting to lock an offset between one focuser lens and the other.

So changing to a locking center diopter setting would be an interesting indication of a change in Chinese ED bin optomechanical design.

They don't seem to patent their various coating designs (though there are patents on various AR and phase coatings most expired) preferring I suppose to keep them as a trade secret (or perhaps improved coatings aren't innovative enough in the "non-obvious" sense to gain patent protection) though they're "easy" to reverse engineer with an ion microprobe for composition (and with more effort for thickness). I suspect the physicas of multilayer coatings is well enough known in the regular textbook literature that the design and manufacture of good coatings is not beyond a lot of companies now (including the Chinese). Very good coatings might still be the province of the Top Bins though.

And their optical designs seem to be trade secrets (and again easily reverse engineered). Not protected in any way except trade secret i.e. your employees and the company doesn't reveal the design but if the opposition can figure it out they can use the design idea.

They will also hold design patents which cover the appearance of the binoculars (the trade dress) so that people can't make bins that look just like Top Bin XXX.

So I'm not sure what copying means in this context: using well known optical designs with well known coatings with well known optomechanics (as the Chinese ED seem to do) with careful enough construction with good components doesn't seem to be copying anyone but just using "known" technology carefully enough to make optically high quality bins but doing it at a lower cost.

So the real innovation is the pricing for a given (high) quality. And I wouldn't write that off as trivial.
 
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So I'm not sure what copying means in this context: using well known optical designs with well known coatings with well known optomechanics (as the Chinese ED seem to do) with careful enough construction with good components doesn't seem to be copying anyone but just using "known" technology carefully enough to make optically high quality bins but doing it at a lower cost.

So the real innovation is the pricing for a given (high) quality. And I wouldn't write that off as trivial.
Sorry to keep coming back to bicycles (my other obsession) but it seems to me that in these, exactly the same principle applies, now that engineers have exhausted (almost?) all possible innovation. And most good bikes are now designed in the UK or Europe, but manufactured in Asia (even the US companies like Trek, Giant etc.). Every so often someone like Shimano comes up with a "different" hub, or lever design or whatever, but it gets "copied" with minor cosmetic variation. Two grand will now buy you a bicycle that´s 99.99999% the equal of a Tour winner. But that´s what bike companies are doing...as well as producing the "average" bike, they´re lowering the costs of top-class models and churning them out (with different livery each year....) Maybe because "serious" cyclists change their bikes more often than binocular-users? (I mean normal, psychologically healthy bino-users, not us lot.....;))
 
Thanks for the optics/trade refresher. So do all the top bins have their own fancy new diopter mechanisms? I'm not sure if I've seen the center diopter adjustment on multiple brands. I wonder who it actually belongs to and if its licensed from them.

And the ocular gets dirty less easily.
 
Don't RSPB HD and Vortex Fury already have center diopter? They are made in China too.

The Swaro EL and Nikon Monarch have been on the market for god knows how long. The companies behind those names do not seem to bother to come up new EL or Monarch every couple of years as long as there is no competition and they can sell the products for whatever price people are willing to pay. For folks who value innovation, those high quality binoculars from China should force Alpha makers to actually "innovate" so they can differentiate themselves from the 99.999% as good competitors. Without competition, we will be naive to think those companies (German, Japanese, Chinese, or whatever brands out there) will innovate just for the sake of engineering curiosity.3:)
 
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falcondude: Good comment about the (new?) RSPB HD (didn't the placement of the diopter setting just move ...) and the Vortex Fury. I wonder if that's Vortex own optomech design or exclusively licensed to them from one of the ODMs. Exclusive licensing is another approach to keeping a feature to you own company (at least for a single OEM).

BTW, I'm not sure that I want (or need) a new fancy product every year but that's more a consequence of the current rapid change in the Chinese bin makers approach. I would expect them to calm down after a while. After all Swaro doesn't want to annoy its customers too much once they had the latest and greatest.

SPARTACVS: not sure what you mean by "And the ocular gets dirty less easily". I wouldn't say that was a feature of either setting method.
 
Maybe. But mistakes have been made before.

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."

-Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)

I would never say never but optics is a pretty well established field.

Kelvin's comment was to the whole field of physics which was silly statement (especially as there were some known problems at the time) but the field of binocular design (as a subfield of optics) is much much smaller rather like Sancho's field of bikes (Champs du bicyclette, peut etre?)): the designs are quite constrained.

It's a bit like saying "Well there could be big breakthroughs in tea bag design in the future" and quoting Kelvin's statement to put down the arguments against. Maybe but it's unlikely.

Think about the last major innovations in this field and the current outstanding problems.

I think lightweight IS would be the next big step beyond moving out of optics entirely which would be a paradigm shift (to HD video mediate by a image processor).

In the meantime Nikon EDG (from it's advertising and placement e.g. in Audubon mag) is trying to re-educate the public that "good bins" are "sharp to the edge". And it looks like Swaro will be next on that bandwagon next year. Nice optical design improvement? Yes. Innovation? Not really, IMHO.

Electroptical systems are the future so long as you can wear them around you neck ;)
 
I would never say never but optics is a pretty well established field.

Kelvin's comment was to the whole field of physics which was silly statement (especially as there were some known problems at the time) but the field of binocular design (as a subfield of optics) is much much smaller rather like Sancho's field of bikes (Champs du bicyclette, peut etre?)): the designs are quite constrained.

It's a bit like saying "Well there could be big breakthroughs in tea bag design in the future" and quoting Kelvin's statement to put down the arguments against. Maybe but it's unlikely.

Think about the last major innovations in this field and the current outstanding problems.

I think lightweight IS would be the next big step beyond moving out of optics entirely which would be a paradigm shift (to HD video mediate by a image processor).

In the meantime Nikon EDG (from it's advertising and placement e.g. in Audubon mag) is trying to re-educate the public that "good bins" are "sharp to the edge". And it looks like Swaro will be next on that bandwagon next year. Nice optical design improvement? Yes. Innovation? Not really, IMHO.

Electroptical systems are the future so long as you can wear them around you neck ;)

IS + computers can probably do some funky stuff to bins in the future. So our alphas now are probably not so hot in 20 years.
 

KP-
I would never say never but optics is a pretty well established field.


Granted optics generally is well established but who knows what tricks might come down the pike with bins and/or scopes.

It's a bit like saying "Well there could be big breakthroughs in tea bag design in the future" and quoting Kelvin's statement to put down the arguments against.

Or, like analogizing optics with tea bags to be reductive.


I think lightweight IS would be the next big step beyond moving out of optics entirely which would be a paradigm shift (to HD video mediate by a image processor).

Here I agree. Some kind of passive IS built into a design that looks and handles like a conventional bin would be huge. The video thing is bound to happen, but will be contrary to many folks idea of a field optic.

In the meantime Nikon EDG (from it's advertising and placement e.g. in Audubon mag) is trying to re-educate the public that "good bins" are "sharp to the edge". And it looks like Swaro will be next on that bandwagon next year. Nice optical design improvement? Yes. Innovation? Not really, IMHO.

Yeah, and I don't care about that "feature" either. Birding bins are birding bins and astro bins, well...

I love to use the Kelvin quote though as it humorously rephrases "never say never". It may have been a silly statement as you say, but it was said by an otherwise brilliant man.
 
Kevin Conville;1542957Or said:
A few years ago, some company here started marketing tea-bags that were pyramid-shaped. I´m not joking. They maintained that they made better tea. Given that tea-bags in general make crap tea, I never tried them. (It occurs to me that, amazingly, prisms are pyramid-shaped....and that tea is yet another fine Chinese innovation we´ve "appropriated".....)
 
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A Tiger (imported from a Chinese Farm)got Him..Poor thing(the Tiger,I mean)

I see.
The ferocious chinese tiger .... that's what the thread is about, isn't it?
Obviously not a vegetarian tiger who lives on soy bean sprouts.

So all of you who like to tickle the tiger: count your fingers after you've gotten close to him. Or watch them tightly in the first place, or else there might be nothing much to count later. ;)
 
A few years ago, some company here started marketing tea-bags that were pyramid-shaped. I´m not joking. They maintained that they made better tea..... (It occurs to me that, amazingly, prisms are pyramid-shaped.....)

So were those tea-bags multi-coated?

I suppose their transmission rate was rather poor, and I guess their colour rendition may have been biased, too (a brownish tint maybe?).
Sounds like a rather poor design then.

A question for the experts: will Porro tea-bags yield better tea than roof tea bags?
 
Maybe because "serious" cyclists change their bikes more often than binocular-users? (I mean normal, psychologically healthy bino-users, not us lot.....;))

3:) 3:)

So were those tea-bags multi-coated?

I suppose their transmission rate was rather poor, and I guess their colour rendition may have been biased, too (a brownish tint maybe?).
Sounds like a rather poor design then.

A question for the experts: will Porro tea-bags yield better tea than roof tea bags?

We could put them on the menu and do a controlled test for the non normal psycologically non healthy bin users....Sancho can be chief judge.
 
.... the non normal psycologically non healthy bin users....Sancho can be chief judge.

Oh dear!
Are you talking yourself into trouble here?


Pyramidal greetings from behind the bar at the R at the end of Everything,
Tea-Tom*




*who is actually gulping amorphic coffee this morning.
 
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