zeiss 8/10x54 HT (1 Viewer)

brocknroller · Jun 13, 2014

james holdsworth said:
I said such flaws would be unacceptable for the Terra, so take it as you want - I expect an expensive instrument to produce a fine image, especially when we have so many other binoculars [far cheaper] that don't seem to be dogged by poor QA or design.

James,

Missed the comments on the Terra.

I agree with you, for the most part, however, I would be more forgiving of flaws that weren't "fatal" in a lower priced bin if it otherwise performed well. For example, the 8x30 M7 I tried had more field curvature in one side than the other. The lesser side was still acceptable and I would have been happy with that sample, particularly since it didn't have the bare metal rings that other samples had, which caused veiling glare. Bare metal parts that are supposed to be painted and that cause flare would not be acceptable to me even at the $300 price point.

IMO, the higher the price, the better the QC should be since you are, after all, paying for premium quality at $1,000-$2,600.

Brock

Vespobuteo · Jun 13, 2014

Kimmo:
could it be lemon?
Very low serial number?

Perhaps "less fortunate items" are handed out to dealers as early demo samples?

james holdsworth · Jun 14, 2014

Vespobuteo said:
Kimmo:
could it be lemon?
Very low serial number?

Perhaps "less fortunate items" are handed out to dealers as early demo samples?

If that were the case, Kimmo could open up a fruit stand........

henry link · Jun 16, 2014

I’ve now spent some considerable time with the 8x54 HT. Once I have things organized I’ll start another thread with the results of the tests I did, including photos of lateral chromatic aberration, star-tests, color bias, etc.

For folks who just want the skinny without the optogeeky details I’ll just say that the sample I saw was just as bad as the one Kimmo saw and in nearly identical ways.

The main problems I could identify are excessive lateral color, which appears close to the field center or even in the center with very slight pupil decentering, and excessive spherical aberration, which is still not well corrected even when the binocular is stopped down to 22mm. There are also other anomalies in the star test, which may play a role. Perhaps others will have some ideas about those when I post the star-test photos.

I’ll just add that this specimen’s failure to form a sharp image in the center of the field was not subtle. I think any but the most casual user would find it unacceptable in a binocular at any price.

karmantra · Jun 16, 2014

henry link said:
I’ve now spent some considerable time with the 8x54 HT. Once I have things organized I’ll start another thread with the results of the tests I did, including photos of lateral chromatic aberration, star-tests, color bias, etc.

For folks who just want the skinny without the optogeeky details I’ll just say that the sample I saw was just as bad as the one Kimmo saw and in nearly identical ways.

The main problems I could identify are excessive lateral color, which appears close to the field center or even in the center with very slight pupil decentering, and excessive spherical aberration, which is still not well corrected even when the binocular is stopped down to 22mm. There are also other anomalies in the star test, which may play a role. Perhaps others will have some ideas about those when I post the star-test photos.

I’ll just add that this specimen’s failure to form a sharp image in the center of the field was not subtle. I think any but the most casual user would find it unacceptable in a binocular at any price.

Yikes! I was close to ordering an 8x54 from Eagle Optics, but I'll back away from the 8x56 market for now--great concept, lightweight...but 'suspect' quality issues!

james holdsworth · Jun 16, 2014

It's well past time for a comment from Mike Jensen. When a flagship model, costing close to $3000.00 is proven to be consistently faulty, and appears faulty to a degree that even $100.00 bino's are not, then it is time for Zeiss to take action - recall the entire line and start over.[and apologize and hope they haven't ruined the good rep. formed with the 42 mm HT]

It's clear the 54 mm HT are not nearly ready for prime-time and it says nothing of Zeiss to keep on releasing such a dud......and it pains me to say such a thing but the company cannot allow something like this to continue. The whole QA dept. needs retraining by the looks of it.

james holdsworth · Jun 16, 2014

karmantra said:
Yikes! I was close to ordering an 8x54 from Eagle Optics, but I'll back away from the 8x56 market for now--great concept, lightweight...but 'suspect' quality issues!

The Conquest seems to have tested well, and a good price too.

karmantra · Jun 16, 2014

james holdsworth said:
The Conquest seems to have tested well, and a good price too.

James: I haven't tried the 8x56 Conquest HD, but I did view through the same-dimensions 15x56 Conquest HD. No problems with the view, but I had a hard time wrapping my smallish hands around it (no thumb indents or side cutouts) and with its fast focus had a hard time getting it into a fine focus, although a little practice would take care of that. The view though was quite nice for a 15x.

JabaliHunter · Jun 16, 2014

james holdsworth said:
It's well past time for a comment from Mike Jensen. When a flagship model, costing close to $3000.00 is proven to be consistently faulty, and appears faulty to a degree that even $100.00 bino's are not, then it is time for Zeiss to take action - recall the entire line and start over.[and apologize and hope they haven't ruined the good rep. formed with the 42 mm HT]

It's clear the 54 mm HT are not nearly ready for prime-time and it says nothing of Zeiss to keep on releasing such a dud......and it pains me to say such a thing but the company cannot allow something like this to continue. The whole QA dept. needs retraining by the looks of it.

Is it a Q&A issue or a design flaw?

NDhunter · Jun 17, 2014

JabaliHunter said:
Is it a Q&A issue or a design flaw?

This is a very good question, but I think it is all about quality control.

Zeiss has been very busy lately with lots of new optics models, from
binoculars, rifle scopes and spotting scopes.

Maintaining quality at the factory floor, to what goes into the box, is very important.

The Zeiss Terra had some growing pains, and I have not posted this photo on here, but I do think now is the time.

The Terra is made in China, and this is an early example of how the size
was applied. This same photo made it clear to some at a higher level that this is not acceptable. It was soon corrected.

Zeiss can and will make the Victory a binocular that they are proud of.
So we will see.

Jerry

james holdsworth · Jun 17, 2014

JabaliHunter said:
Is it a Q&A issue or a design flaw?

If it is a design flaw, then shame on Zeiss for ever releasing the binocular in the 1st place. I would have thought that many Zeiss expert technicians would have checked out the optical performance before they were released to the [unsuspecting] public.

Worse still, two of the most respected Birdforum members were handed multiple bad samples. No better way to ruin a reputation....

ronh · Jun 17, 2014

I am confident this is not what the optician calculated. The objective lens, even if it's "only a binocular", is an ED triplet, a persnikity beast and sensitive to error. The simplest dumb thing I can think of to cause excessive SA is an incorrect spacing between elements. I bet it's that or something equally minor and easy to correct.

There's often some kind of startup foible. More than one of the first FLs was reported here to have the focus knob pop right off, with springs and doodads flying all over the place. More than one first SV had, apparently, and incredibly, mold on the insides. Hooray for the 42mm HT which seemed good from the get go! But this kind of shenanigin is nothing out of the ordinary. Zeiss will not crumble into the sea quite yet.

Ron

Hermann · Jun 17, 2014

james holdsworth said:
It's well past time for a comment from Mike Jensen.

It sure is. You can't just walk into a forum to tell everyone how wonderful one's products are and keep quiet when major problems arise. To his credit Mike Jensen helped people with their problems before - but this is on an entirely different scale. 2 out of 2 HT 54s apparently lemons, that's *not* acceptable.

james holdsworth said:
It's clear the 54 mm HT are not nearly ready for prime-time and it says nothing of Zeiss to keep on releasing such a dud......

Well, there was a time when one could order a new product from one of the major manufacturers as soon as it was announced. Now it seems like one has to wait half a year at least to see whether there are any major flaws.

Hermann

Vespobuteo · Jun 17, 2014

Are the 54mm HT:s made in Germany, or outsourced?

Hermann · Jun 17, 2014

Vespobuteo said:
Are the 54mm HT:s made in Germany, or outsourced?

AFAIK they're made in Germany, in Wetzlar, to be precise.

Hermann

Vespobuteo · Jun 17, 2014

Hermann said:
It sure is. You can't just walk into a forum to tell everyone how wonderful one's products are and keep quiet when major problems arise. To his credit Mike Jensen helped people with their problems before - but this is on an entirely different scale. 2 out of 2 HT 54s apparently lemons, that's *not* acceptable.

Well, there was a time when one could order a new product from one of the major manufacturers as soon as it was announced. Now it seems like one has to wait half a year at least to see whether there are any major flaws.

Hermann

And all zeiss binoculars had 25 years of warranty.

At this price levels I thought that every single unit
were carefully tested to meet the standard of a
premium product.

Launching so many products the same year was probably not a good idea.

I will go and look at the HT54 for myself this week,
I'm very sensitive to CA…
:eek!:

kabsetz · Jun 17, 2014

ronh said:
I am confident this is not what the optician calculated. The objective lens, even if it's "only a binocular", is an ED triplet, a persnikity beast and sensitive to error. The simplest dumb thing I can think of to cause excessive SA is an incorrect spacing between elements. I bet it's that or something equally minor and easy to correct.

Ron

Ron,

Something along these lines is my guess also. It does not seem plausible that the prototypes would have exhibited the kind of image quality myself and Henry saw in these production units. They must have been better than the corresponding 56 mm FL's, otherwise the product launch would make little sense. Nevertheless, Zeiss designs do seem to generally allow higher levels of spherical aberration than those I've seen from Swarovski, Nikon and Canon in the recent years.

Let's wait for Henry's detailed report and (hopefully) the responses from Z. As you said, it is early days into the production run of these binoculars.

Kimmo

mjensen6577 · Jun 17, 2014

james holdsworth said:
It's well past time for a comment from Mike Jensen. When a flagship model, costing close to $3000.00 is proven to be consistently faulty, and appears faulty to a degree that even $100.00 bino's are not, then it is time for Zeiss to take action - recall the entire line and start over.[and apologize and hope they haven't ruined the good rep. formed with the 42 mm HT]

It's clear the 54 mm HT are not nearly ready for prime-time and it says nothing of Zeiss to keep on releasing such a dud......and it pains me to say such a thing but the company cannot allow something like this to continue. The whole QA dept. needs retraining by the looks of it.

I've seen this develop and waited to see what other feedback came from this thread. This information has been clearly communicated to the Product management team in Wetzlar and has been further pushed to the head of R&D to sample internal inventory to evaluate this situation. I can not comment on the details of the factory findings at this time since I have not been notified. However, I can say that the internal specs were defined to assure that the maximum CA allowed in the 54's was to not exceed the small amount of CA that could be detected in the 56mm FL's. I do know that the CA in the 56FL's is extremely minimal so this thread is surprising to us. We are evaluating this situation and more info to come as we clarify our findings.

henry link · Jun 17, 2014

Mike,

Here are a couple of photos of a homemade target I use to evaluate lateral chromatic aberration; photographed through the 8x56 FL on the left and the 8x54 HT on the right. At the distance these were made the centers of the white bars are about 1º of AFOV apart, so the entire width is about 13º of apparent field with the cross shaped bars at the field center.

Henry

brocknroller · Jun 17, 2014

henry link said:
Mike,

Here are a couple of photos of a homemade target I use to evaluate lateral chromatic aberration; photographed through the 8x56 FL on the left, 8x54 HT on the right.

Henry

Thanks for posting those, Henry. If the "internal specs were defined to assure that the maximum CA allowed in the 54's was to not exceed the small amount of CA that could be detected in the 56mm FL's," as Mike stated above, then something got messed up in the manufacturing or assembly.

Hopefully, your work and Kimmo's will help Zeiss get to the root of the problem and come up with a fix. In the meantime, anyone hankering for an oversized format Zeiss HT had better hold on to their plastic a while longer.

Brock

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