Zeiss Jena Klein-DF 6x18 - first impressions
The little Zeiss arrived today and I got the opportunity to try it briefly.
First, I need to point out that it leaves me with some mixed emotions. Admittedly, my expectations weren't too high so I think of it as a nice acquaintance rather than a new love.
This is a collector's item and its place is the shelf - right where I intended to put it. That said, it has its weaker and stronger points.
The focus wheel seems to need some lubrication, and the barrels seem to lose synchronization if the focus wheel is turned all the way to near point and back beyond infinity.
Diopter is located on the right barrel and there is no indications like numbers, dots or lines.
The focus wheel goes anti-clockwise to infinity which was a real surprise to me.
It is slightly larger than I expected - very similar to my Minox BV 8x25 and huge in comparison to the minuscule Nikon Mikron. As can be seen in the pics, the build style is just about right for a compact binocular - two fingers can be wrapped around one barrel.
The Klein-DF is not only klein, above all it is very light. The ridged bakelite housing is sturdy and light, but the appearance and the weight make the binocular feel very much like a toy.
"MEIN ERSTES FERNGLAS" à la 1962, if you see what I mean.
The eyepieces are equipped with non-adjustable eyecups- or if you prefer, the ocular lenses are quite deeply recessed. However, the depth seems very adequate as I can't provoke any blackening by moving the bin in or out.
Looking through the objective ends reveal a major prism (or mirror?) cut-off.
Careful studies of the exit pupils confirm this finding.
The roof prism edge is very visible, too.
I compared the FOV with that of the Nikon Mikron and found it to be virtually identical, which translates to 140 m/1000 m.
However, the magnification is a smidgeon less than the Nikon's. In combination with the Klein-DF's ever present eyecups, the PFOV seems quite a bit less than the Nikon's.
You may wonder what I did to evaluate the magnification, and I simply let one eye look through one of the bins, and the other through the other.
Then I reversed the procedure to make sure it wasn't the eyes themselves that were responsible for the difference.
The Nikon's image was ever so little larger all the time. Comparing the Klein-DF to a Pentax Papilio 6.5x21 revealed a substantial difference in magnification.
Now for the optics. Is this a well kept secret of Eastern German optics engineering? There have been some statements that it can compete with the Zeiss West and Leica compacts. Frankly, I haven't tried any vintage BRD compacts, but I can tell you this is not an alpha bin.
First the good point - it handles glare a lot better than the Nikon, but puts even the Minox at shame. The image is not very bright but shows the colors reasonably saturated, compared to the other two who suffer from the glare problems.
The sweet spot is not actually large, I estimate it covers about 50% of the field, if I'm generous. There is a marked edge where all blur shows up almost immediately, and I suspect this is part of my feeling this is a narrow bin.
Further tests show that the edges can be refocused to a very high level of sharpness, showing they suffer from a marked curvature of field.
The focus difference also causes some edge distortion where the blurred parts appear less magnified along the field stop.
As a comparison, the Nikon Mikron's sweet spot is about 70-75% of the FOV and only the last couple of percent of the field show such dramatic sharpness fall-off.
This 'review' is not intended to hail the Nikon, but one cannot avoid getting impressed what a glorious image it has.
Sadly it's made for puppet-sized optics aficionados, and it is frustrating to always stumble to find the focus wheel and feel the bins move away while focusing, just because they're too small to hold.
The Zeiss Klein-DF's strongest point is its well-thought ergonomic design. Apart from that, only the glare handling is better than the other two compact bins I own.
But it's really cute in my shelf
EDIT: I will do some more testing tomorrow.
