The Kingfisher
Well-known member
I have ordered the new EDG (8x42) now. Hopefully it arrives early next week! Waiting with excitement.. |=)|
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EDG, here it comes.. (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter The Kingfisher
- Start date
Please check to see if the "ghosting" issue was resolved. This author discussed it in some detail.
http://diglloyd.com/articles/Binoculars/Binoculars-NikonEDG.html
I saw the ghosting problem within a few minutes of using an 8X42 and I was very disappointed that an expensive Nikon optic would have this fault. Hopefully, it's been addressed in the new model.
Jason Bugay Reyes
Well-known member
I tried a pair of Nikon 8x42 EDG's and sent them back because of ghosting. I don't know if it just the 8x42 or all the EDG's but it was bad!
The Ghosting Flare
While I was sitting on the stair
And testing out a brand new pair,
I saw a flare that wasn't there,
A ghosting flare that wasn't there!
I sat upon that stair today
To test my bins another way
It wasn't there again I say.
I wish that it would go away!
Ogden N. Kelvinator
While I was sitting on the stair
And testing out a brand new pair,
I saw a flare that wasn't there,
A ghosting flare that wasn't there!
I sat upon that stair today
To test my bins another way
It wasn't there again I say.
I wish that it would go away!
Ogden N. Kelvinator
James Bean
Well-known member
They also serve who only sit on the stair and stare, and have a flair to not see flare that wasn't there...
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Yes,
Ogden N. Kelvinator was a strange dude! His hypothesis was that one could create a kind of "unified field" between the scientific discipline of Psycho/Physics and the lesser discipline of Psycho/Babble and thereby make some sense out of the analysis of the quality of binoculars made for the birding fraternity. Elkcub might be able to explain it easier.
It is rumored that Kelvinator was disowned by his family after going insane doing quality control work on M3 Binoculars which were made, in part, by them for use by the armed forces in WWII.
http://www.freewebs.com/tedbrink/usa.htm#302575648
He attempted to answer all complaints about them in a manner that would be understandable by anyone. This, along with trying to put the bureaucratic specifications of their manufacture into understandable english fried his brain!
After that he devoted his life to poetry. The poem above is from "The Collected Work of Ogden N. Kelvinator." In fact it is his ENTIRE work!
Thanks for your interest in this poor forgotten soul,
Bob
James Bean
Well-known member
The name Kelvinator is not entirely unknown to me. Until quite recently a factory on the Wirral Peninsula, at Bromborough about 8 miles North of Chester, made Kelvinator fridges but now the Candy name adorns the building. It's a small world, isn't it ?
Let us know if the latest models still have the ghosting problem. I would try the EDG again if they solved this problem. You can get good deals on them right now.
NDhunter
Experienced observer
Pilate:
Careful here, in relegating the EDG with a large ghosting problem, as to the
the review here, not all of the sizes were tested. The reviewer here, raved
about the EDG in most terms.
Have you spent some time with the 8x42 EDG, or a quick glance? I appreciate comments from those who have used the optics with experience.
Jerry
I tried them for some time before I returned them. I observed the same ghosting problem the author describes in the 8x42's. I didn't try any other magnifications. It could be the problem is unique to the 8x42's. Drove me nuts though.
I saw the ghosting problem with the 8X42 EDG. Others have reported the same thing and the article I referenced was quite specific. I tested it during late afternoon sun in open forest conditions. Like CA, I'm quite certain the ghosting effect shows up more or less depending on lighting. Some may never see it, but that's not the point. I saw it and it was a real disappointment for a loyal Nikon fan.
FWIW, I tested it side-by-side with a Leica Ultravid 7X42. The Leica did not exhibit ghosting under identical conditions.
That's pretty poor performance for a $2k binocular. Did you send them back?
NDhunter
Experienced observer
Pilate:
Just a followup, not many have reported any ghosting with the EDG, including
quite a few reviews. I am very pleased with mine.
Can you comment on how you liked them otherwise? What size did you test or do you own one? That way your comments will not just dwell on a negative.
Jerry
Jason Bugay Reyes
Well-known member
Pilate:
Just a followup, not many have reported any ghosting with the EDG, including
quite a few reviews. I am very pleased with mine.
Can you comment on how you liked them otherwise? What size did you test or do you own one? That way your comments will not just dwell on a negative.
Jerry
Jerry,
I will be using the demo unit EDG 8x32 by Nikon Malaysia next week at Davao, Philippines for the Asian Bird Festival. Will let you know about the ghosting issue if I sees any
I tested the EDG, side-by-side with an Ultravid and an SE. The EDG had a nice view but almost immediately displayed the hard edge "ghosting" others have mentioned. All binoculars have some form of this, depending on lighting, but this was quite distracting and, for me, a deal killer. I was surprised when I read about it in the article I referenced in post #2.
brocknroller
porromaniac
Lloyd Chambers may be mixing macaques and mandrills in describing what he's calling "ghosting flare". Ghosting and flaring are two different animals.
Ghosting is most often seen in the evening or at night when a bin is pointed at or near a bright light sources such as the moon or a street lamp and is seen as a reflection of that light. "Ghost" because it is transparent and it moves in the opposite direction of the light source as you move the bin towards or away from the light. You might see multiple ghost images of different sizes, but all are reflections of the same light source.
Flare is due to light being reflected from lens surfaces or the insides of poorly baffled barrels or some shiny surface inside the bin, degrading the overall image, though it's most often seen as a crescent shape at the bottom of the view. Change your eye position and you can increase or reduce this effect.
Flare occurs when light, usually sunlight or bright overcast skies, is positioned at an angle above the bin. Move the bin down or away from the sky, and you can reduce or even eliminate the flaring.
A good example of flaring is the original 7x36 ED2. I usually notice this when I'm out with the bin in the late afternoon or evening and the sun is low in the sky or under a bright, overcast sky.
If I point the bin away from sun or overcast sky, the flaring reduces, if I point it up toward the sun or overcast sky, the effect will increase to the point where the entire image will become veiled ("white out").
Ghosting is most pronounced in my single coated or MC '80s porros and my '80s 9x63 non-p coated roof. As I point the bins toward a street lamp, I will start to see "spiking" at the leading edge and then a ghost image of the lamp appears and moves toward the opposite edge as I turn the bin closer to the lamp.
Looking at the moon, I might see one large ghost moon off axis and several smaller ghost moons, which "dance" around as I move the moon from the center to off center or out of view.
In this sentence "diglloyd" drops the "ghost" and uses the term flare in his review: "...it’s distracting to have this flare near bottom under some conditions, though most of the time one won’t be consciously aware of it."
Sounds like it's typical flare he's describing. I saw this in the 10x42 EDG in the late afternoon and evening when pointing the bins toward the sun or brightest part of the overcast sky, but it was no more distracting than I've seen in the 8x32 HG.
Even the 8x32 SE, which normally does a better job at controlling flare while pointing it perpendicular to the high sun in the summer, will show a distracting amount of flare when raising the SEs toward a low sun in the late afternoon.
I'm interested to hear if horukuru sees this flaring in the 8x32 EDG and under what kind of lighting conditions he sees it.
If the 8x42 model has the same degree of "flare" as the 10x42 EDG, which only appears under certain lighting conditions, I can't imagine it being a deal breaker.
Perhaps the flaring is worse in the 8x42 model, or Pileatus used his EDG more in the late afternoon/evening hours when this effect was more pronounced and was bothered by it more than Jerry and I were.
Also puzzling was Lloyd's comments about the 7x42 EDG showing more CA than the 8x42 or 8x32 models. You would think that the lower power would lessen, not increase, CA. This begs for an explanation.
Brock
Ghosting is most often seen in the evening or at night when a bin is pointed at or near a bright light sources such as the moon or a street lamp and is seen as a reflection of that light. "Ghost" because it is transparent and it moves in the opposite direction of the light source as you move the bin towards or away from the light. You might see multiple ghost images of different sizes, but all are reflections of the same light source.
Flare is due to light being reflected from lens surfaces or the insides of poorly baffled barrels or some shiny surface inside the bin, degrading the overall image, though it's most often seen as a crescent shape at the bottom of the view. Change your eye position and you can increase or reduce this effect.
Flare occurs when light, usually sunlight or bright overcast skies, is positioned at an angle above the bin. Move the bin down or away from the sky, and you can reduce or even eliminate the flaring.
A good example of flaring is the original 7x36 ED2. I usually notice this when I'm out with the bin in the late afternoon or evening and the sun is low in the sky or under a bright, overcast sky.
If I point the bin away from sun or overcast sky, the flaring reduces, if I point it up toward the sun or overcast sky, the effect will increase to the point where the entire image will become veiled ("white out").
Ghosting is most pronounced in my single coated or MC '80s porros and my '80s 9x63 non-p coated roof. As I point the bins toward a street lamp, I will start to see "spiking" at the leading edge and then a ghost image of the lamp appears and moves toward the opposite edge as I turn the bin closer to the lamp.
Looking at the moon, I might see one large ghost moon off axis and several smaller ghost moons, which "dance" around as I move the moon from the center to off center or out of view.
In this sentence "diglloyd" drops the "ghost" and uses the term flare in his review: "...it’s distracting to have this flare near bottom under some conditions, though most of the time one won’t be consciously aware of it."
Sounds like it's typical flare he's describing. I saw this in the 10x42 EDG in the late afternoon and evening when pointing the bins toward the sun or brightest part of the overcast sky, but it was no more distracting than I've seen in the 8x32 HG.
Even the 8x32 SE, which normally does a better job at controlling flare while pointing it perpendicular to the high sun in the summer, will show a distracting amount of flare when raising the SEs toward a low sun in the late afternoon.
I'm interested to hear if horukuru sees this flaring in the 8x32 EDG and under what kind of lighting conditions he sees it.
If the 8x42 model has the same degree of "flare" as the 10x42 EDG, which only appears under certain lighting conditions, I can't imagine it being a deal breaker.
Perhaps the flaring is worse in the 8x42 model, or Pileatus used his EDG more in the late afternoon/evening hours when this effect was more pronounced and was bothered by it more than Jerry and I were.
Also puzzling was Lloyd's comments about the 7x42 EDG showing more CA than the 8x42 or 8x32 models. You would think that the lower power would lessen, not increase, CA. This begs for an explanation.
Brock
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One more time...
http://diglloyd.com/articles/Binoculars/Binoculars-NikonEDG.html
He's VERY clear about his observations.
"The ghost image exhibits a brighter circular flare most of the way across the viewing area, typically showing near bottom, though this can be changed by altering the eye position, causing the ghost image to shift. It almost looks like the image of a circular lens element. Beyond the edge of the ghost image, contrast returns with a clear view for the small remainder of the viewing areas. Center contrast is also excellent, but it’s distracting to have this flare near bottom under some conditions, though most of the time one won’t be consciously aware of it."
This is precisely what I saw and Lloyd's description is better than anything I can offer. That's why I referenced his article.
http://diglloyd.com/articles/Binoculars/Binoculars-NikonEDG.html
He's VERY clear about his observations.
"The ghost image exhibits a brighter circular flare most of the way across the viewing area, typically showing near bottom, though this can be changed by altering the eye position, causing the ghost image to shift. It almost looks like the image of a circular lens element. Beyond the edge of the ghost image, contrast returns with a clear view for the small remainder of the viewing areas. Center contrast is also excellent, but it’s distracting to have this flare near bottom under some conditions, though most of the time one won’t be consciously aware of it."
This is precisely what I saw and Lloyd's description is better than anything I can offer. That's why I referenced his article.
brocknroller
porromaniac
Yes, he was clear about his observations, but NOT very precise with his terminology, which was my point.
"Ghosting" is different than flaring.
"Flare" is what I described above, and it's also what Lloyd described in your quote from his review, not ghosting. I gather that he threw that term in to describe how the flare seemed to move around the view, but you can do that with just about any bin that exhibits flare by repositioning your eye.
Holger Merlitz explains this in his Oct. 2009 update to his ZR 7x36 ED2 review (at bottom):
http://www.holgermerlitz.de/zen7x36.html
Edz from Cloudy Nights used the term "veiling flare" to describe an extreme amount of flare, which avoids this confusion of terminology.
Most flaring confines itself to the lower half of the view, but if it's bad enough or if you purposely position the bin at the worst possible angle to induce this effect, the flare can grow to the point of "whiting out" most of the image or even the entire image, or "veiling" the image, as Edz calls it.
Flaring is found in many bins and can be seen "under some conditions" even in bins that otherwise control flare well.
How easily the flaring can be induced and how distracting it is to the user (which varies from person to person) will determine if flare is a "deal breaker" or not.
I have not tried the 8x42, only the 10x42 model, so I can't say if the flaring would bother me as much as it bothers you. Then again, Lloyd didn't try the 10x42 model, which would have been helpful since that's the model Jerry and I have used.
Certainly, if the flare in the 7x and 8x EDGs is at the same level as the original ZR ED2, it would be a deal killer for me.
It was annoying enough to find it in an affordable bin (but to their credit, ZR quickly rectified the problem), but for $2K, I would expect flare to be minimal, certainly no more than I saw in the 10x42 EDG.
For you, the flare was distracting enough to send the bin back, and apparently Lloyd feels as strongly about it since it kept him from giving the EDG "top billing" with the alphas.
However, I'd like to hear from more 7x42/8x42/8x32 EDG owners on this issue to see if this turns into a consensus or if it's more like the "rolling ball" issue in the SV EL, which some people are bothered by and others are not. Or as Lloyd put it, "though most of the time one won’t be consciously aware of it."
Better yet, I'd like Henry, Holger, or Edz to evaluate the problem and give us their expert views on the issue (not that it would matter if it bothered me!
. Thanks for posting your comments. Sorry the EDG had an "Achilles Heal". I hope I don't feel the same way about the 8x32 model, which I was hoping might replace my now sold 8x32 HG.
Brock
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