[Marys1000]

In November I was at a weekend bird festival where I got to look through some Zeiss, Swaro and Leica. Talking just color here it didn't seem as much had changed color wise for me.

I still saw the Zeiss as quite yellow (which I sort of like btw because of the
contrast it provides but it was strong enough that it seemed to make
them a bit dark)
The Leica as so white its a blueish white (my personal least fav colorwise)
The Swaro's seeming the most neutral but in some ways not as
crisp/contrasty.

When I remarked on the pronounced yellow to the Zeiss guy he seemed surprised.

So....do we as individuals each see color that differently and/or strongly?
Is it a rods and cones thing or something in our brain that latches on to something that might be quite minor, sort of a personality thing?
Do the people that love Zeiss not see the yellow via their rods and cones or does their brain prefer it so psychologically they dismiss it somehow?

[BobinKy]

First, here are a few links on color seeing:

How do we see colors? There are other links in this color series from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
http://www.hhmi.org/senses/b110.html

Hearing Colors And Seeing Sounds: How Real Is Synesthesia? How our sensory system is intertwined.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0724113711.htm

3% of women may have a fourth receptor cone--one more than the usual red, blue, and green that the rest of us have.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06256/721190-114.stm

. . .

Next, color seeing out of doors is highly dependent upon the light quality received from the atmospherics. My wife and I just had a new roof installed. It changes color from day to day, hour to hour; and whether the surrounding trees have leaves (and what color of leaves).

. . .

And of course, I am sure, if we knew more about optics and lenses we could rate the color transfer quality of lenses, as we do FOV, AFOV, etc. Maybe, someday, the binocular manufacturers will provide us with this information. However, since color sensitivity varies from person to person, by light quality, and atmospherics, this may not prove to be such an accurate rating.


--Bob
Kentucky, USA

[BobinKy]

Another question raised by your original thread is "What causes some binoculars to exhibit more contrast than others?" Does it have to do with color (light) transfer quality of the glass--or is it due to something else?

. . .

Here is a thread I started a while back on "color bias" of binocular models and manufacturers.
http://www.birdforum.net/showthread....hlight=fujinon

. . .

I hope you get several people posting comments. Unfortunately, threads about color rendition of binoculars--or color seeing differences between observers--do not seem to be overly popular. I sent an e-mail to another participant who is also interested in color. I hope he joins the discussion as he has studied color rendition from the optics perspective.

Thanks for the thread.

--Bob
Kentucky, USA

[FrankD]

I do not have much to contribute from a technical perspective though I must say that I think Bob handled that quite nicely. What I wanted to comment on is your impression of the Zeiss having a yellow color cast. This is genuinely surprising to me. Having owned several current Zeiss (FL, ABK and Conquest) I never found any of them to display a yellow cast to the image. Quite the contrary actually. I found them either very neutral or slightly blue/white in color bias. The Swaros, Meoptas and Nikon Venturers all showed a more pronounced yellow color cast at least to my eyes.

Interesting.

[Steve C]

Good question. I hope this thread has some life in it. Mary, I have to agree with Frank and the Zeiss salesman. I would not use the term yellow in any way to describe a Zeiss FL image. I'm not saying you did not see what you saw. Zeiss to me are almost too bright with a more noticeable blue to white bias. So I suppose it does to some degree depend on individual differences. Sometimes the light conditions of an indoor test will influence what we see as well.

[Pinewood]

Hello Marys1000,

I had noticed that one eye seemed to show more saturation than the other, using a binocular on a stained glass window. It seems that I have a nascent cataract in one eye, which is effecting my colour perception.

A perceptual psychologist, who posts on the Forum, told me that among people, and even between an individual's own two eyes, there is a lot of perceptual differnces.

I do not find the Zeiss' binoculars yellowish or even warm, but I am aware of only large shifts.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur

[Marys1000]

Interesting to see the variations in reports here, especially those that not only don't see Zeiss as yellow, but amazing the exact opposite of me and see it as bright with the Leica being a bit yellow.
As for lighting conditions, this is the second time I was at a bird festival and got to look through the big 3 high end optics. Granted the first time was 6 or so years ago but as I mentioned "the color thing as stayed the same for me" from my dim memory the Zeiss distinctly and quite pronouncedly yellow, Leica quite white/blue. One time was in the spring/summer in Michigan on a nice bright day in a parking lot with lots of leafy maples around, then recently in Nov in New Mexico on a bright day, but inside a dusty white tent. I compared some scopes outside, looked through the bins inside.
Years ago I owned an old pair of the east German Zeiss I got off ebay and I thought they were yellow as well. Perhaps they were, the new ones aren't and its just my mind....well I hope not:)
For future thread readers sake I will also throw out there that I am extremely nearsighted. And that I prefer the more warm or yellow light cast of incandescent bulbs to others. And that I used to look for sunglasses with the brown/yellow lens' because I loved the contrast they provided. So I do seem to have an affinity for warm colored light.

I wonder if there is a gender data point? I'm not the birder most people here are but...does it seem like there are a lot more women with Leica's?

Pinewood - my right eye is much worse than my left it just seems darker (an unhappy legacy of my 3rd anthrax vaccination). But I will try to keep in mind to note any differences btw eyes.

It would be interesting to have available the actual notes from all those past bin comparison tests that the magazines host to see who claimed what on color bias.

So far 3 to 1. I hope more chime in.

[Marys1000]

Bob - I read your link after posting. Lots of good info there. You guys are way ahead of me on much of this. I have never given a though to the form vs. color thing.
This comment by Owen did jump out at me though.

"The same bin that brilliantly contrasts brightly colored foliage suddenly loses its lustre when aimed at a more subdued target area-"

I thought the warm yellow of the Zeiss had great contrast which I liked, but I also felt that they sometimes were disturbingly dark, I suspect most like when I was looking at something of a more subdued color or in a darker spot in the room.

[MacGee]

Originally Posted by Pinewood

It seems that I have a nascent cataract in one eye, which is effecting my colour perception.

Mary, if you, by any chance, have a nascent cataract, you will see neutral light as yellow and some blue light as neutral, which might explain your untypical reaction to the bins you mention. Before the days of quick and easy cataract operations, elderly women in this country used to get their white hair blue-rinsed because only then did it look white to them.

When I had cataracts, it was a consolation for my poor sight that the natural world sometimes looked more beautiful. Buttercup meadows in early summer were glorious.

Michael

[Pinewood]

Originally Posted by MacGee

Mary, if you, by any chance, have a nascent cataract, you will see neutral light as yellow ...

Michael

Hello Michael,

Indeed my increased colour saturation was most noticeable in the yellows.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur

[Marys1000]

I don't think so, the eye dr. has never mentioned it and certainly not 5-6 years ago when I first looked through Zeiss and noticed it.

[henry link]

I've been planning to do a test project on the subject of color bias in binocular optics. Perhaps I can get it done over the next week and post the results. My hope is produce an "objective" result that eliminates personal differences in eyesight. In this test eyesight sensitivity to color is considered the baseline. It's quite nonlinear in everyone but that doesn't matter. The color bias of a binocular simply reflects the particular way in which its light transmission is nonlinear across the visible spectrum. All optics are nonlinear, but the exact shape of the transmission curve is largely dependent on coatings.

The idea of the test is to first photograph a white test card in sunlight. Then photograph the same card through various binoculars held backwards in front of the test card. If the small circle of the test card visible through the binocular is superimposed on the original image the color bias (and relative light transmission) of the binocular should be quite obvious.

[Pinewood]

Originally Posted by Marys1000

I don't think so, the eye dr. has never mentioned it and certainly not 5-6 years ago when I first looked through Zeiss and noticed it.

Hello Marys1000,

My ophthalmologist did not mention the nascent character until I mentioned the colour bias. It is nascent but it is no problem.

Happy bird watching,
Arthur

[henry link]

Here's a photo that illustrates the idea of the test described above.

I photographed a white card by window light with an old Swarovski 8x30 placed in front of it. The white background on the left is the direct reflection from the card and the yellow circle is the same reflection after it has passed through the binocular optics. In this case the color bias is quite obvious. Swarovski intentionally made some very yellow biased optics in the past to please hunters.

[falcondude]

is it anything to do with the coating on the lens. I saw some binoculars with pure green coating, some with purple-ish green, some with yellow-ish green. I wish I could get all those binoculars together to compare side by side.

[BobinKy]

Henry Link--

Your tests look interesting. If I may, please consider these suggestions for your tests.

(1) Color is very dependent upon light (direct and reflected). Taking the photos of various binocular models to be tested should be made as close together in time as possible.

(2) The light meters in many cameras are designed to see "gray." When the camera is set in "auto" mode the camera's light meter frequently adjusts the exposure settings (aperture size and shutter speed) so a white card becomes gray in the finished photo. The user can compensate for this by metering off of a gray card, identifying the exposure settings and setting them manually for additional photos. This only works when the lighting remains the same. Many photo gray cards have white on one side of the card and gray on the other.

Please keep us posted of your tests. They are very interesting.

--Bob

[henry link]

Thanks, Bob. I think I'm probably already using most of your suggestions. Photos are made in rapid succession in the same test set-up around noon on a sunny day. I'm using a manual exposure setting that gives slight underexposure of the white card. I'm hoping for some help from a friend with Photoshop to generate images that superimpose a small circle of the light that has passed through the binocular optics over an image of the direct reflection from the card taken from the same photo.

This isn't exactly rocket science. Anybody with a white piece of paper and a digital camera can do it.

Henry

[Marys1000]

So Henry - what all do you have to test? I would love to see the new big three tho I'm sure you don't own them:) Any brave souls near you that would lend a hand?

[Yippeekiay]

Hi All,
I'm no expert and this is purely conjecture but I believe it's possible that a person's current state (nutritionally speaking) may affect visual perceptions. There're reasons they tell us to eat our vegetables. Certain deficiencies and or surpluses, in vitamin A for instance, can lead to degenerations sure to affect the way we see things. This also can change on a daily basis so one day we're sensitive to greens and reds the next. (Again, purely conjecture. Just some "health" food for thought).
Oh, +1 awaiting the results of the tests.

[henry link]

Just a quick update on this project for those who are interested.

The photo below is my tentative format for showing the test results. The background color around the edges is sunlight reflecting directly back to the camera from a white piece of paper. The central squares are the reflection from the very same piece of paper after traveling through four different binoculars. The bottom left is a Nikon 8x30 E from 1985 with single layer MgF coating, typical of that generation of coatings. The upper left is a Carl Zeiss/Jena 8x50 Octarem from 1987. It had an early multi-coating called "T3M". The upper right is a Zeiss 8x56 FL and the lower right is a Nikon 8x32 SE.

I know everyone is actually interested in comparisons of the current alpha binoculars. That will have to wait until I can make a trip to a dealer who has generously humored me in things like this before.

[BobinKy]

Henry--

This is good news on your test methodology.

Now, to be sure, do the four color squares in the above photo reflect the results of your research on the four models you listed?

Or is this just the format you will use and the actual color differences will be posted at a later date?

Thank you for your work and dedication on this project.

--Bob
Kentucky, USA

[henry link]

Bob,

The central squares are crops from actual photographs made with the binoculars placed in front of the paper like in the Swarovski example above. The background around the edges is an actual photograph of the paper with no binocular in front of it made at the same time. Exposures are all identical. A perfect binocular with 100% transmission and no color bias would produce a square that looks just like the background. I found I didn't need Photoshop. I just assembled the crops into a Powerpoint slide and saved it as a jpeg.

It's hard to believe that the old binoculars are really that dim, but thats what the camera recorded. The eye is easily thrown off by context. If I look at those squares in isolation and surrounded by black as through a binocular they don't look dark at all.

Henry

[Kevin Purcell]

Originally Posted by henry link

It's hard to believe that the old binoculars are really that dim, but thats what the camera recorded. The eye is easily thrown off by context. If I look at those squares in isolation and surrounded by black as through a binocular they don't look dark at all.

This is an example of the Simultaneous Contrast Illusion or the Contrast Effect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contrast_effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gr...l-illusion.svg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%27s_illusion

Very interesting work, Henry.

Do you have a RAW mode on the camera? Minimizing the amount of processing (especially lossy conversions like JPEG) of the image might help in making measurements.

[Pileatus]

Henry,

When I cropped out the 8X30 E and the Zeiss 8X50 the FL and SE were visually indistinguishable from one another. Interesting.

John

Originally Posted by henry link

Just a quick update on this project for those who are interested.

The photo below is my tentative format for showing the test results. The background color around the edges is sunlight reflecting directly back to the camera from a white piece of paper. The central squares are the reflection from the very same piece of paper after traveling through four different binoculars. The bottom left is a Nikon 8x30 E from 1985 with single layer MgF coating, typical of that generation of coatings. The upper left is a Carl Zeiss/Jena 8x50 Octarem from 1987. It had an early multi-coating called "T3M". The upper right is a Zeiss 8x56 FL and the lower right is a Nikon 8x32 SE.

I know everyone is actually interested in comparisons of the current alpha binoculars. That will have to wait until I can make a trip to a dealer who has generously humored me in things like this before.

[BobinKy]

Henry--

Impressive!

I hope you do not mind, but I posted a link on Cloudy Nights to this thread.

--Bob
Kentucky, USA