I broke my SF so you don't have to... (2 Viewers)

[Pinewood]

Hello High North,

You call "-4ºC" cold? On Friday, I was bird watching with a Meopta Meopro 6.5x32 and a Zeiss FL 10x32, when it was -16ºC, which was my coldest bird watching effort. The Meopta may have been a bit sluggish, but it was less affected from the cold than I was. The Zeiss was working well.
At a mere -4º, I would not expect any fatigue, so when it went "hurtling," was there some extra momentum from your removing the sweater? I once threw a binocular over my shoulder before putting my arm through the neck strap. That binocular hurtled to the floor and was dispatched for repair, at my expense. Ouch!

Happy bird watching,
Arthur :hi:

 

[Hermann]

Well, you can expect some damage when you drop a pair of binoculars. It doesn't always happen, but it can.

But from a height of less than 1 m? Well, the bins really should have survived than no problem. And the front bridge broke off cleanly? No way. That should not have happened. Never ever. And the temperature doesn't really come into this at all. -4 C isn't "cold", it's pretty mild for many parts of the world. Sure, some materials can get brittle when it's really cold, but not at -4 C.

I've been using binoculars from various manufacturers for more than 40 years, and I even though I'm pretty careful with my binoculars I dropped them quite a few times over the years. I also once had a very bad fall when I slipped when crossing a river and banged the binoculars really hard on some rocks. But I only once had to send a pair off to have the collimation checked one such incident.

I expect Zeiss to repair the binoculars really quickly free of charge. I also expect them to explain what happened and make appropriate changes to prevent such things from happening in the future. A binocular that doesn't survive such a minor incident can't really be called fieldworthy in my not so humble opinion.

Hermann

 

[HighNorth]

Hello High North,

You call "-4ºC" cold? On Friday, I was bird watching with a Meopta Meopro 6.5x32 and a Zeiss FL 10x32, when it was -16ºC, which was my coldest bird watching effort. The Meopta may have been a bit sluggish, but it was less affected from the cold than I was. The Zeiss was working well.
At a mere -4º, I would not expect any fatigue, so when it went "hurtling," was there some extra momentum from your removing the sweater? I once threw a binocular over my shoulder before putting my arm through the neck strap. That binocular hurtled to the floor and was dispatched for repair, at my expense. Ouch!

Happy bird watching,
Arthur :hi:

Hi Arthur!

No, I don't call -4 C cold: my record up here last year was - 38 C, and consider that I live close to the coast, whereas further inland it can get even colder! Still, I am grateful for the Gulf Stream, and I don't wish for Siberia-like temperatures!

It might have been a bit of momentum to the fall, but everything happened so quickly that I only remember the bin suddenly just lying there on the floor...

 

[HighNorth]

I expect Zeiss to repair the binoculars really quickly free of charge. I also expect them to explain what happened and make appropriate changes to prevent such things from happening in the future. A binocular that doesn't survive such a minor incident can't really be called fieldworthy in my not so humble opinion.
Hermann

Thanks Herman!

Let's hope so!

 

[kabsetz]

High North,

I generally don't like to speculate with insufficient information to back it up, but just looking at your photos it very much looks like the bridge that has cracked was magnesium and not plastic. I have seen a badly mangled Swaro magnesium binocular body (I think it was driven over by a car) and the breaking points looked similar, granular and silvery gray. If it were plastic, it would very likely be colored through and therefore black where it broke, whereas metal is oxidized or painted and the color is only on the surface, like here.

What you can also see in the photo is how Z managed to keep the weight of these binoculars so low. There really is no excess metal visible anywhere.

It is too bad you had the accident, and I hope all will turn out well for you. But, I don't think binoculars should be designed to survive falls on stone floors unless they are intended for marine or military uses or the like. If we insisted on birding binoculars to do that, we'd have to accept significantly higher weights and thicker armorings, and even then there would always be the odd accident where the binocular would break anyway and the owner would be unhappy because it was supposed to be shockproof.

Ironically, this might have been just the kind of an accident where the composite body that Zeiss was advocating earlier and that was used in the older Victory series could have survived better than the magnesium body which they adopted for the SF because birders prefer its more solid "feel". Nevertheless, I still personally prefer the use of metals for binocular and scope bodies, despite having had my own mishaps once or twice in the past.

In summary, accidents happen, every accident is different, and it is not possible to draw conclusions about the durability or lack thereof of a binocular model based on isolated accidents.

Kimmo

 

[BruceH]

North High ... Ouch, I am sorry to see what happened to your SF. That must of been a terrible feeling when you saw that it did not survive the drop.

I hope that was just a fluke accident and Zeiss will take care of it with minimal pain to you. They do say they in the Invention of the SF video that the binocular design did take shock into consideration. It is discussed at 2:32 in the video. I wonder if Zeiss would expect it to survive a less than 1 M drop. Yours may have had a faulty casting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6-Dr8yKWAw

If Lee gets a chance to interview Dr. Dobler again, it would interesting to ask if they tested for dropping and what the expectations are.

I hope all turns out well.

 

[brocknroller]

A Bridge Too Far

Hi All!

I have been loath to share this, but since there is currently a discussion going on about the robustness of the new Zeiss Victory SF, I thought you should know...

A few days ago, I had just come in from a birding session in the cold (about -4° C) , when I was a bit too quick to remove the woolen hood I wore, and my brand new SF 8x42 was sent hurtling to the floor with it!

As you can see from the pictures, the front bridge broke clean off at the hinge.

The binoculars were otherwise fine though: I could not discern any damage to the optics or focusing mechanism, and the bins weren't even out of collimation as far as I could see. I guess the armouring worked as it was supposed to! :t:

I have sent the bins back to the dealer, and the dealer will send them to Zeiss in Germany for an assessment. As the damage is "self inflicted", I know I can't expect to have them repaired under warranty, but in that case, I hope they can be fixed at a reasonable price and within a reasonable time frame...

The dealer (which was very helpful by the way) was quite surprised at this mishap actually, as Zeiss has touted the triple bridge as more robust than the double bridge on the Swarovski EL series.

I also told the dealer to ask Zeiss to have a look at the focuser, since it has now become clear that the uneven movement could be due to a manufacturing flaw.

I just pray that the SF comes back to me as good as (or better than) new, and that it won't cost me an arm and a leg!

Well, for a while you had the only "open hinge" SF in existence.

I remember when the EDG first came out, Pete Dunne gave one a 10 ft. javelin toss. They came down hard into the dirt. He dug them out an wiped them off, and other than a slightly crushed eyecup, they worked fine. Made me feel better about the double hinge design since there were people who doubted their robustness, not just the EDG, the EL, etc.

You had Zeiss over the barrel with those photos. You could have blackmailed them. Either send me a new unit or I will post these photos to Birdforum, the largest online birding community in the world! They probably would have sent a new unit via FedEx to the nearest city and delivered the package to your door by dogsled a few days later.

The repairs better not cost you an arm and a leg, because the bin already cost you an arm and a leg, two more missing limbs and you'd have nothing left to bird with! :smoke:

Good Luck!

Brock

P.S. For winter birding, perhaps you should use a bin with a No Fault Warranty:

NO BLAME... NO FAULT... NO PROBLEM WARRANTY

 

[NDhunter]

HighNorth:

I agree that is too bad the break in your new binocular. That is a bad thing no matter what
brand or what they cost.

Brock, mentioned the No-fault warranties that some companies provide. As far as I know, Zeiss
does not offer that in their warranties. I just carefully read mine over, for the current Conquest HD.

The warranty states that it "does not cover damages due to misuse, neglect, accidental damage,
mishandling or alteration of the Product".

That being said, many companies will cover something like this. And early in the introduction of
a new model, we may be finding some weak points in the design. I believe we have heard the casting
process has been a challenge. I agree, trying to keep the weight very low up front, it looks like
from your pictures, that could be a problem with a too thin of a casting. Magnesium casting sounds
difficult in its own way.

In my business, I know all about machinery repairs, mostly steel, some aluminum.

I expect Zeiss will handle your issue with a brand new replacement. Let us know.

Jerry

 

[stereotruckdriver]

My sympathies, too. 1 m doesn't sound like all that much, but I'm guessing you have hard floors? I've dropped optical stuff from that height onto carpet and never had a problem.

And -4 C? Right now I'd call that balmy.:-O I'm sitting on -8 as I write and we've been down to -25. If any kind of metal gets brittle at that temp there's something wrong with it, right? My guess is Zeiss may have lightened up the front end a little too much? Lots of talk about moving the weight to the eyepiece. Maybe there's a "robust" cost involved? You mentioned plastic, but I kind of doubt that. Maybe just too little Mg.

I don't know. I think Zeiss will take care of you though. Best of luck.

And where do you get off up in Kirkenes with -4 C? Heck, yesterday we hit 0 C and I was sitting outside in a lawn chair reading The New Yorker and watching the birds. Felt like Florida or something.

Keep us posted,
Mark

That has got to hurt! I had a Pentax DCF SP 10x50 that dropped approximately 10'
objectives first onto concrete, I wigged out sent them in.

A few weeks later received them with a note.

Cleaned and inspected no damage, wow!

I was greatful, and ultimately surprised.

Bryce...

 

[etudiant]

Have to say, this experience adds to the credibility of the recently posted evaluation by KikkertSpesialisten. (http://www.birdforum.net/showthread.php?p=3174355#post3174355)
They dinged the SF for less 'robustness', rating them at 9, down from 11- for the HT. Apparently they were not unjustified in their assessment.

 

[[email protected]]

High North,

I generally don't like to speculate with insufficient information to back it up, but just looking at your photos it very much looks like the bridge that has cracked was magnesium and not plastic. I have seen a badly mangled Swaro magnesium binocular body (I think it was driven over by a car) and the breaking points looked similar, granular and silvery gray. If it were plastic, it would very likely be colored through and therefore black where it broke, whereas metal is oxidized or painted and the color is only on the surface, like here.

What you can also see in the photo is how Z managed to keep the weight of these binoculars so low. There really is no excess metal visible anywhere.

It is too bad you had the accident, and I hope all will turn out well for you. But, I don't think binoculars should be designed to survive falls on stone floors unless they are intended for marine or military uses or the like. If we insisted on birding binoculars to do that, we'd have to accept significantly higher weights and thicker armorings, and even then there would always be the odd accident where the binocular would break anyway and the owner would be unhappy because it was supposed to be shockproof.

Ironically, this might have been just the kind of an accident where the composite body that Zeiss was advocating earlier and that was used in the older Victory series could have survived better than the magnesium body which they adopted for the SF because birders prefer its more solid "feel". Nevertheless, I still personally prefer the use of metals for binocular and scope bodies, despite having had my own mishaps once or twice in the past.

In summary, accidents happen, every accident is different, and it is not possible to draw conclusions about the durability or lack thereof of a binocular model based on isolated accidents.

Kimmo

Yes, it makes you wonder if the development of ever lighter binoculars isn't sacrificing reliability. Those hinges look flimsy to me.

 

[Steve C]

That looks like a poorly cast, faulty part. From the look of it, it looks like cast aluminum to me. The break looks exactly like crappy cast aluminum. In my experience cast aluminum tends to break easily from blunt force trauma. I've seen plenty. If you look, the bright shiny parts that indicate where it broke are not around the whole needed area of contact. It looks like there was only something like half of the needed area that was cast properly, the black places did not cast or set properly. The black finish should never have been able to penetrate where it did. If the whole thing was cast properly it may well have never broken. We see that sort of thing a lot on cast (miscast) pieces on farm machinery. That kind of work does not seem to be as well done anywhere anymore.

 

[GLOBETROTTER]

My guess is that the bin flew to the floor in an attempt to remove that cheesy "ZEISS"-labeled hinge end cap in protest and in hopes that Zeiss might replace it with one with the classic stylized "Z" design.

--AP

Good Idea !!!!!!

:t::t::t::t::t::t::t::t::t::t::t

So sorry HighNorth i hope they will fix it as soon as possible.

 

[Inquisitor]

That is going to cause a couple of ugly meetings over at Zeiss....

I think Steve is right, since he pointed it out I agree there does seem to clearly be black finish penetrating an area that should be bright and shiny.

So sorry, I had the urge to vomit when I read the thread and saw the pictures and realized you were dead serious. I would be very, very upset. That is a million miles difference from the Conquest abuse video that has been referenced around here.

 

[Vespobuteo]

That looks like a poorly cast, faulty part. From the look of it, it looks like cast aluminum to me. The break looks exactly like crappy cast aluminum. In my experience cast aluminum tends to break easily from blunt force trauma. I've seen plenty. If you look, the bright shiny parts that indicate where it broke are not around the whole needed area of contact. It looks like there was only something like half of the needed area that was cast properly, the black places did not cast or set properly. The black finish should never have been able to penetrate where it did. If the whole thing was cast properly it may well have never broken. We see that sort of thing a lot on cast (miscast) pieces on farm machinery. That kind of work does not seem to be as well done anywhere anymore.

Though the pictures of the break point could have been a bit sharper,
I doesn't look better than a faulty cast..

Considering the amount of dampening rubber around the front objectives,
this should not happen from such a low impact fall (less than 1 meter/3 feet)

 

[Pileatus]

High North,

I generally don't like to speculate with insufficient information to back it up, but just looking at your photos it very much looks like the bridge that has cracked was magnesium and not plastic. I have seen a badly mangled Swaro magnesium binocular body (I think it was driven over by a car) and the breaking points looked similar, granular and silvery gray. If it were plastic, it would very likely be colored through and therefore black where it broke, whereas metal is oxidized or painted and the color is only on the surface, like here.

What you can also see in the photo is how Z managed to keep the weight of these binoculars so low. There really is no excess metal visible anywhere.

It is too bad you had the accident, and I hope all will turn out well for you. But, I don't think binoculars should be designed to survive falls on stone floors unless they are intended for marine or military uses or the like. If we insisted on birding binoculars to do that, we'd have to accept significantly higher weights and thicker armorings, and even then there would always be the odd accident where the binocular would break anyway and the owner would be unhappy because it was supposed to be shockproof.

Ironically, this might have been just the kind of an accident where the composite body that Zeiss was advocating earlier and that was used in the older Victory series could have survived better than the magnesium body which they adopted for the SF because birders prefer its more solid "feel". Nevertheless, I still personally prefer the use of metals for binocular and scope bodies, despite having had my own mishaps once or twice in the past.

In summary, accidents happen, every accident is different, and it is not possible to draw conclusions about the durability or lack thereof of a binocular model based on isolated accidents.

Kimmo

A superbly cogent post. My compliments.:t:

 

[perterra]

This really makes me wonder why the buying public has such a resistance to polymers

 

[Troubador]

I was a bit too quick to remove the woolen hood I wore, and my brand new SF 8x42 was sent hurtling to the floor with it!

Hi HN

So sorrry to hear your bad news, you must have been devastated.

And you dropped it only 1 metre while taking off your hat? I never imagined you as only 1 metre tall, but perhaps those fierce winds in Kirkene stop the local people from growing any taller :-O

Seriously, I hope you get it fixed soon.

Its hard to tell from the pics exactly what has happened but I agree with others that the bridge looks like metal and that one of the pale areas shows a shape of the break that doesn't look right. I wonder if Steve C is right and it was a faulty casting.

This incident reminds me of the time my wife dropped her Canon 100 macro lens onto a tiled floor in France. The lens had been dropped occasionaly onto carpet and outside onto grassy surfaces from much higher and always survived OK. But the drop onto the tiled floor from less than the height of a low bed ruined the lens as it would not focus.

All best wishes for a happy outcome.

Lee

 

[Rotherbirder]

High North,

I generally don't like to speculate with insufficient information to back it up, but just looking at your photos it very much looks like the bridge that has cracked was magnesium and not plastic. I have seen a badly mangled Swaro magnesium binocular body (I think it was driven over by a car) and the breaking points looked similar, granular and silvery gray. If it were plastic, it would very likely be colored through and therefore black where it broke, whereas metal is oxidized or painted and the color is only on the surface, like here.

What you can also see in the photo is how Z managed to keep the weight of these binoculars so low. There really is no excess metal visible anywhere.

Kimmo

I'm inclined to agree, looks like the bridge is Mg rather than plastic. Things just aren't made like they used to be. I remember well absent-mindedly leaving my Zeiss Dialyt 10x40 BGAT on the roof of a car before driving away and watching it bounce on the road through the rear-view mirror, a heart-stopping moment to be sure. The binocular was fine apart from a few scuffs to the armour. New is not always better!

 

[[email protected]]

I'm inclined to agree, looks like the bridge is Mg rather than plastic. Things just aren't made like they used to be. I remember well absent-mindedly leaving my Zeiss Dialyt 10x40 BGAT on the roof of a car before driving away and watching it bounce on the road through the rear-view mirror, a heart-stopping moment to be sure. The binocular was fine apart from a few scuffs to the armour. New is not always better!

I agree with that. Maybe they are trying to get these new binoculars too light.