Steiner Hunting 10x50 (1 Viewer)

[John A Roberts]

For convenience:

A) Petr
I absolutely agree with you. Today's new binoculars are overpriced, marketers are doing a good job...
Sometimes, to get a 5% better image, you need to overpay by 50%-100%...

B) Canip
To achieve a 5% improvement in image, the manufacturer sometimes has to make large investments. Unfortunately, these are the physical laws of optics.


John

 

[Swedpat]

John,

That is understandable. And this leads to the interesting question: how high is the price to manufacture the optical class where no further noticeable improvements are possible to reach?
Yes, I understand that this also depends on the individual eye sight. A person with eye resolution above the average, will see difference between two instruments where a person does not see any difference. The same when it comes to CA: some are more sensitive for that than other.
But there has to be an optical class which is "perfect", so no further noticeable improvement is possible for anyone.

 

[Binastro]

£15,000 and above, and still not perfect.

Regards,
B.

 

[WJC]

£15,000 and above, and still not perfect.

Regards,
B.

Nor will it EVER be!

 

[WJC]

John,

That is understandable. And this leads to the interesting question: how high is the price to manufacture the optical class where no further noticeable improvements are possible to reach?
Yes, I understand that this also depends on the individual eye sight. A person with eye resolution above the average, will see difference between two instruments where a person does not see any difference. The same when it comes to CA: some are more sensitive for that than other.
But there has to be an optical class which is "perfect", so no further noticeable improvement is possible for anyone.

There is so very much more than GLASS going on here! But, some people don't know and some people don't care.

A few years ago, I THOROUGHLY explained an aberration a fellow was complaining about. He wanted quantifiable answers. I gave him accurate answers as simply stated as the situation would allow.

His response to me was: "I can't understand all that s---".

And that is the way it is with so many armchair EXPERTS! They don't understand aberrations. They don't understand how they interact. They don't understand glass types and think its all "optical glass" They don't understand most binocular companies don't make their own glass. They don't understand that MOST American binocular companies buy off the shelf from Japan or China (If they have enough money, they can have THEIR design produced.

And yet if anyone offers what it takes to bring these people out of their self-inflected darkness ... they're being rude!

Well, if you can't understand all that s--- why must you demand answers that require "all that s---t to be used in the answer?

"What a world ... what a world!" — Wicked Witch of the West

 

[Canip]

It is mankind you you are wondering about, Bill !! Remember how we came into existence - we couldn’t even cope with the simple instruction „don‘t eat from that tree“

 

[Swedpat]

£15,000 and above, and still not perfect.

Regards,
B.

This is of course hypothetical because there is no handholdable binocular for £15,000.
And I am sure that before such a high class is reached, no more noticeable improvement is possible. We can also argue about the meaning of "perfect". Is it an image inseparable from the naked eye view or is it the level from where no more noticeable improvement is possible. One could also argue for that not even naked eye is perfect.

 

[Ignatius]

For convenience:

A) Petr
I absolutely agree with you. Today's new binoculars are overpriced, marketers are doing a good job...
Sometimes, to get a 5% better image, you need to overpay by 50%-100%...

B) Canip
To achieve a 5% improvement in image, the manufacturer sometimes has to make large investments. Unfortunately, these are the physical laws of optics.


John

This is known as the Law Of Diminishing Returns, which was already known to 18th century economists. It actually comes from productivity analysis and states that at some point an extra unit of input into the production process, ceteris paribus, will return a lower unit of output per unit of input.
Here, it applies to both answers equally: for the manufacturer to increase image quality (however defined) by 5%, a disproportionate investment has to be made; and for the buyer to purchase said image quality increase of 5%, they will have to spend not 5 or even 10% more, but a very disproportionate 50-100%. I remember having to draw all sorts of curves in economis at uni for this stuff, but it was still one of the (more) realistic models compared with some of the other theories and models they play with there, in their desperate attempts to put the right spin on the world out there and make us believe it is all for our best.

 

[Binastro]

I am talking of hand held binoculars costing £15,000 plus.
Hand made.

Perfection is an idea, a concept of the mind.

Perfection does not exist and certainly not for binoculars.

1. A hypothetical perfect binocular for one person would not be perfect for another.

2. Collimation is not perfect.

3. The image from a fast system as in a binocular is not perfect, especially as it covers object distancse from near to infinity.

4. It has an erecting system.

5. The eyepieces may be wider than a person's IPD.

To achieve perfection, one has to make compromises and accept that the binocular is perfect enough, even though not actually perfect.

I have not seen even a near perfect binocular.

The Zeiss 20x60S is near perfect on axis, but not off axis, and the AFOV is not large.

The Nikon WX may be nearly perfect but is too large and heavy.

I have seen and owned near perfect telescopes.
I suppose that they had faults, but were not noticed in use.

Horace Dall's camera obscura and 8 inch Maksutov seemed perfect to me.

My Pentax 100mm f/12 astro refractor, 100mm Soviet Maksutov and Ross 100mm triplet seemed perfect to me.

The Hubble space telescope when corrected seemed perfect.
Then the Webb telescope came along.

There are seemingly perfect objects.
The wheel.
A paper clip.
Maybe a pencil.

But they also have faults.

As to the unaided view in humans or animals.
This is very far from perfect even in the best examples.

There are £80,000 military binoculars, but these too are not perfect.

Some folks on the forum seem continually looking for the perfect binocular.
Good luck in your quest.

Regards,
B.

 

[Swedpat]

I absolutely understand what you mean. I was focused on the optical quality.
Is it possible to reach the point where you cannot more improve noticeable sharpness? Yes, I am sure it is. But there are several factors to take in consider. The sharpest optics in the center comes on the expense of edge sharpness. Advanced eyepieces for wide angle with sharpness to the edges have more lenses which results in lower light transmission and contrast.
An optically truly perfect instrument would have 100% light transmission, with highest possible sharpness over entire FOV, absolutely zero glare and zero CA.
That will never happen, because everything has its price.
So of course not even the optically perfect binocular will be made, independent of the price.

But: without the glares I would consider Swarovski NL Pure as the perfect binocular for me. There is nothing else I think should be better with it.

 

[Thotmosis]

Perfection is an idea, a concept of the mind.

Hence all my binoculars are perfect.