Nikon HG & digiscoping (1 Viewer)

Hi,

I wanted to demonstrate the chromatic aberration of Nikon HG binoculars with my digital camera and to my surprise I found out that these binos perform *very* well in digiscoping. Sorry if this is too obvious, but I'll post this anyway just in case some HG owners have not found this "feature" yet.

The filter ring of Nikon cp4500 (as well as the objective of Canon A80) fits and centers perfectly inside the rubber eyetube (pulled out about 5mm) without any adapters and the great eye relief of HG allows the use of whole zoom range (minor vignetting at full WA, see attachment). You can easily keep the binos vertically with left hand, camera in the upper tube, support the system to your belly/chest and focus with your left thumb.
Have fun!

Ilkka

ps. I'll post the results of CA experiments later...

Very interesting., looking forward to se your results! Probably the best way to trace CA in binoculars in a more "objective" way...

Will this type of set-up show the CA in the bins or will it introduce aberations of it's own?

i.e. Bin/scope optics + camera optics = new optical configuration

Normally the CA in the Nikon CP4500 is low compared to a high quality scope that lacks APO/Fluorite/ED-glass (CA levels rises with the focal length of a lens). From the picture it seems to be a cp4500 in the setup, so I think that most of the potential CA would originate from the binos in this case since they have the longest focal length, but it depends on the level of CA in the binos of course (ie if they have ED-glass in the front lens which I dont believe they have).

The results

My experiments with chromatic aberration in Nikon 10x32HG are far from scientific. I have not been able to make the star tests I wanted, but here is an example just to show the existence of CA. The pic was taken hand-held in bright light against the sun, in conditions where CA is most obvious to the eye. The images are resized but unedited. In many different lighting conditions CA is not visible at all. I hope I am not causing any unnecessary doubts about the optical quality of Nikon HGs - these binos really are great, but - as has been noted earlier - CA is there (at least in my unit).

Ilkka

ps. I agree with gorank that CA of CP4500 is not significant in this setup. I can show some evidence if someone is interested.