• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Lens hood problem of ATS with SOCase in place. (1 Viewer)

Crake Dude

Well-known member
Am I living in a parallel universe...or is it just me, or what!

A few weeks ago I thought I'd treat my Swaro ATS80 HD to a new Swaro stay-on-case(SOC) because mine was looking a bit tatty, and the photos of the later design with black trim looked very 'pwetty'. Also, I was tired of having to partly unzip the body case to enable the lenshood to slide in and out, very poor design fault, IMO.....surely this had been corrected in the newer design. Case arrived, I fitted it on and....nope, same problem, lenshood almost impossible to slide out with SOC in place. It's even worse now that the body case zip is divided into two, instead of the all-around zip on the older SOC, and the zips start at the object lens end so cannot be partly unzipped to reduce friction with the SOC and scope's body.

I contacted Swarovski customer service and part of their response was, 'As the SOCs are sewn by hand, sometimes the cases are a bit too tight. Nevertheless, you should definitely be able to extend the lens hood.' I definitely cannot without great effort, and expletives abounding from my mouth.

After much thought, I seem to have found the solution, though it's highly technical and very expensive, but that's no problem for us/you have-to-be-filthy-rich to be Swaro owners, is it. Here goes:

I could feel that the lenshood very gently 'snapped' into position when in the fully retracted position. Even though there are indentations in the SOC to enable a better grip to pull the hood out, it's that final snapping back which was the main cause, I reckoned. So, with the SOC off, I just put a rubber band in the gap formed between the rear of the hood and the scope body if you slide the hood forwards a few millimetres. SOC back on, much easier now to slide the hood out, especially if you use a twisting action. Sorry to be all technical.

So, are Swaro gonna include 3mm rubber bands now with their SOCases, or sell 'em separately....which do you think.

Good luck.

Steve
 
The postman here leaves a steady trail of suitable rubber bands in two sizes.
Normal and Swarovski lens hood size.

The advantage of these is that they always seem to be fresh, and if an old in use one is perished, fresh ones seem to be always available.
 
I also experienced the same problem and remedied with a piece of 3 mm thick string, which should last longer than a rubber band. In fact it has been in place for 3 years now :)
 
I think it is normal, that there are some 'problems' with the lens-hood. At the time my Zeiss DiaScope was new (2011), the SOC (also two parts) were very tight. My dealer told me, that there is some time needed to use the SOC normally - that was true, 4-5 weeks later all functions (e.g. pulling out the hood) worked well. Since 2011 there was no flaws with the scope and the SOC (original Zeiss), but I bought two hoods from heliopan (2x5cm - aluminium) because the retractable hood(s) are very short. You can see this better behaviour whlie digicoping with lower sun in the direction of the objective.

good pulling
Manfred
 
Warning! This thread is more than 5 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top