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ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

Bresser Super Wide Angle 8.5x42 (1 Viewer)

Binastro

Well-known member
Just found this.
Didn't know I had one.
As New in box. Box marked £50, so maybe that is what it cost perhaps 2008?

Many uncoated surfaces.
Some single coats.
Marked 193m/1000m or 11.06 degrees.
It actually has a poorly marked serial number and GKA on tripod thread cover. With a picture of a tripod.
Mild pincushion distortion.

Reading from my Post It note stuck on the box.

720g.
Not heavy.
Approximately 5mm exit pupil.
8.5x42 Bresser SWA.
11 degree true field.
Magnification about 8x so simple 88 degree apparent.
Some magnification change across field.
Bigger than Nagler 11mm eyepiece.
Fisheye effect.
Maybe fisheye mirror with prisms

Sharp only over central 40% of field.
Different in different quadrants.
Distortion and badly out of focus edges.
Very bad for stars.
Flare.
Spherical aberration.
Left barrel astigmatic.

I can't vouch for any of this as I can't remember testing but might check.

Very little cut off from prisms centrally almost round.

Crazy hot again 32C again 90F, gone on for two months but thankfully promise of change Wednesday.
30C indoors air conditioner on.
 
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Close focus about 16ft or 5m.
Crazy ghost images off axis this morning in bright sunshine, seems to be mainly from prisms and poor coatings.

It strains my eyes to use the Bresser, as I noted previously with the 7x32.
The Visionking 5x25 is a joy to use in comparison. The Visionking is restful until one notices that fine detail is missing. There is no fine detail to my eyes with the Bresser.

Comparing the Visionking with at least 14.8 degree true field and 74 or 75 degree simple AFOV, then the Bresser AFOV is 15% larger in diameter, say 87 degrees simple AFOV. The Visionking has considerably more eye relief, so comparison is not easy.

Last night the transparency was not very good, but using star separations the Bresser field is about 11.15 degrees. If the magnification is about 8.1 times, then the simple apparent field is 90 degrees.
There is a lot of field curvature in addition to other aberrations, so edge stars are very blurred and even in bright sunshine the edges are bad.
Next time I'll try to refocus edge stars to get better measurements.

The Bresser uses similar mirror prism ideas to the Leitz 6x24 Amplivid. The Amplivid is great, but with the Bresser they have pushed this system too far.
Perhaps young people with a lot of accommodation could cope with the Bresser, but I can't and it just gives me a headache from eye strain from the weird view.
 
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The Nikon 8x30 E II has a true field of 8.8 or 8.85 degrees, so the Bresser 8.5x42 with a 25% larger diameter true field sounds too good to be true.
Unfortunately the Bresser is very flawed.

The Minolta Standard MK 8x40 with 9.4 degrees is a good alternative, as are several older Japanese Porroprism 8x40s.
 
Pity, but unsurprising. Very few really wide angle bins seem to have acceptable edges. Things get interesting when you go beyond about 70degrees AFOV, the E2 is on the edge here. Always fun seeing what interesting cheap old Porros one can find.

I’m waiting for the promised rain, see if the grass and trees can return to their normal colours!

PEter
 
The Bresser uses similar mirror prism ideas to the Leitz 6x24 Amplivid. The Amplivid is great, but with the Bresser they have pushed this system too far.

Thanks for the very interesting post Binastro. It could be that the prism mirror combo needed Leitz design and build quality to go with it. 8.5x would also of course show up more flaws than 6x. The first generation 8x40 Trinovid with (per Allbinos) a whopping 176m field of view was supposedly very complicated to make and had a very short production run. It would be fascinating to see what could be done by Leica or another alpha manufacturer with the prism mirror concept with today's coatings, dielectric mirrors and production technologies. I have occasionally thought about acquiring an Amplivid, but 7x is only just enough for my viewing and 6x would be a step back too far, I think.

Peter, what's the edge performance of your Bushnell like? Back in May I had out the Swift 7x35 alongside my Zeiss West 8x30 (considered by Holger Merlitz and other users to have pretty good edge performance) specifically to compare fall-off towards the edge, and was surprised to find the two very similar, although of course nothing like a true flat field. I would certainly like to try one of those 8x40 extra wides.
 
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Last night the sky was very transparent after rain, something we haven't seen for two months.

Using very accurately known star separations, the true field is equal or greater than 11.08 degrees.
The best measure of the full field is probably 11.19 degrees, giving about 91 degrees simple apparent field of view.
However, the star images near the field edge are so awful that this edge field isn't much use, although I suppose a charging rhino might be spotted from the side before it would be in a normal binocular.

Even trying to refocus because of field curvature edge stars are long lines parallel to the field edge.
Even during the day the edge performance is awful.

Central stars are also a mess, possibly spherical aberration and other errors plus poor optical surfaces or poor mirror surfaces. Central stars are blobs of uneven brightness rather than sharp stars.
During the day nothing is really sharp, centrally or off axis.

The Bresser 7x32 SWA is similar, which is probably why I put the 8.5x42 away and forgot I had it.
I also don't know where the 7x32 is hiding.

I suppose a cherry picked Bresser SWA may be better, but the testers on the Channel 5? tech programme were probably lacking in optical knowledge to suggest that the 7x32 Bresser SWA could be compared favourably to the Canon 10x30IS.
That is why the 7x32 sold out in days, never to be seen again.
 
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