Zen Ray ED....initial impressions (1 Viewer)

I have messed with a bunch of 10x binoculars, and had a 8x Viper for a short while. While very pleasing at 8x, I had some reservations about the 10x. Still have not seen it, but it was an easy decision to go with Promaster 10x42. My number two choice would have been Pentax ED 10x43, but it was a lot of money. And I have the SP version of it, would have offered little new for me to test. I already know the ED Pentax is better, than SP.

I consider the Promaster and Zen Ray essentially equivalent.

Tero said:

I consider the Promaster and Zen Ray essentially equivalent.

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But you haven't tried a ZR yet ... have you?

I think in this case you also mean the 10x are similar as the 8x have significant (half degree) difference in FOV. That doesn't bother me but it might others.

Bbut the ZR 8x is a bit brighter PM 8x so they're close but not identical.

Then again the Promaster has the Repellant coatings too.

I guess it all depends on what you mean by "equivalent" (within the tolerance of a given user).

They are very close in price, build, reliability etc. I do not have to see all three or four. You would have to agree they are closer to each other than to other models.

The Pentax I have is quite good overall, not spectacular in any department. So if I could have the Pentax housing and the Promaster or ZR optics, that would be the ideal package. I think my Pentax is made in Japan, but is very similar to most mid price roofers. A step up from the 10x42 Monarch, which is a step up from the 150-200 dollar pair.

A bit more information FWIW.


I asked Promaster about the resolution specs for the Promaster ELX ED.

Here is their reply:
"According to the engineers, arc seconds are the standard resolution measurement. The resolution for the Infinity Elite ELX ED is less than or equal to 3.6" "

Zen Ray tells me their number is 3.2 arc seconds.

Maybe Henry Link or someone can indicate where this falls in the general scheme of binocular resolution ability.

As I posted earlier, If there is any difference in my Promaster and the ZEN ED I have, I can't see it. I may refine my approach and see if it shows up.

Wait till the star testers get hold of some of these.

Kevin P -

Have you been using the 10X's for general birding or raptors only? How do they perform when you are looking at a bird in a forested or low bushy type of environment - are you able to find the bird and stay on top of it as it moves? I am curious how they would preform trying to keep pace with something like a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

Steve C said:

As I posted earlier, If there is any difference in my Promaster and the ZEN ED I have, I can't see it. I may refine my approach and see if it shows up.

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The amateur star testing with a booster may be able to see/measure that but for an 8x bin that means that your eye would need a resolution of 3.2 x 8 = 25.6 arcseconds to just about tell the difference. That's well below the resolution of even the best human eyes at 2 arc minutes (per line pair) about 8 times worse.

Wikipedia with citations (see the article) matches what Henry Link as said before

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye#Acuity

Visual acuity is often measured in cycles per degree (CPD), which measures an angular resolution, or how much an eye can differentiate one object from another in terms of visual angles. Resolution in CPD can be measured by bar charts of different numbers of white — black stripe cycles. For example, if each pattern is 1.75 cm wide and is placed at 1 m distance from the eye, it will subtend an angle of 1 degree, so the number of white — black bar pairs on the pattern will be a measure of the cycles per degree of that pattern. The highest such number that the eye can resolve as stripes, or distinguish from a gray block, is then the measurement of visual acuity of the eye.

For a human eye with excellent acuity, the maximum theoretical resolution would be 50 CPD[16] (1.2 arcminute per line pair, or a 0.35 mm line pair, at 1 m).

Spherical aberration limits the resolution of a 7 mm pupil to about 3 arcminutes per line pair. At a pupil diameter of 3 mm, the spherical aberration is greatly reduced, resulting in an improved resolution of approximately 1.7 arcminutes per line pair.[18]

A resolution of 2 arcminutes per line pair, equivalent to a 1 arcminute gap in an optotype, corresponds to 20/20 (normal vision) in humans.

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Found on Ars Technica forums (a highly reliable reference site

The average human eye, in the fovea (the sweet spot) in bright light, can distinguish 1 arc minute (1 degree/60) in luminance (black/white) difference. About 2 arc minutes (1/30 degree) for a red/blue or other chrominance difference at roughly the same brightness.

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Or multiply by 2 for line pair measurements. But it's interesting to note that color feature distinctions are seen at about half the resolution.

So you can see why my (unboosted) sharpness tests have become less than useful as our bins have become better.

The point ... that the Chinese ED bins have sharpness conquered. The battle is now in other features and properties of the bin.

Laura, this is the problem with most 10x, even most 8.5x bins. They are not much good for warblers etc. I did spot a kinglet, a pretty golden one, with 10x, at some distance in winter woods a week ago. But come May I will be using my 8x42 porros with over 400ft fov.

Kevin,

Thanks for that. I had on some level had an in my head that would have taken me somewhat down that path. So I won't bother the resolution chart much more.

The problem with resolution charts is just doing one binocular at a time, making some notes. After looking at magnified lines for a while, my eyes start to cross anyway. When you try to do several binoculars in one session what I see seems to change after some time. Besides which my in-the-house set up likely needs some work. It was just what I could put up on short notice.

Kevin Purcell said:

The point ... that the Chinese ED bins have sharpness conquered. The battle is now in other features and properties of the bin.

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Very few binos, other than absolute junk, don't have good resolution in the center. The battle has not been over that for a long time. It is maintaining resolution outside the center, and in the course of doing so, controlling CA and other aberrations, along with contrast issues, that is the challenge. But your point is valid--most optics are quite good these days, so quality for price, ergonomics, durability etc are where the action is for most of the market.

--AP

lulubelle said:

Kevin P -

Have you been using the 10X's for general birding or raptors only? How do they perform when you are looking at a bird in a forested or low bushy type of environment - are you able to find the bird and stay on top of it as it moves? I am curious how they would preform trying to keep pace with something like a Ruby-crowned Kinglet.

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For general birding but not for close-in woodland birding.

The ZR 10x have a FOV of about 6.5 degrees (specified, I've not measure that). I've found with 8x bins that 6.5 degree is perhaps the smallest FOV that I'm really happy with for general birding. More is better and I'm happy with more than 7 degrees. I get diminishing returns above 7.5 degrees. Below 6.5 degrees I start finding myself feeling I need more and by 6 degrees I don't like the bin that much.

And that's was a problem for 10x birding. Some people don't mind giving up field for 10x in a good bin (e.g. Swaro 10x42 is 6.3 degrees IIRC. I used one briefly recently and it was a very nice view but perhaps just too narrow but I could see why people like them!).

At 6.5 degrees I can follow passerines easily in flight that are not too close (25 feet? I've not really measured it.).

So i have two 10x: a Bushnell Excursion 10x42 roof (which is not that bad for an inexpensive roof: much better than I tough it would be). And a Eagle Optics Raptor (Vixen Foresta) porro 10x42 which is a good bin though the ZR beats it in a few ways (more to come on that).

As far as following RCKI it all depends on how close they are to me. Even with wide FOV 8x they can be a challenge close up. And I do look at them because I'm looking for HUVI: Hutton's Vireos.

http://montereybay.com/creagrus/HUVI-v-RCKI.html

Yesterday in woods when I didn't take the ZR 10x because I knew we hitting two woodland parks (but I missed them on the Puget Sound part of the trip (of Alki Light)) I had some problems following a rather close in (10 feet?) RCKI (it turned out) who were feeding in their usual manic fashion (and hiding behind things).

So it comes down to how much FOV do you need? What's the minimum you are comfortable with. And what sort environments do you bird in.

The vast majority of my bins are 8x. And I expect it to stay that way. But I can see how some passerine hunters would argue that 10x can be helpful. But really there isn't a huge difference between 8x and 10x.

It's just another example of how bins are all about compromise

Alexis Powell said:

Very few binos, other than absolute junk, don't have good resolution in the center. The battle has not been over that for a long time. It is maintaining resolution outside the center, and in the course of doing so, controlling CA and other aberrations, along with contrast issues, that is the challenge. But your point is valid--most optics are quite good these days, so quality for price, ergonomics, durability etc are where the action is for most of the market.

--AP

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Yet I can tell the difference in center field sharpness between bins that are "not junk" in my definition (i.e. $200 and up roofs) e.g. my "not junk" Bushnell Elite are less sharp than the Chinese EDs. I can see that. It wins in some other areas (resistance to stray light, weight). Same with my Zeiss Victory 8x40: these EDs are sharper.

Maybe your definition of junk is "not current alpha bins"? I know you have high standards

And I'd say I have average corrected vision just a bit better than 20/20.

Perhaps something else is going on?

I spent some more time doing stray light testing.

I've managed to confirm that the ZR 8x and 10x do not have the same "halo" outside the field stop that the Hawke 8x has.

I figured out how to to reproduce the problem: looking at good uniform overcast through a gap in the trees. It gives uniform light at a lot of angles but also the details of the trees. I'd previously seen it from a reservoir with sun glinting on it (which gives the halo a particular sparkly and rainbow-like effect. The "halo" itself looks rather like looking down a reflective tube (with annular stop). I suspect it's a reflection from lens edges in the eyepiece (as it's outside the EP field stop).

So after I could reproduce the "halo" in the Hawke I tried it with the ZR bins and the Promaster and couldn't get the effect in any of them (or any other bin I took with me to test).

So that's useful information.

This result also shows that all of these "Chinese ED" bins are slightly different from each other. There must be a few design changes that give each of these bins slightly different properties.

And we're back .... to the second half of my stray light testing

In this stray light test I look at an old barn Owl perch up in a Douglas Fir on the edge of Volunteer Park. The perch is well shaded but through the branches of the tree and framed by surrounding trees is overcast sky

The overcast sky is a "bright overcast" i.e. an "anticyclonic gloom" overcast with a high pressure area generating an inversion at around 600 feet with a cloud thickness of just a thousand feet or so then sun and blue sky above that. It's not the sort of dark overcast associated with rain (nimbostratus) which would also have other clouds above it.

I found this test by accident (observing a Barn Owl in a daytime roost) and found quite a few of my bins "feel apart" in this situation when the best ones could deal with it.

Amount of stray light in the field (least to most)

1. Zeiss FL 7x42
2. Zeiss FL 8x32
3. Bushnell Legend 8x42 (yeah, WTF!)
4. Bushnell Elite 8x43
5. Promaster Infinity ELX ED 8x42
6. Hawke Frontier ED 8x32
7. Zen Ray ED 8x43
8. Zeiss Victory 8x40

Here to top four bins make it easy to see where the bird would be without stray light being at all annoying.

Of course the real surprise here is that bin in fourth place: the $200 Bushnell Legend 8x42. It does an very good job dealing with stray light even better than the Elite. And I put this down to it's 6.3 degree FOV. I'm pretty sure keeping the FOV narrow really helps to cut down on stray light.

But the brightness of the stray light in the FOV is not the only parameter here. How bright the image is will affect how much you can see.

So ranking the bins in order of Image brightness (i.e. transmission) by eye

1. Zeiss FL 7x42
2. Zeiss Victory 8x40
3. Zeiss FL 8x32
4. Bushnell Elite 8x43
5. Zen Ray ED 8x43
6. Promaster Infinity ELX ED 8x42
7. Hawke Frontier ED 8x32
8. Bushnell Legend 8x42

So the AK prisms with TIR followed by SP with dielectric mirrors then silver mirrors with quality of AR affecting the ordering too. The Legend doesn't do as well in this ranking. The Elite and ZR are very close I think: dielectric mirror and older AR coatings against silver mirror and newer AR coatings. This is also the order of absolute contrast and color saturation.

So now considering the observer image contrast quality with stray light (i.e something like image brightness / stray light brightness) the ordering from best to worst is:

1. Zeiss FL 7x42
2. Zeiss FL 8x32
3. Bushnell Legend 8x42
4. Bushnell Elite 8x43
5. Zeiss Victory 8x40
6. Zen Ray ED 8x43
7. Promaster Infinity ELX ED 8x42
8. Hawke Frontier ED 8x32

The ones that do better supressing stray light do best in this ordering even when they're not as bright (i.e. the Legend). Then the Victory that doesn't do as well with stray light but has a bright image does better. Then ZR where it's brightness helps a bit more than controlling stray light against the other Chinese EDs so it comes out at the top of the pack.

Even with this ordering the positions are not precise depending upon how much light they see there are some variations e.g. there were some points where the ZR 8x was differently better than the Zeiss Victory.

So this is a rather subjective test especially as the stray light varies across the field: some of the light is concentrated into bright crescents (the ZR does this) whereas others have a more of a veiling glare problem (the Promaster and Hawke suffer from this).

This is quite an extreme but realistic sort of test especially for birding in the woods (or looking for owls just before twilight) with a dark target and bright surroundings.

Of course keep in mind this isn't the only ranking of these bins. For example with sharpness all the ED or FL bins beat the non-ED/FL bins. Perhaps something like this:

1. Zeiss FL 7x42
1. Zeiss FL 8x32
2. Zen Ray ED 8x43
2. Promaster Infinity ELX ED 8x42
2. Hawke Frontier ED 8x32
3. Zeiss Victory 8x40
4. Bushnell Elite 8x43
5. Bushnell Legend 8x42

and price or weight would be another ranking.

Binoculars are always a compromise so determine the trade-offs is part of deciding which bin fits you. And that often takes experience.

Sorry, my mistake. I read sharpness as resolution. If the new Chinese ED binos have made improvements in CA control and contrast, they would certainly have better sharpness, even in the center, than binoculars that accomplished those tasks less effectively.

And no , my definition of "not junk" is not restricted to current alphas. Only those cheap binos that are defectively manufactured (out of collimation, alignment etc right out of the box) or which are impossible to make well (e.g. $20 pocket roofs, cheap compact zoom binoculars) fall dismissively in that category for me.

Digressing now....
My disparaging attitude toward some other binos (e.g. many cheap and "mid-priced" roofs) comes only in the context of making bino recommendations to devout birders. I don't understand, given all the money that so many people (in my country and social circles, and probably most of the people from the socioeconomic backgrounds that support their making it here to this forum) spend on expensive consumables (e.g. cars, restaurants/bars/coffee shops, movies, fancy cell phones and calling plans) why so many birders, even those who are absolutely committed to the activity, are so cheap when it comes to buying optics. I don't understand the thrill of birding with a $400 bino that is almost as good as a $1500 bino. I also don't understand the appeal of $400 binos to those just dabbling with birding--$400 is a lot of money to spend on a lark, and as we all know, there are good functional porros that cost a lot less. I know that my failure to understand these things is a pet failure, so to anyone reading this thread, please don't feel you have to explain it to me or argue the points. I'm just explicating the basis of my biases. I'm a lover of great birding optics that are cheap (great $125-$250 porros), and of in-all-ways-exquisite birding binos that are priced within the reach of those privileged enough to afford comparable luxuries (e.g. "enthusiast" quality bicycle, digital SLR and lenses, golf clubs, jet ski, car fancier than a subcompact, regular eating out), which I think today's alphas still are. Everything in between is just an exploration of the market space, and in my view, wasteland, between my two optima.

--AP

Alexis Powell said:

Sorry, my mistake. I read sharpness as resolution. If the new Chinese ED binos have made improvements in CA control and contrast, they would certainly have better sharpness, even in the center, than binoculars that accomplished those tasks less effectively.

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That's an interesting and important distinction to make and not one I've considered to hard before but it makes perfect sense.

It's the difference between measuring the resolution at one wavelength and measuring it for white light.

On a related note that actually already had me thinking this way earlier in this week was a comment on a forum that black and white camera lenses don't need to worry about CA. Wait a mo' I though. That makes no sense (unless you only photograph mimes ). You won't see he "color fringing" but you will see "luminance fringing".

Steve C said:

A bit more information FWIW.


I asked Promaster about the resolution specs for the Promaster ELX ED.

Here is their reply:
"According to the engineers, arc seconds are the standard resolution measurement. The resolution for the Infinity Elite ELX ED is less than or equal to 3.6" "

Zen Ray tells me their number is 3.2 arc seconds.

Maybe Henry Link or someone can indicate where this falls in the general scheme of binocular resolution ability.

As I posted earlier, If there is any difference in my Promaster and the ZEN ED I have, I can't see it. I may refine my approach and see if it shows up.

Click to expand...

Ron (Surveyer) measured the resolution, collimation, light transmission and photographed a star test of the Promaster ED back in September. See this thread and scroll down to post #20.

http://birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=122545

henry link said:

Ron (Surveyer) measured the resolution, collimation, light transmission and photographed a star test of the Promaster ED back in September. See this thread and scroll down to post #20.

http://birdforum.net/showthread.php?t=122545

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Thanks for the link. From Surveyor's test, the resolution specs from Promaster and Zen-ray seem to be credible! That is a good start. I remember my last purchase of binoculars. It spec says 17mm eye relief, the real number is less than 11mm. My ZEN 8x43 was shipped yesterday. should be able to get it Monday or Tuesday.:-O

My ZEN 8x43 was shipped yesterday. should be able to get it Monday or Tuesday

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I look forward to hearing your comments on it once you receive it. I really think they have further refined the open bridge Chinese ED design with this one. They are really difficult not to like.

Mine was shipped yesterday too. Can't wait to get my hands (and eyes) on it.